Dorris, the oldest of three children, didn’t recall the reaction of her mother, Veda, to the adventure. (“She wasn’t really into his flying,” Dorris recalls. “I was a daddy’s girl. Dad was a lot more fun to be around.”) She just remembers her father had been daring himself for a while to do it. He was 54 at the time.

He knew it was a no-no. Almost exactly one year before the flight, the Federal Aviation Agency warned that any pilot who flew through the legs would be severely penalized. The FAA collected the names and addresses of 12 witnesses who saw the flight, and a canvass was started within a 75-mile radius to find the plane and pilot.

“We don’t take this as a joke,” an FAA supervising inspector told the newspaper at the time. “If the plane had hit the Arch or any of the downtown buildings, it would have killed a number of people in addition to the occupants of the plane.”

Nobody caught the entire tail number. The plane flew through the Arch legs at an altitude of 200 to 250 feet. The Arch is 630 feet tall. Bolin told his daughter he had sped up to return to Illinois, where he landed and kept the plane at the now-defunct Lakeside Airport near Granite City. Apparently, the FAA inspectors later passed over him.