Grateful for the many mentors in aviation.
“Would you like to see our jet?” I asked.
“I suppose so,” Mr. Lovell answered quietly with a smile, and we walked slowly out to the beautiful blue and white Gulfstream G-V with United States of America painted above the line of six oval windows.
We climbed the short fold-out staircase and turned left so he could see the modern glass cockpit of six screens in front of the pilot seats and the panels overhead consisting of only black push-button squares. It was a very smooth, clean cockpit.
I then guided Mr. and Mrs. Lovell down the blue carpeted, cramped hallway and into the VIP cabin adorned with mahogany wood and 12 blue leather First Class-sized chairs, each with its own spacious window. The Lovells each took a seat and looked around the cabin.
“What do you think?” I asked my old mentor.
Mr. Lovell sat with his cane between his legs and replied, “Well, they all fly the same. Keep the shiny side up and wheels on the bottom.” He was trying not to sound impressed.
Reaching out to an old mentor
One of the final trips of my 20-year career was to take Air Force General Ed Eberhart, commander of Northern Command (NORTHCOM) on visits to the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve bases in the southeast and south-central United States. Our planned final stop would be Ellington Field, just south of my hometown of Houston, Texas. As we flew toward New Orleans, I told the other pilot, my good friend Major “Ice” Icenhour, that I learned to fly at LaPorte Municipal Airport, not far from Ellington. He said, “That’s cool! You should call up your old flight instructor!”
I told him my instructor, Richard Lovell, was a Korean War Navy veteran, and I wasn’t sure if he was even still alive. I had last seen Richard and Sylvia in 1990, when we took our baby boy, Daniel, to visit them in Pasadena, Texas. Ice told me I had to call him and tell him we’d be at Ellington tomorrow. I really dreaded making that phone call, fearing Sylvia might answer and sadly tell me that Mr. Lovell had passed away. With Ice’s continued prompting, I got up my courage and dialed his number. On the second ring Mr. Lovell answered the phone. What a relief!
I told Mr. Lovell we would be flying a new Gulfstream V (Air Force C-37A) into Ellington the next day with a four-star general onboard. Without me prompting, Mr. Lovell asked, “Can we get together for dinner?”
I smiled and told him, “That would be great! And I’d like to show you the aircraft after we land.”
Ellington Field is an joint civilian and military air base open to the public, allowing visitors to park near Base Operations. We taxied our G-V up to the painted cement “red carpet”, where an entourage of colonels waited to greet their visiting four-star general. The group whisked General Eberhart away to visit the F-16 squadron that had escorted President Bush’s Air Force One 747 on 9/11.
The man that made my dream happen
Once the passengers left, I walked along the red carpet to find Mr. and Mrs. Lovell sitting on an outdoor wooden bench, looking like Ma and Pa Kettle. Mr. Lovell’s once curly hair was now thin and he leaned forward on the bench, supported by his wooden cane.
I owe my flying career to Mr. Lovell. I never called him or knew him as Richard, only Mr. Lovell. He was the owner of a beautiful 1973 Piper 180 horsepower Challenger, a white four-seater with a black and gray stripe down the side. Mr. Lovell was in the Navy during the Korean War, but not as a pilot, and he didn’t deploy overseas. He laughed about earning the National Defense Service Medal for never going anywhere. He was a short, tough old man; a Navy boxing champ with a permanently crooked nose to prove it. Day in and day out, he dipped Copenhagen … and swallowed it. During flying lessons over the Texas Gulf Coast as he gave me instructions, he’d suddenly let out a burp, filling the cockpit with the smell of Copenhagen. To this day my Pavlovian response is to equate the smell of dipping tobacco with a Piper four-seater.
A demanding mentor that made me a better pilot
Mr. Lovell was demanding, telling me to “fight for centerline” when landing in a
Crosswind, and commenting if my landings were a foot or two off centerline. As tough as he was, though, he was also very kind. Mr. Lovell donated his instructor time for free, as a way of giving back to the Aviation Explorers Scouting program. My flight lessons from 1978 to 1980 started at $22 an hour and eventually rose to $25 an hour. This, at a time of high inflation, when CDs earned 13% and I was making around $3 an hour at the restaurant.
It had been 26 years since he took over as the leader of our Aviation Explorer Post in south Houston. Twenty-four years had passed since I last flew with the 5’ 6” former Navy boxing champion with a permanently crooked nose. The tough old cuss no longer dipped and swallowed Copenhagen chewing tobacco, but he sucked on the inside of his lower lip out of habit.
As was the case with a lot of young pilots, my training stagnated before I earned my license. Sometimes it was due to family vacations and other times it was because I had to put my restaurant paycheck into car repairs instead of flying lessons. The result of my poor consistency led to retaking lessons to regain flying proficiency, a common occurrence in private flying.
The FAA requires students to have 20 hours of flight instruction and 20 hours of solo time, including cross-countries, to take their Private License checkride. By the summer of 1980, after my high school graduation, I was approaching 60 hours of flying time and would be leaving for college by mid-August.
He was tough on me, but rightly so
Mr. Lovell was the one who kicked me in the pants to complete the rating, telling me, “If you don’t finish it before starting college then you’ll never finish it!”
He was right. I would have regretted for the rest of my life if I hadn’t finished what I started. I am a pilot today because of that caring, tough old man.
After a quick tour of our jet, I changed clothes and the three of us went out for seafood along the Kemah Boardwalk, between Houston and Galveston. We spent the evening catching up over a fish dinner. I told them all about my family and my international flying since September 11th. I gladly treated the Lovells to dinner that night as a very small repayment for his patience and graciousness during my teenage years.
Full circle moment
After dinner, Mr. Lovell brought their large four-door Ford sedan up near the restaurant door as I waited with Sylvia. I held the passenger door open for Sylvia and as she started to climb in, she squeezed my elbow, leaned in close to me, and whispered, “You’ll never know how much this means to him.”
My flying career had come full circle. As I prepared to retire from the Air Force and join the ranks of airline pilots, I happily thanked the gruff old guy who taught me to fly.
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