Since today is Aviation Day, let me tell you about my Dad:

My dad loves planes and flying. He got his (small plane) pilot’s license at 16, but since had bad eyesight he knew he’d never be a pilot professionally, so he went to school and got a certificate in aircraft maintenance. This was back in the day when that was all you needed. He bounced around for a while at a couple companies, ending up at LearJet where he met my mom. in 1982 he got on with Northwest Airlines as a mechanic, and stayed there until retiring in about 2005 or so.

But fixing planes wasn’t just his job, it fueled his hobby. My Dad has always belonged to one flying club or another, trading his mechanic skills for flight time. I remember my first time in a Cessna when I was maybe four or five. We’d frequently fly down to St. Louis to visit family, cause hey, 2 hours in a small plane beats the hell out of flying standby on commercial. We spent so much time at the St. Cloud airport as kids that I joke that we half grew up on a tarmac. When we moved cross country from Minnesota to Washington he traded in powered small planes for gliders.

And that wasn’t just weekends. I’ve been to more airshows then I can count. We flew or went to Oshkosh air show a number of times. When we took a family vacation to Disney we also attended an airshow in Orlando that was going on at the same time. Planes and flying was just part of our lives growing up. I’ve seen the Concorde, SR-71 Blackbird, lots of things. The one time we made it to DC when I was a kid, the only museum we went to was the Air and Space museum.

And that interest trickled down to us kids. My brother and I both took glider lessons for a while, though I never did get my license (i don’t remember if my brother did). Getting a pilot’s license is still on my bucket list though.

Now that my dad is in his 60s, he’s still flying. In the last couple of years he got an instructor rating, so he gives lessons too.

One of my favorite memories is when we went to the big island of Hawaii when I was a teen, my Dad rented a plane and we flew over Kilauea volcano.

So, uh, I guess he short version is my Dad is kinda awesome 🙂