As a man of fifty-three, Caniff wrote a poem titled “Dayton Kid” for the Christmas Day 1960 Steve Canyon.  In it, the rosy glow of his childhood memories of watching primitive test pilots is counterbalanced by his adult perspective of those who “helped sow Pearl Harbor’s seed” through advocating arms control.  Caniff consciously linked his lifelong passion for airplanes and the adventure they represented to his boyhood fascination with flight and the direct observation of pilots and planes in Dayton, something that would not have been possible for most of his contemporaries.