"I happen to be a war buff, World War II in particular, but also ancient history wars," says Priel. "As a kid, I read stuff like history and ancient warfare. I knew what a catapult was when I was 10 years old."

And Priel's childhood passion for history has found its expression in her adult life as well.

For the past 10 years, Priel, as a producer of The Better Part—a public-access TV program for seniors funded by the city of Cupertino—has co-produced, written and hosted videos about a wide variety of subjects. Priel particularly enjoys her interviews with inspiring people, and her videos of such people have won awards and found their way into museums and historical archives.

And two local seniors have provided Priel with the stuff for fascinating historical and inspiring videos about World War II and about women pilots during war and in peacetime.

When Priel interviewed retired Capt. Harry Changnon, a Cupertino resident and the main subject of the video B-29 Pilot, which Priel co-produced with Better Part team member Ernie Piini, she got a deeper look into some little-known details of what some pilots of WWII experienced.

Changnon, now 86, became a pilot about a year after he enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps in early 1942. He eventually flew more than 35 missions over Japan and other Pacific targets as part of the 40th Bomb Group.

"He'd been a WWII historian for many years, and his house is piled sky high with books, letters, photos and videos," Priel says. "He had a story he wanted to tell, and I had a story I wanted to tell, and so did Ernie."

Priel read stacks of background material Changnon gave her. The interview with Changnon was long and full of fascinating details about the pilots. But because each Better Part show was restricted to 28 minutes and 30 seconds, Priel and Piini wound up breaking Changnon's story into three videos.

The first video focused on experiences Changnon and other American pilots had with their B-29 planes in the Far East during the early World War II years in the Pacific. The story includes details about how the crews often couldn't get needed parts for the experimental, untested B-29s and how the pilots had to repair the problematic planes temporarily as best as they could. Changnon explained that during the war, the military used women pilots to fly the rapidly manufactured planes from U.S. factories to the Far East, where male pilots awaited their arrival. Women in those days couldn't fly in battle.

The video B-29 Pilot garnered Priel and Piini a Western Access Video Excellence Award in 1998.

In 2000 Priel and Piini put together the second video Flying the Hump with unused material from Changnon's interview and with additional background material he gave them. The term "flying the hump" refers to the Himalayas, over which the pilots, including Changnon, had to fly during the early years of the war when the United States had its air base in India.

"[Changnon] was the trailblazer," Priel says. "He led the attacks on Japan.

They didn't have enough gasoline to fly from India to Japan for the bombings, so they had to fly gasoline over to China and then go back and get bombs and fly them to China. Then they'd load up on the gas, load up the bombs and go bomb Japan. Sometimes they made six roundtrips, fighting through the bad weather over the Himalayas."

The path they took over the Himalayas is called the "Aluminum Trail." Changnon says some 700 B-29s crashed there, killing close to 7,000 men. The planes went down for various reasons: bad weather, engine trouble, vertigo or empty fuel tanks. No one could get to the crews, and today shiny metal from the planes is still visible from the air.

In 2003, for the final of the three videos, Priel and Piini produced B-29s in the Marianas, which details the last few months of the war, during which Changnon and some of his crew were injured by shrapnel during a bombing run. Changnon received a Purple Heart for his injury.

Until three years ago, Changnon served as the historian for his 40th Bomb Group Association and placed about 1,000 photos and other World War II materials on its website. He contacted individuals he knew with connections to the Smithsonian, and Priel and Piini's three videos about Changnon and the 40th Bomb Group are now included in a World War II exhibit.

Another of Priel and Piini's videos, The Flying Lady, about a Cupertino resident, has delved into aviation history of another sort. This 2003 video is about Nancy Rogers, a former racing pilot.

While Changnon left his flying days behind him as a young man after the war, Rogers, now 76, didn't get her pilot's license until she was 44.

"I was a late bloomer," Rogers says. "Flying gave me a whole new opening in my life."

She learned to fly a single-engine two-seater at San Jose's Reid-Hillview Airport and eventually qualified to pilot a single-engine four-seater.

As soon as she received her license, she joined The Ninety-Nines, also known as the International Organization of Women Pilots, founded in 1929 by a group of 99 women who loved to fly. Its first president was Amelia Earhart, whose career Rogers had followed ever since she was a little girl.

In 1975, Rogers was asked by a Ninety-Nines member to be a co-pilot in an air race. She agreed and was immediately hooked by the sport.

"Once you try, it's like eating peanuts," Rogers says.

Rogers, the mother of five daughters, flew in more than 40 air races between 1975 and 1992, mostly against other women. Her daughter, Cathy, occasionally flew with her.

Major races ran from Southern California to Oregon, and others took place within California.

Rogers won a Pacific Air Race from San Diego to Palm Springs and placed in the top 10 at other times. The highlight of her racing years was participating in the 1976 Powder Puff Derby from Sacramento to Wilmington, Del.

"Powder Puff Derby" was the name humorist Will Rogers (no relation) gave to the first All-Woman Transcontinental Air Race in August 1929 when 20 women pilots raced from Santa Monica to Cleveland. The Ninety-Nines group was founded a few months later.

"They were teased a lot because men thought they couldn't fly or anything," Priel says. "They used to be horrified that these women, maybe 200 in their little planes, would be flying over the United States."

The Powder Puff racers didn't fly at night and had to stop after a certain distance, even during the year Rogers participated, which was the last one for the derby. She completed the race and says, "If you finished it, you placed well."

In June 2004, Rogers took her granddaughter Jessica Kain, 3, for her first flight, along with Jessica's mother, Rogers' daughter, Shari.

These days, Rogers is fighting lung cancer and can no longer get a medical clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly alone or be a pilot-in-command, so she flies with an aeronautical engineer from NASA—who happens to be a woman.

"We are so conditioned to think of a pilot as a man," Rogers says.

Rogers says the Santa Clara Valley chapter of The Ninety-Nines was behind her 2002 induction into The Ninety-Nines' International Forest of Friendship, outside Atchison, Kan., the birthplace of Amelia Earhart.

The Forest of Friendship was created to honor men and women who are not necessarily pilots but who have contributed to aviation in some way. Astronauts, U.S. presidents, government leaders, NASA employees and Nancy Freer Rogers have their names inscribed on separate granite plaques embedded in a concrete path among the trees.

She says she was surprised by the honor, but won't say why she was chosen.

A copy of The Flying Lady is now with The Ninety-Nines in Atchison.

Priel and Piini offer up an even broader taste of aviation history with Wings of History, for which they won the Western Alliance for Video Excellence producers' award in 2002. This video reviews the vast assortment of planes and related paraphernalia at the Wings of History Air Museum in San Martin. The museum features an exact replica of the Wright brothers' plane; a plane that was part car, part helicopter; French World War II planes that used kerosene bombs; gliders; old engines; and even a repair shop for old wooden propellers.

There was so much to cover and so many aviation aficionados to interview that Priel and Piini had to go back a couple times to complete the video. Wings of History is now part of the museum's collection.

Priel has co-produced more than 30 Better Part videos with Piini, who is often Priel's cameraman on "porta-pak" shoots outside the studio. The subjects of their videos have included such distinctly eclectic topics as 4,000-year-old bristle-cone pine trees and impotence.

Piini is a longtime amateur astronomer and an award-winning producer of videos about solar eclipses. An upcoming Better Part video will be directed by Priel and will feature Piini's coverage of the Transit of Venus, a celestial event that took place on June 8, 2004. For the first time in 122 years, Venus was visible as it took a path in front of the sun.

Priel likes to find unusual subjects for The Better Part viewers. In the recent Andrew Norblin: Journey of a Guitarist, she profiled an almost-60-year-old Almaden musician who released his first musical CD to critical acclaim last year. A new video has Priel interviewing retired federal Judge Robert P. Aguilar, who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter during the 1970s.

But WW II continues to beckon Priel and Piini. They are currently working on a video about the Japanese-American internment during that era.

"I have a nice feeling in my heart about things that inspire," Priel says. "I like to hear about these boys who struggled in the war. I like to hear about a lady in her 70s who is still flying and was quite a gal. When other people can see them, I feel really good about it. Maybe it will inspire them."

"The Better Part" can be seen on Community Channel 15 in Cupertino, Los Gatos, San Jose, Sunnyvale and Saratoga. For further information or to purchase "The Better Part" videos, visit http://www.ascentjobs.org/thebetterpart.

To learn about retired Capt. Harry Changnon's 40th Bomb Group, visit www.40thbombgroup.org.

For information about The Ninety-Nines, visit www.ninety-nines.org.

For Wings of History Air Museum information, visit www.wingsofhistory.org.