Lowell Wheeler had just unloaded a crate of lettuce from the rumble seat of his Cadillac roadster when he heard a roar overhead. It was June 20, 1937. Wheeler was 26 and was delivering produce from Portland to the Army store near Pearson Field. The rumble was a big Russian ANT-25 airplane flying toward Pearson on its way from Moscow via the North Pole.

         Wheeler and the store manager, Don Harter Sr., ran outside the PX. "I remember Don Harter said, "What the hell is that?" Wheeler said. "A plane that size and coming in that low was unusual to see." The ANT-25, its single 900 horsepower engine droning, "didn't circle around," Wheeler said. "It just came right in."

         Wheeler didn't know the event was history, that it was the first time a plane had flown the dangerous non-stop polar route. Or that thousands of aviation enthusiasts and newspapermen soon would be rushing to the scene. "I had no idea," he said. But he did run to his car, grab his camera and start shooting. "I was kind of a photography hound anyway."

         Three weary Soviet fliers, pilot Valeri Chkalov, co-pilot Georgy Baidukov and navigator Alexander Belyakov, climbed from the machine. "Here's these three little Russian guys and, boy, were they happy because they had landed. You couldn't understand them. They were real nice guys. It was a lot of fun. I could tell by the way they were talking they were out of gas." According to news reports after the landing, the plane had less than 11 gallons of fuel. - 15 minutes flying time - when it landed.

         The 63-hour flight, in a time when aviation equaled romance, had been guided by Russian, Canadian and American radio beacons in a spirit of international cooperation. The Soviet aviators were welcomed as heroes in Vancouver and around the world. After the landing, Wheeler said, "The Army got in here in a hurry and barricaded everything up. I just got the heck out because I still had produce to-deliver."

         Today, Wheeler is 76 and semi retired. But in 1937 he worked day and night. In the morning, he would drive to Produce Row in Portland to pick up fresh food for the PX and small grocery stores in Vancouver. "I didn't have a truck in those days. I delivered the produce in a roadster. It had a big rumble seat." He said he can't remember when the Cadillac was made, but he said, "It was a good car. I paid a bundle for it even in those days. But I was always working and I always had money, so if I wanted something good, I got it. I was a bachelor in those days."

         At night, Wheeler, like his father, the late Charles Wheeler, was a theater projectionist, "in the days of the (now defunct) Mission and the State and the Roxie theaters in Vancouver." Lowell Wheeler later operated his own television and radio repair businesses and managed movie theaters in Vancouver.

         He and his wife, Juanita, had two sons, one of whom died in World War II. After Juanita died, Wheeler remarried and fathered a son, Brent, 19, who lives with him and is to graduate from Hudson's Bay High School this year.

         Wheeler said he retired eight months ago, or tried to. "I've always been a workaholic," Wheeler said. "I'm still doing work out of the house (repairing) old time radios."

         Wheeler, recalling his 50-year old encounter with the Russians, said he liked them. "They were friendly and we were friendly too. We had no problems. And why in hell we can't get along today is more than I can understand. Think of how much we'd save if we worked together instead of everybody pulling against each other. It's the big guys that want to fight, not the little people."