I'm not sure when I got the flying bug but I know that I have been enamored by airplanes for a long time. From the time I was swinging in the school yard imagining myself in a plane until now, it has always thrilled me to think of flying. It's not just flying though. It is also the machines themselves as well as just the general aura of airplanes that is exciting to me. I like just being around them!
As my mom tells it, my first airplane ride was when I was maybe 6 or 7 years old. We were out by Park Township airport, perhaps to visit the Ottawa County Fair which is right across the street. Mom said one of us wanted a ride, probably my older brother Steve, so she packed all her kids in a little plane and nervously watched them fly away. I don’t have a clear memory of it but she swears it happened.
As the years passed, you could find me doing what most kids did, but I always looked up to notice a passing plane. I remember hearing sonic booms and wondering what it must be like to be “up there” going that fast. I drew pictures, made models, and played with toy airplanes, but never got much closer to a real one until I was about middle school age.
We visited my Aunt and Uncle in Latrobe, PA one year. Uncle Denny had a Piper (probably a warrior) and took us for a ride. I remember it was really bumpy, but I didn’t know the difference. I just thought it was really cool.
I was in 7th grade when my brother Steve joined Civil Air Patrol and started taking flying lessons at Kent County airport. I joined CAP in my 8th grade year and as a 9th grader (14-15 years old) started taking glider lessons in Ionia.
My instructor was Jerry Benz. I don’t know all the details, but me and some of the other CAP guys helped him put the wings on a Schweizer TG-3A WWII training glider. This was really a blast because now I was not just looking at an airplane, I was actually working on it! There were some things he needed to do to make it airworthy, but after a few weeks, he had it flying and started giving lessons.
I remember paying $5 for an aero tow to 2000 feet. That was a lot of money for a youngster with no real job other than cutting lawns. I continued taking lessons on the weekends, and ground school during the week at CAP Tuesday night meetings. My dad started taking lessons too, but I think I was more geeked about it than he was.
Flying stopped when the snow came, but I remember flying when it was so cold you could barely feel your toes on the rudders. The following summer, there were some new gliders there for us to train in and the TG-3A was gone. The new gliders were not really new, but compared to what I had been flying, they were very modern. There were a couple of 2-33’s and a 1-26. We had an old L5 as a tow plane.
My dad and I took the written test out at the Kent County Airport and passed. I had 30 flights in when I turned 16. That’s about what you need to get your license, but now that I could drive (legally), I had much better things to do with my money and time than to spend it flying. It was one of those things with priorities that just seem right at the time, but I always wished that I had at least seen it through and gotten my license.
Years pass without any flying other than a trip to Colorado to visit my brother who is now in the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. We flew out on a 747 which was a huge airplane at the time (1970 or 71).
In 1975 I joined the Air Force and worked in aircraft maintenance as a Crew Chief on KC-135A Tankers. This was a very cool job in which I got to fly with the plane so that there was someone there to care for it on the ground. I spent the next 4 years doing that.
After I was discharged from the Air Force in 1979, I briefly thought about doing aircraft maintenance as a civilian, but didn’t have the A&P certification to get a job.
I kept dropping hints to my wife through the years about taking flying lessons until she finally urged me to “just do it”. So I did, starting out at Rapid Air, one of the FBO’s at Kent County that offered training. I worked hard for a couple of months and got 9 hours in before I got canned from my management job in a big hack-and-slash cost cutting move by my employer.
No income will certainly curtail your flight training goals, and I didn’t fly again for about a year. I landed a job in Allegan, MI that was two minutes from the little airport there. I passed it every day on the way to and from work until one day I saw they were having a flyin or something so I stopped to look at the planes and asked about training.
Dan Dodgen, who owned the FBO in Allegan (Dodgen Aircraft), hooked me up with their “new guy” Jason Blair, who would take me through the rest of my flight training. I soloed in November of 2004, passed my written a little later, and took my flight with the FAA examiner on May 6th 2005. I had fulfilled a lifetime dream and became a pilot!
I rarely fly now due mainly to the expense, but am still always looking up whenever I hear a plane go over.
Dreaming...
