Growing Up With My Hero
I don’t think that anyone looks back on life and wishes they had spent less time with the ones they love.
My dad is my hero in every way. As a kid, he was larger than life to me. You name it—in my eyes, he was and still is the best. It seemed there was nothing he couldn’t do. I learned everything from him. How to build out and finish a basement and fix just about anything around the house? Check. How to hunt/fish? Check. How to treat women? Check. He set the example by how he treated Mom and my sisters. How to love and serve God and Country? Check. Look up father, husband, or friend in an encyclopedia, and I would expect to see his picture.
Maybe it was growing up on Air Force bases, or his love of flying passed down to me genetically, but I have wanted to fly as long as I have memories. He was an instructor pilot in T-38s when I was born and went on to fly C-130s out of the Philippines and Taiwan in the early ’70s and then HC-130s in Alaska in the early ’80s.
The only career I wanted was to be a pilot in the Air Force, but like a lot of things in life, they don’t always work out as planned. Mine went a different direction, and it wasn’t until I was 44 that I would find myself in the left seat of a Cherokee with the yoke in my hands. If you are wondering, it was more fun than I dreamed it would be.
Flight Training
That flight kicked off a series of calls where I would talk to my dad more frequently in the next 6 months than anytime since I moved out of the house at 19 years old. I tried to fly twice a week. After each flight, as soon as I got in the car, I called Dad and talked to him the whole drive home. I would tell him about the flight, and he would tell me stories of when he was learning to fly and his days in the Air Force. It was a way of debriefing my flight and reminiscing on his life all at the same time.
A First Flight With Dad
Less than a month after my PPL checkride, with 49.9 hours in my logbook, I rented a Cherokee from the flight school and flew my two boys 3.6 hours from Chino, CA (KCNO), to Chandler, AZ (KCHD). With a bit of a headwind and the speed of the Cherokee, we covered the distance at an average groundspeed of about 90 mph. If you count the time to get to the airport, get the plane, preflight, and fly there, I might have arrived at the same time if I drove, but that didn’t matter. I had one purpose, and that was to take my dad on a flight.
The landing at Chandler after the longest flight of my short pilot life came with the challenge of a gusty crosswind. The ATIS was reporting winds variable at 4 knots, but I was about to find out that was very outdated. On the first try, as I was approaching the end of the runway and getting ready to pull power, a gust of wind pushed us to the left, and it looked like we would miss the runway. I went full power, took out the third notch of flaps, and once we were climbing, I took out the second notch. By now I was about halfway down the runway and had some free brain cells, so I told tower we were going around. I’m sure he had already figured that out.
If the second time didn’t work, I was going to bail on KCHD and head over to Williams Gateway (now Mesa Gateway) with their 10,000’ x 150’ runways. The second attempt went much better, and although I missed the centerline, we landed and taxied to transient. The flag at the base of the tower was standing straight out—a strong direct crosswind. Clearly not 4 knots.
The next day, on his 75th birthday, I took Dad and one of my sisters flying. We left Chandler and went over to Williams for a touch-and-go before heading back to Chandler. Dad spent three years back in the early 1970s at what was then Williams Air Force Base as an instructor pilot in T-38s. After the flight, I asked him what he thought. With a smile, he said, “I was wondering if we were ever going to get to the runway.” I don’t know how many landings he had in 3+ years as an instructor in T-38s, but the difference of 80 mph (69 kts) on final in a Cherokee vs. 178 mph (155 kts) in a T-38 must have felt like an eternity, even if it had been over 40 years for him.
A Second and Maybe Last Flight
The next time I would take Dad flying was a little over a year later, this time in our Mooney. The trip from Corona to Chandler was 2.4 hours with a headwind—clocking in 1.2 hours less than the first trip in the Cherokee. Dad and I flew up the Salt River over the lakes, making a turn at Roosevelt Lake and coming back over the Superstition Mountains. We had a great time flying along, me talking about flights I had done in the past year and him reminiscing about his time flying T-38s. It was a little bumpy, and I mentioned that Kathy wasn’t a fan of the bumps. With the same smile from our previous flight, he said, “Why, it just lets you know there’s still air around you.”
It’s been almost 8 years now, and that is the last flight I’ve had with Dad. I have no idea where the time has gone. There have been over 40 more flights to AZ to visit since that flight, but I haven’t taken him up. I added G5s and GPS to the plane, and he came out to the airport where I showed him how they work. He was amazed by all the data available and mentioned how that would have been nice to have when he was flying HC-130s all over Alaska with the 71st Air Rescue Squadron from 1980-1984, but we didn’t go fly. I added a GFC 500 autopilot and told him all about the capabilities of it, but we didn’t go fly.
Initially, it seemed that there was always a lot going on at their house when we visited, and with only so much time to visit, we didn’t take the time up in the air. For the past 4-5 years, every time I would ask if he wanted to go fly, he would say he wasn’t feeling very good and “maybe next time.” It’s hard to say, but maybe it was the beginning of his dementia coming on; it has just progressed. A few visits back, he came out to the airport when we were leaving and sat in the plane with me, and we took a few pictures.
A few weeks ago marked 9 years to the day of that first flight with Dad in the Cherokee. He has recently mentioned in passing that he has been told he used to fly, but he doesn’t remember it. Have I missed the chance to take Dad on one more flight? I’m just not sure at this point. Will he feel up to it on a future visit? If we went, how would he react to flying? I just don’t know the answers to those questions. I do know I have missed probably at least 20 opportunities in the last 8 years to take him flying.
If I could roll back the clock, I would tell myself that even during those summer visits when it was blazing hot outside and the air conditioning inside was nice, to just sweat for an hour or two and take Dad flying. If there’s someone you have wanted to share the joy of flight with, don’t wait for “another day.” None of us know when that clock might run out. I do know I haven’t regretted the times I have taken someone flying.
