I never had a "bucket list." Rather I had a list of things I wanted to accomplish by thirty years old. I had my education through Ph.D. at stellar places, and a noteworthy job at Bell Telephone Laboratories with a good reputation in my community of math geeks. I ran the famous Boston Marathon in 1975 and a few other marathons including New York City in all five boroughs. The two remaining items that I could think of at the time were a commercial flight to the moon and learning to fly. No moon flights were likely in 1986 between summer and December, but I could still become an aviator.

     A friend was taking lessons at Colts Neck Airport (N61), a run-down dirt-and-grass airstrip in New Jersey. He introduced me to Frank Fine, his flight instructor, and I developed an immediate fondness for Frank. Frank had a love of the sky, wanted to be up there as much as possible, and enjoyed sharing his own love of aviation. My favorite mental image of Frank was the ear-to-ear smile on his face as we were bouncing along the rutted dirt runway and aiming skyward in a single-engine, two-seat Cessna 150 airplane. Enjoying the leaves changing color we flew together often in 1986 autumn and I made my first solo flight on 1986 December 7, twelve days before my thirtieth birthday, on a date President Franklin Roosevelt said would live in infamy.

     Frank was a terrific instructor for me. He shared not only the mechanics of aviation but also the lust and lore of airplanes. He introduced me to the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) and our local Chapter 315. I got my private-pilot license in 1986 May.

     Frank seemed like an old guy when I met him, I was twenty-nine and he was about fifty-five. We stayed in touch with birthday emails and such until we were both older.

     Frank had been a marine, a car salesman, and a Boy-Scout leader I think he used to race cars, at least I recall the story where his wife June was nervous about his flying until there was a nasty race-car crash and she said, "Frank, why don't you go back to flying?" He and I were part of a community of pilots at Colts Neck and Monmouth Alliaire Airport (BLM).

     When I shared my flying adventures with Frank, especially any new airplane type, he always knew specific aspects of flying them. When I mentioned the Piper Comanche I flew he pointed out not to do our standard "full-stall" landing but, instead, to fly it onto the runway reducing power so the throttle closes right at touchdown. Many pilots I know have airplanes they just don't like, but Frank's world seemed divided into good airplanes and bad airplanes where any airplane that flew was in the good-airplane category. "I flew an Arrow in the air, I hope to hell it stays there."

     Frank's teaching approach revolved around learning to land an airplane from the first lesson right to private-pilot checkride. The usual curriculum has lots of maneuvers including steep-bank turns and stalls, where the airplane temporarily stops flying and the pilot recovers. We did a few of those, but the emphasis was takeoffs and landings in the airport circuit we call the "traffic pattern."

     I'm still flying forty years later and Frank is very-much part of my flying soul. I'm not sure, but I think it was 2013 May in Utah. I had lunch with my instructor-friend LaVar Wells and I was flying from Hanksville Airport (HVA) back to Canyonlands Field (CNY) near Moab. The weather voice on the radio said there were serious crosswinds, so I turned off the radio and enjoyed the rest of the flight. It was late enough in the day there really wasn't anywhere else to go. (In an emergency I could fly at night to someplace like Grand Junction (GJT), but I wasn't anxious to exercise that choice.) I've landed my Piper Cherokee in thirty-five-knot crosswinds before, maybe I'll do it again, but it was still a serious challenge. I sat up straight, adjusted my glasses as I always do, banked into the wind with opposite rudder to keep myself straight, and touched down perfectly on one wheel. As I rolled along the runway in a proud and perfect crosswind landing and made an early taxi turnoff, my first though was how proud Frank would have been that I flew that landing so well. (My second thought was I wish somebody else had seen it, it seems we always do the worst landings with the largest audience, and I was truly happy that there was a fellow at the airport who complemented me on that landing.)

     Every time I fly I think of Frank and I'm grateful to have his energy and enthusiasm as part of me.

Key commands: ⇦ previous                         next ⇨ B back ten                 forward ten F 0-9 view first, 10%, 20%, ..., 90% slide ENTER views first slide from here ENTER views JPEG image from slide Up Arrow goes to thumbnail array from slide