The Wind Beneath My Wings - Part One

As do all pilots, I have a lot of flying stories, things that occurred throughout my career. But nothing I ever did, nothing I ever achieved could have been possible without the support of and the sacrifices made by my wife Marsha.

I met her early in my sophomore year at Olney Central College. I still remember the way she looked, the way I felt when she walked into the student union. It was my good fortune that she and I had mutual friends, which facilitated my meeting her. Normally, I would not have had the courage to approach a girl like her. But somehow, I did.

I believe at some point I may have mentioned that I worked at the airport and was a pilot in training. (Question: How do you know when you meet a pilot? Answer: He will tell you.)

Before I knew it, we were dating, and a few weeks later I tested successfully for my private pilot license at the Mt. Carmel airport. I was more than a little proud of myself.

To celebrate, my flight instructor Ed Smith, his then-girlfriend and later-to-be-wife Susan, and I flew over to Flora, Illinois to pick up Marsha. From there we flew to Mattoon, Illinois’ Coles County Memorial Airport to eat dinner at the airport restaurant. It would be a good opportunity for me to officially get a night checkout and at the same time show off for my girlfriend.

The landing at Mattoon was not the best of my career. In fact, it was so bad that Marsha screamed because she thought that we had crashed. I was embarrassed, but what can you do?

Marsha and I continued dating, and against all common sense, she agreed to marry me. We tied the knot on a sunny February day, barely three months after our first date. The following morning, we were up with the chickens and flying to New Orleans for our honeymoon. I was excited. I had the most beautiful girl in the world as my new bride, and I was flying an almost-new Piper Cherokee 180, N16458, on a long cross country. I remember John Schnepper, Chief Pilot of Triangle Air Service, telling me that if I was worried about getting lost to just fly west to the Mississippi River and follow a barge all the way down to New Orleans.

We stopped about halfway down for fuel and a bathroom break, then were off again.  Approaching the Big Easy, I was very concerned about flying VFR (Visual Flight Rules) over Lake Pontchartrain.  I had heard numerous stories about pilots becoming disoriented when flying over water when they no longer had a horizon to help them maintain a sense of up and down or knowing when the airplane is in a turn. Within a year, I would have a dramatic experience with the phenomenon – commonly referred to as vertigo – that would nearly claim my life.

On this day, however, I asked New Orleans Moisant Airport approach control for vectors around the lake. Although I was still a bit nervous, perhaps even intimidated about flying into a large airport, we had an uneventful arrival into Moisant.

When it came time to return home a few days later, we hopped back into the Cherokee and flew back to Olney. Back in our real world, we both went to work at building our new life together – Marsha working at Kentucky Fried Chicken, me as a line boy for Triangle Air Service. How could we ever have known the adventures and misadventures, the good times and the bad, that were to come?

In August of 1974 Marsha accompanied me and waited inside the FBO as I took a check ride in Casey, Illinois and obtained my commercial pilot license, which meant that I could be paid to fly. I thought that I was a really hot stick. Marsha, ever the supportive bride, seemed to be impressed.

I was working toward my instrument rating, but was not yet ready to fly IFR – Instrument Flight Rules – when one day the call came in for a single engine charter flight to Sikeston, Missouri. My boss, Earl Smith, let me take the trip, knowing that I needed to build time. It was good for him, too. Using me on this particular flight would free up the other pilots for anything else that might come up.

I was tasked with taking an engine block from a tractor down to Sikeston, Missouri and waiting while the cylinders were re-bored. The flight down was uneventful. I remember that back in those days I always took a certain amount of pride whenever people would note and comment on the fact that I was a commercial pilot at such a young age. And I was young. Only twenty years of age, and I didn’t look even that. Twenty, a commercial pilot, and married to the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life. Like me, Marsha was also twenty, and she nearly became a young widow that day. But that’s another story.  

Marsha was always willing to go with me whenever I needed to build up some flying time. We would get up early, take a Cherokee for a sunrise flight before work.

We would fly with family and/or friends to St. Louis Bi-State Parks Airport to go watch Cardinal baseball games. Or into Lambert to go see a Blues hockey game. We flew another trip to New Orleans for a weekend, just to have someplace to go.

I was committed to building up the hours and pursuing my ratings, but I wouldn’t have done half those things without her. She encouraged me because - when no one else did – she believed in me. I can’t hear the old Kenny Rogers song “She Believes in Me” without thinking of her.

One day at work, I was servicing one of the airplanes, and accidentally spilled oil on the top of the engine. I tried to clean it up but wasn’t able to get it all. A few hours later, after the oil had managed to find its way through all the little nooks and crannies on the engine, there was a puddle on the ground beneath the engine cowling. Earl saw it and reamed me out a new one in front of everyone.

When Earl was angry, he was loud. He went on and on, ranting about my lack of professionalism. That cut deep. Then, he left on a trip. When he came back, I quit.

I suppose that if I had it to do over again now, I would have thought to take the cowling off the airplane and pressure wash the engine to do a more thorough job of cleaning up my mess. To tell the truth, though, I don’t know if even that would have spared me Earl’s wrath. He probably would have chewed me out for doing that, too.

Earl was a good man, but once in a while he just felt the need to chew on someone, and I think maybe that was just my day to be the one on the receiving end and I gave him all the excuse he needed. And now, looking back, I should not have been so thin-skinned. I should not have quit.

But then … everything that happened after that in the story of our lives would have been completely different.

I don’t know why, but Marsha stayed with me and encouraged me when I quit my job. I still had the itch to fly, so after having talked it over, Marsha and I headed south to Opa-Locka Florida in January of 1975. I began flight training for my multi-engine and Instrument Flight Instructor ratings at Burnside-Ott Aviation Training Center. Due to an unusual set of circumstances, I acquired my CFI-Instrument rating before the CFI-Airplane. A few weeks later, having completed my training, we returned to Illinois.

When we returned to Illinois, I had to fly the flight instructor check ride in a complex aircraft – one with 200 HP engine, a constant speed propeller, and retractable landing gear with the FAA. That meant I was going to have to rent an airplane from Earl. Surprisingly, he agreed. I suppose that he thought my money was as good as the next guy’s, even if I was a former employee who had not left under the best of terms. I suppose it was a way for us to make peace, to bury the hatchet.

I took the Piper Arrow to Springfield, Illinois General Aviation District Office and passed my check ride. When I landed back in Olney. Earl came out on the ramp with a big smile on his face and took my picture for the newspaper. Marsha kept the write-up and made a wall plaque for me.

It was spring of 1975, and I saw an ad in Trade-A-Plane for a flight instructor in a place called Appleton, Wisconsin. I called and was invited to interview. Marsha flew with me to see the place and offer moral support. It wasn’t long after that, we two country bumpkins moved to Wisconsin.

Marsha and I did a lot of growing up during our time in Appleton. We learned to take care of ourselves, more or less. We bought a small house and with it came the expense and work required to maintain and improve it. We paid a contractor to put on a new roof and siding. We put up paneling ourselves inside. The house was still small, but it looked a lot better for our having been there.

While at Maxair I had three emergencies with engines running rough. Two were close enough to the airport that my students and I had enough power to just barely make it to the runway. The other, flying over the Canadian wilderness in a Cessna 206, was the second time Marsha nearly became a widow. I’ll recount that story in a future post. 

After a couple of years at Maxair, I was ready to make a change – again. Rather than hold out for a move up, I settled for a lateral move and called Earl to see if there was a chance of coming back to Triangle Air Service in Olney. We sold our house almost immediately and loaded up a U-Haul to transport all our belongings.