There was a time when airplanes represented more than transportation. They embodied a new world of flight and, for both pilot and passengers, freedom. Airplanes were time machines, crossing continents and even oceans in a matter of a few hours. It is 1927, and 12-year-old Leo Sander Jr. has run away from his family’s Tillamook, Ore., farm for the afternoon’s air race. The oldest of Leo Sr. and Theresa Sander’s 11 children, he has climbed the highest hill above the Wilson River and is sitting there, waiting.