Jimmie Angel Historical Project sends a letter from America!

Representatives from the Jimmie Angel Historical Project send a letter from America: “Dear Alfreds Paulausks. Valdis Ābols recently sent me photographs of your paintings of Aleksandrs Laime, Angel Falls, and Jimmie Angel’s airplane on the sides of a Kurbads truck. Your painting is a  beautiful homage to all, but especially to Laime. He was an important person in the history of exploration in the Angel Falls region. It is good that by seeing his image more people may learn about him. Kind regards, Karen Angel.”

Aleksandrs Laime became famous as the first known person to reach the world’s highest waterfall – Angel Falls. In 1949, he was the guide for Ruth Robertson’s expedition to measure the waterfall and confirm it as the tallest waterfall in the world. In 1955 he climbed the Canaima Plateau for the first time, reaching the Jimmie Angel’s “El Río Caroní”, which had been there since the accident that happened in 1937.

But there is another very important person who is very closely connected with this place – it is the aviator Jimmie Angel, after whom the waterfall is named. Jimmie Angel was the first Westerner to spot the falls by flying over in an airplane. He crashed trying to land on top of a waterfall mountain and became famous for his rescue story of eleven days of searching for a way down a vertical mountain. Laime, on the other hand, was the first to climb to the top of the waterfall and find the wreckage of Jimmy’s plane 18 years after the accident. In real life, these two gentlemen do not seem to have met, but Laime must have known about Jimmie’s adventures and they inspired him to new discoveries.

So we come to the composition of my drawing – Aleksandrs Laime in the center, Angel Falls in the background and Jimmie Angel’s plane above it. I’m kind of sloppy with the chronology because when Laime arrived in Venezuela, Jimmie’s plane had been rusting on the top of the mountain for quite some time and he was dreaming of the National Museum of Caracas. But I wanted to give the picture a more positive mood, so I chose to depict the moment when Jimmy is still flying over the waterfall in his plane.

Two outstanding personalities, two most interesting destinies intertwined around a natural pearl – the highest waterfall in the world.”

In 1970  Venezuelan Air Force removed Jimmie Angel’s airplane El Rio Caroni from Auyantepui in pieces and reassembled it at the Venezuelan Air Force Museum in Maracay, Venezuela.