Georgia middle schooler’s creativity soars through paper airplanes

KENNESAW, Ga. - Thirteen-year-old Zaron Mack talks about airplanes the way most people talk about their favorite celebrities.

“That’s a Boeing 727,” he says, looking down at a model of the real thing.  “There’s not a lot of them made, so when you see one it’s, like, legendary.”

The Pine Mountain Middle School eighth-grader has been a fan of planes for as long as he can remember.  

“I love to fly,” he says. “I love to just go up and see all the clouds, and the little things moving like ants. I like it. I like it a lot.”

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And since the Kennesaw teenager can’t just go out and buy a plane of this own, he makes them. Using nothing more than notebook paper, scissors, glue, and a pen, Mack creates painstaking replicas of actual airplanes. He’s not working off of any guides or plans — using mainly his own encyclopedic knowledge of aircraft engineering.

Although his paper planes are incredibly tiny — some just the size of a quarter — they’re made to scale, complete with moving wheels and wing flaps.

“With me, having my hands growing every day … the more I try to keep it simple, the more it gets harder,” he says.  “It gets stressful over time, but…the challenge of it keeps me going.”

For Mack’s mother, Jessica, there’s no better feeling than watching her son’s creativity take flight.

“It started [with] just him folding the paper.  He would cut it out and kind of fold it, and put the little wings onto it and everything," she says. "But then, over time, it evolved to where he was just putting his all into it and it got better and better over the years.”

For Zaron Mack, the goal is to eventually move from paper planes to the real thing, becoming a pilot and flying for a major airline.  

And with a young man this focused and talented, the sky’s the limit.

To see some of Zaron’s work, click the video player in this article.

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