I’ve been passionate about flying my whole life. As a kid, I made my grandparents drive me past the local airport to see the planes. It was just a small grass strip with a few planes parked along the split-rail fence, but that was enough for me. If we were lucky, one of them would be taking off or landing. At home, I would make fleets of paper airplanes and fly them all over the house.
I remember my first time on an airliner. My sister and I were traveling as unaccompanied minors. The stewardess (they were still called that back then) put us in first class next to the window. I was in a rear-facing seat so I could see the wing and the engine. Before we took off, one of the pilots asked us if we wanted to see the cockpit. He put me in the right seat and let me play with the yoke and showed me a few of the other controls. He showed me the throttles and told me to push them forward. A warning buzzer went off as I moved the throttles and scared me out of my skin.
My sister and I seemed to do a lot of traveling between Cincinnati and Washington, DC where my mother lived. Then when my dad remarried, we moved to Australia for a while. Talk about a long flight for a six-year-old! But all the flying just set the hook. I wanted to be a commercial pilot when I grew up.
Somewhere along the way, I decided a commercial pilot wasn’t a high enough goal. I set my sights on being an astronaut. Either way, becoming a military pilot was the obvious first step.
After high school, I joined the Navy and worked on the flight deck of the USS Peleliu fueling helicopters. I knew I’d have to get a college degree to be a pilot, so I enlisted for a two years active/four years reserve stint to get money for college.
As often happens to young people, I went in another direction for a while. I dropped out of college and went back to software development, something I had started doing my senior year of high school. As a contractor, I made some good connections and ended up part owner of a software development company creating desktop and web-based software for the real estate industry.
As chance would have it, our office was right across the street from that old airport my grandparents drove me past as a kid. It had grown to be one of the busiest general aviation airports in the state with over a hundred based aircraft and a 3,500 foot runway. Now I got to see the planes land and take off every day.
Still, it never occurred to me that I could become a pilot myself until one day I was having a conversation with my next-door neighbor. I discovered that he was a private pilot and a member of a flying club based out of that very same airport!
Now I don’t believe in fate, but clearly I was meant to fly out of that airport. So I stopped at the airport one day during my lunch break and talked to the guy who ran the FBO. He put me in one of their Cessna 152s and it was all over. I signed up for a discovery flight on the spot, and after that flight scheduled my first lesson. Just over five months later, I took my Private Pilot checkride and became a pilot. I joined the flying club and flew every chance I got.
That airport has since closed and I moved to another field. It’s a little farther away and more professional than one I grew up on, but I found a new club with more planes and have since become a flight instructor sharing my passion with others.
I may not have become an astronaut or an airline pilot, but I’ve had some amazing experiences flying. And who knows. I still have a chance at that airline job. After all, I’m not sixty-five yet.