THE letter that sparked the campaign to win belated recognition for Andy Mynarski, the acorn from which this wonderful oak tree grew, still sits in the filing cabinet in the corner.

"I hope you don't mind me writing to you," began 78-year-old Betty Amlin, self-effacingly, "but I feel I'd like to."

Betty, from Sedgefield, County Durham, is herself married to a former Canadian airman. Her main concern, however, appeared initially to be the decision to rename Teesside Airport as Durham Tees Valley - "an insult to the local people," she wrote.

Seemingly grounded, it was the foot of the second page before poor Andy Mynarski even merited a mention. Once she got airborne, however, Betty was off with all guns blazing.

"There is not one iota of recognition of his heroics at the airport," she wrote. "In his service to this country he paid the ultimate price, yet he seems almost to have been forgotten.

"What a wonderful recognition it would be to call it the Andrew Mynarski VC Airport . . ."

If she were flying a kite, as perhaps those magnificent men once did, it couldn't have been blown in a more appropriate direction. What a wonderful, wonderful idea.

The campaign was launched on February 11, last year, the Gadfly column given wings and moved to page three so that the story might better be expanded upon.

The column vigorously supported her wheeze. "Does anyone in high authority have one vestigial jot of the courage of Andy Mynarski?" we asked.

A couple of columns and a couple of meetings later, I baled out, as always had been planned.

Since six columns a week allows about as much room for manoeuvre as the mid-rear gunner's turret in a Lancaster bomber, others took the old kite up - and aimed high.

In one way, of course the campaign failed - swiftly shot down in a barrage of anti-adventurousness. Probably there was about as much chance of the earth-bound authorities who run the airport changing their name - and their spots - as there was of Pat Brophy getting out of that blazing bomber alive.

Yet he, thank God, lived to tell the tale.

For all sorts of other reasons, today's ceremony marks a singular success, proper acknowledgement after all these years for the only VC to have flown from what is now a British commercial airport.

What on earth kept them? Why on earth was the only Mynarski memento at the airport a small and unheralded photograph in the hotel bar? How could he so easily, and so shamefully, have been forgotten?

It should also be said, unless the poor columnist is countermanded, that the battle for Andy Mynarski has been waged quite magnificently by the folk on this newspaper, and led imaginatively and enthusiastically from the very top.

The statue, it is much to be hoped, will stand in that gallant man's memory long after the airport has again been rebranded, its naming rights sold to the highest bidder.

How long before we fly from the Coca Cola airport, or simply it becomes another BMI baby? Thanks to Betty Amlin, to The Northern Echo, and to all those who have rallied to the fight, Mynarski's soaring, sonorous memory will live way beyond the tunnel vision of some ghastly municipal ground crew.

All that said, I won't even be there and there's nothing to be done about it. At the moment when Andy Mynarski's statue is unveiled, I shall be calling to order the annual meeting of the Arngrove Northern League, in Esh Winning.

At the hair-raising moment that the Lancaster drones distantly into view, I shall be half way through a 6,481 word annual report and grown men will be diving for cover. If that's my line of duty, what of Andy Mynarksi's? What price now his gallantry, his unquestioning devotion to friend and colleague, his ultimate sacrifice?

Betty Amlin had ended that first tentative letter with thanks just for reading it and with apologies for her handwriting.

She, too, should be saluted - but it is that incredible young Canadian who, on North-East soil, we properly and proudly remember today.

May he, and those like him, never again be forgotten. Goodnight, sir.