Fun, family and flights. The 2nd annual Wings over the Ozarks Festival flew by this Memorial Day weekend.

Parker Padgett from Ozarks First recaps the event:

The festival was free to the public while also benefiting the Boys and Girls Club of the Ozarks.

“It’s here to get everybody out in the community, have a good time, and also be able to benefit the kids and young people in our communities.” Director of Operation Patrick Stewart said.

Stewart says more than twice as many people showed up today compared to last year.

“So actually our best number right now, we still got a couple hours left to go,” Stewart said. “We’ve already seen about 8000 people, which is an uptick of about 100% from last year.”

One of the main attractions were air shows, one of them featuring Tom Larkin and his mini jet.

Cory Phillips and his wife and son traveled from Nixa to take in the holiday event.

“It was a show tribute to the men and women that served the nation that have lost their lives.” Phillips said. “It’s a pretty remarkable show. Amazing. He did some tricks up in the air and it’s good to watch little Jordan watch him, too.”

There were also planes on the ground, several on display.

There were even some you could sit in and learn about the aircraft.

Seville Oliver may be 12 years old but knows a lot about planes, knowledge she’s learned in a year with the Civil Air Patrol.

“I feel like people should like know more about airplanes. I like teaching people about them”. Oliver said.

In a world moving past the COVID-19 pandemic, Cory Phillips says these community events are important.

“It was good to go back to the community and see that people are coming out in a more of a normalcy environment before COVID,” Phillips said.

“And it’s a great to see people come out and enjoy themselves and not be restricted most of the time. Feels good to have some sort of normalcy outside an event like this.”

A video on this event can be seen on the Ozarks First Website.