Born July 27, 1914 at Green Level in Boone's Mill, Virginia to Norwood Greer and Margaret Helms Carper, Chris Carper evinced a desire to fly at an early in life. At the age of seven, he prepared for his first solo~a glider flight from the second floor of his uncle's house in Roanoke, Virginia on his sister's mattress with open umbrellas on the corners. Fortunately, for all concerned, present and future, a watchful housekeeper foiled his flight plan. Several years and small scale models later, Chris Carper built and flew gliders throughout the Roanoke Valley. He documented one of these flights with a photo he snapped using a wing-mounted camera. Taken when he was around 17, the picture won an award from Eastman Kodak. While still in his teens, he co-founded the Roanoke Glider Club and soloed in a Waco 10 after less than an hour of instruction.
After graduating from Thomas Jefferson High School in Roanoke in 1933, Carper enrolled for a brief time at Roanoke College before entering Parks Air College in St. Louis. Upon graduating in 1935, he and Leonard Hylton, another local aviator, struck out for California to earn their instrument ratings. While living in a hanger in Burbank, they worked for Coastal Air Freight. When not delivering packages or barnstorming, they shuttled couples to Las Vegas for quickie weddings!
In 1937, Carper hired on with Mid-Continent Airline in Kansas City. Then, after a brief stint with Hanford, he signed on with another new airline, Marquette, in 1939. He came to Transcontinental and Western Air, later TWA, in 1940 when the two airlines merged. In 1941, Carper earned his Captain's stripes on the DC-3. As a reserve officer in the Army Air Corps, he was called to active duty in May 1942, just short of a year after marrying Mary Jane Carothers of Bloomington, Illinois, his best girl and beloved wife of fifty-six years. Carper spent most of World War II in North Africa where he was Operations Officer for the Air Transport Command. Shortly after returning to Washington, DC in May 1944 as Head of Air Safety for the Army Air Corps, he was promoted to Lt. Colonel at the age of 30. Having resigned his commission in 1945, Captain Carper returned to Kansas City and TWA. During the remainder of his 34-year career with Trans World, he flew various models of the Lockheed Constellation and the speedy Convair 880. During his tenure with TWA, he trained Lufthansa pilots, served as an ALPA officer, and flew numerous luminaries, including Wendell Wilkie, Richard Nixon, and Dwight Eisenhower.
While not on duty and after retirement in 1974, Carper was involved with community agencies such as the Youth Symphony, Boy Scouts, the Gillis Home for Boys, and Second Presbyterian Church, where he served on the Session. Always a tinkerer, he often supplied neighbors with hardware, tools, and expertise. Indeed, he was a master of things in general. When not working in the basement workshop, playing with one of his favorite toys, a three manual Allen Organ, or keeping track of his three children— James Carothers, Cherie Helms, and John Tazewell— he occupied himself with several business ventures.
He passed into the life eternal on March 22, 1997.