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I learned to fly long before some (many) in the Air Facts community were born, but I love to read your stories about flying and aircraft and wanted to share my story as well.
I decided to take flying lessons in my early 20s because my father had secretly arranged for me to be taken on a flight in his company’s Cessna 182 while I was home from school.
I am an 87-year-old woman who started taking flying lessons when I was in my early 20s. I decided to take flying lessons because my father (who flew a WACO prior to my birth) had secretly arranged for me to be taken on a flight in his company’s Cessna 182 while I was home from school visiting Houston, Texas. I was terrified. The company pilot had me sit in the left seat and of course, had me try my hand at the controls. He was in the right seat. My mom and dad were in the rear seats. If my grip on the controls had been transposed to a person, the person would never have survived. I did my best to hold that 182 up in the air using my grip on the controls. My decision at that time was that I would learn to fly because nothing should be able to scare me like that. Then it was necessary to figure out how to pay for it—another scary thought.
I started lessons a year or so after that flight. I had completed my Master’s degree as a student at UCLA and I was filling in as an instructor for a year for a faculty member on sabbatical from Pomona College. So I had a little more money than I had/would have when back at UCLA. I learned in a Cessna 150 at a small airport in Pomona, California and got my license there. I did tell my folks and ultimately, when I had my license, they were my first passengers in a Cessna 172. By that time, I was back at UCLA.
We flew out of Santa Monica, California with my mother saying, “John, does this girl know what she is doing?,” while gripping the seat so tightly that her knuckles were white. I had anticipated her stress response and had a male friend, who was still a student pilot, sitting in the right front seat to try and ward off her fears. She liked him and I thought would be reassured by his presence. And in case you are wondering, while although I had my license, I was still scared when in the air.
The first Powder Puff Derby we flew in the Comanche departed from Bakersfield, California.
I continued to fly and, at the same time, completed my doctoral degree at UCLA. Santa Monica was a busy airport with several women, in addition to me, flying out of there. One of them needed a copilot/navigator to go with her on a Powder Puff Derby in her Comanche. I was delighted to be asked. The first Powder Puff Derby we flew departed from Bakersfield, California. The rules were that the flying could only take place in daylight, under VFR conditions, and no special help from anyone. The beginning of the event was fine. Bakersfield is pretty flat and it is easy to see where you are going; however, as we went on, we did have some weather to contend with (under not over) and when we were close to the end point of the race, we started to have a problem with the engine of the Comanche.
We decided to make a landing at Allegheny County Airport and given the rules of the event, we kept telling the tower that we were NOT declaring an emergency. We landed very hot! Bless the mechanics at that airport, they managed somehow to give us a new jug and we finished the race, not quite in the last position, but before time ran out. We flew two more Powder Puffs in the next two years. One, again, in the Comanche and one in a Cessna 182. My recollection is that we ended somewhere in the middle of the pack for each of these.
It was shortly after these events that I moved from California to Wisconsin where I was offered a faculty position at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I decided that I wanted to continue to do something with airplanes and so took lessons toward a commercial license. This time I was being taught by an “old time” instructor at Truax, the local airport. That initial instructor (who shall remain nameless) never met a rule that he thought wasn’t there for the breaking. And so I was introduced to all sorts of interesting experiences that had not been a part of my training for a private license, including lots of aereobatics. We tried them all in the training Cessnas that were typically used for standard instruction. There were times when I felt I spent more time inverted than upright. And somehow, none of this really reduced my being scared by very much, buy I knew (sort of) what to do in the event of a crisis in an airplane.
I ordered a Decathalon and set it up so it could be scheduled for aerobatic instruction out at Truax.
As peculiar as it may seem, I also thought that maybe I should have a plane of my own, and I was getting a salary so I could pay for it. Bellanca’s were built not too far from Madison, so I ordered a Decathalon (101AL) and set it up so it could be scheduled for aerobatic instruction out at Truax. And of course, I would still use it for my training for my commercial ticket. I continued flying with the aforementioned instructor until he (literally) took off to dust crops.
There was another (quite handsome) young instructor that I sought out for instruction. He never indicated that he might be interested in me. Ours was a definite student/instructor relationship. A short while later, I heard from others at the airport, that his grandmother had died and she had lived in Minnesota. I thought the least I could do was offer him the airplane to get to her funeral. It would carry him and one other person. That wasn’t much, but it could help. The result of making that offer was that I discovered he was not married, nor in a committed relationship. I have now been married to him for over fifty years.
But back to flying…I continued to fly and received my commercial license in due course. My husband had obtained all sorts of licenses (single, multiengine land and sea, instructor, instrument instructor) benefitting from the GI Bill after serving as a mechanic in the Air Force for several years. However, he did not learn to fly until he was back home from serving in Germany which would have been several years before I met him. When the Decathalon arrived, he provided dual aerobatic instruction in it and we formed a very small air charter business wherein he served as the PIC of a light twin which we leased locally. I was chief cook and bottle washer and kept the books.
Shortly before we were married, he decided that he was called to be a chaplain. This was something he had thought about for quite a while, but classes started in September and the seminary was in Minneapolis, so he was off to Minnesota. An opportunity arose for us to sell the Decathalon to my former instructor, who was home from crop dusting and had a young son who loved aerobatics, so that is what we did.
We bought a Beech Bonanza to reduce the time it took to go from Madison to the Twin Cities. We had also gotten Aku, a young female Siberian Husky, who we tethered to the back seats so that she could get her head forward to be close to us, but could not come any closer. She was a good sized girl. She rode through several weather situations nuzzled up to the back of my husband’s head. I was jealous, because if I had been able to nuzzle him, it might have reduced my fear as well.
We might still have that Bonanza except for a wind storm that wrecked it at an airport where we were having some radio work done. A Bonanza lying on its back with its wheels up in the air has got to be one of the saddest things one could ever see! We didn’t replace it. And I was unable to maintain my flying for want of an airplane and for want of the money to rent an airplane or pay for air time. I have flown nationally and internationally on commercial airplanes many times, and the interesting fact is, I’m still scared when flying.
- I’m still scared of flying - September 18, 2024
It’s also inspiring how you balanced your academic career with your love for aviation boxing random