A letter to explain it all
I'm in the middle of writing a book of sorts to give Laurel and Madison a record of our history as a family, to be given to them when they leave home. I'm not good at writing long prose, so the book's taking the form of a set of letters to them. I'm glad I have plenty of time to write as it's going to take a while. A small section of this book describes how aviation came to be so important to us. Here's the letter that opens that section.
Dear Laurel and Madison,
As you have well learned, aviation is in the lifeblood of our family, and seems like it always has been. More than any other single “secular” activity, it has defined who I am, determined what we do as a family, and driven the relationships with others we’ve had. My outlook on the world has been colored by how it can be seen from aloft. I now think of distance not in terms of highway miles but in how long it takes to get there at a “yardstick” measure of 130 knots, or 150 miles per hour, the speed of our beloved Skylane. To a certain degree, I also think of the price of everything in terms of what my good friend and fellow Skylane owner Greg Wright calls the “basic aviation unit:” One BAU equals one thousand dollars. In those terms things seem positively cheap.
Exploring where this love of aviation came from would be fun, and might help you understand that your father isn’t quite the kook you think he might be, or at least isn’t the only kook out there. I’m in good company.
From my earliest memories the thought of flying has been in my mind. I don’t recall exactly when I became aware of Poppa’s history with military aviation, as I seem to have always known about Black Widows and the Philippines and such things. You see, Poppa was both fortunate and unfortunate: Fortunate, in that his interest in aviation (where that came from, seeing how his roots were distinctly hillbilly, is for him to explain, as I cannot) brought him into the Army Air Corps right at the end of World War Two as a pilot candidate; unfortunate, in that he was just too young to get into training before the war ended and suddenly pilots were made surplus. He was “in,” though, and when asked by a pleasant young man behind a desk where he’d like to serve his country, he chose the European occupation force. In true military fashion he was whisked away to the Philippines via troopship, where he spent two years as a radio operator in the 419th Night Fighter Squadron based at Florida Blanca airfield on Luzon Island, not far from Clark Air Base.
Disappointment turned to happiness in his role in the squadron. He wasn’t a pilot, but he did get to fly, and got airborne in several aircraft that I can only dream about today: B-25 Mitchell, DC-3 “Goony Bird,” and the magnificent P-61 Black Widow, the airplane that captured my imagination as a child and for years afterward. He witnessed the transformation of the piston-engined Air Corps into the jet-powered Air Force with the replacement of the Clark P-47s and P-51s with Lockheed P-80 Shooting Stars, and saw an awful lot of types people spend gobs of money to see at airshows today. I’ll flesh out his experiences later, hopefully in his own words, and will stay on track here, but just remember this as the beginning of the Shelton love of all things flyable.
Out of the Air Force in 1947, the demands of beginning and maintaining his career and a succession of businesses kept him from flying until the mid-1970s. Finally, comfortable in his role as PR director at Southwestern and seeing the fruits of his efforts at Weatherford Press, the finances finally caught up with the desire, and he learned to fly under the tutelage of Warren Wagoner in Weatherford. He checked out immediately in a Cessna 172 Skyhawk (a “big step” from the little 150 he’d learned in) and, if my reading of his logbook is correct, Susan, Nanny and I were airborne with him that very day, September 10, 1977, my first recorded flight with him. I wish I remembered the flight, but I don’t; for all I know I was a disinterested backseat passenger. But I’d like to think I was right up front, soaking it all in, so that’s the version I’ll choose to remember.
I must backtrack slightly, as that was not the first time I’d been in, or close to, airplanes. Weatherford was the childhood home of an Oklahoma hero, Thomas Stafford, an illustrious Air Force general and influential astronaut who commanded the Apollo-Soyuz mission in one of the most important moments in spaceflight history. As such, and due to its having one of the best
science-based colleges in the region, the town hosted periodic bigwigs for various functions. One of them was the dedication of the town’s airfield as Thomas P. Stafford Airport. Two pictures hanging on two walls a thousand miles apart came from that day. On Poppa’s office, front and center, is a picture of Spiro Agnew speaking at the dedication with a flight of F-105s passing overhead in salute; right in front of me, in the downstairs office in our Minnesota home, sits the other, a picture of me at the controls of a clean, polished Army JetRanger observation helicopter, shading my eyes with my arm as I always have in sunlight. Poppa took many pictures that day; it was a red-letter day in the town’s history, and is burned into my psyche in some way as well.
Even farther back, though, was another time, documented only by a photograph taken of me at a very early age in front of a V-tail Beech Bonanza. Those planes are old now, but the one in the picture looks brand spanking new, and probably was. I don’t know who it belonged to or what we were doing in front of it, or even if we flew in it that day, only that the picture is in Nanny’s photo album and therefore means something.
Anyway, after Poppa learned to fly we were at the airport a fair amount, either flying around locally looking at things or taking trips. He never got his instrument rating, so our trips were necessarily limited by weather, but we managed to get to Arkansas a couple of times and to several towns around western Oklahoma. For that first year the flights were in the Skyhawk and in a Piper Warrior rented from the Clinton airport 15 miles away. Being part of the “in crowd” at the airport was fun; we saw all kinds of airplanes. Poppa’s connections through the college brought him in contact with D.J. Witherspoon, a prominent Southwestern graduate, Omaha businessman and big benefactor to the school (the “Witherspoon Bells” at the college, tolling the hours and playing beautiful music at the end of each day, were named for him and are still there). He owned a Mitsubishi MU-2, and on one of his visits we sat in that plane for quite a while admiring it and talking to him and his pilot. I don’t remember the conversation but I remember the plane, its position on the south ramp at Stafford Field, and that it had a cockpit chock-full of instruments.
Oklahoma was decidedly aviation-oriented, what with the Federal Aviation Administration headquarters right there at Will Rogers World Airport. Wiley Post was as big a state hero as Will Rogers was, got an airport named after him as well, and his exploits in his beautiful white bird “Winnie Mae” were almost required reading. It was almost poetic that the two of them died together in a plane crash. The state was tailor-made for planes of all types, although the wind sometimes hit awe-inspiring speeds over those flat plains. It seemed like every little town had its airport; a night flight at any significant altitude showed dozens of airfield beacons flashing from horizon to horizon.
Sometime in late 1977 or early 1978 airplane fever hit. Ken Reid, the publisher of the Weatherford Daily News and a couple of other newspapers, had bought N2355R, the Skylane we now own. According to Poppa, he then offered up partnerships in it to help defray the expense of ownership; several ponied up to join, “1610 Flying Club” (named for the airport’s elevation) was born, and Poppa joined soon thereafter, beginning our long association with that magnificent machine.
I guess it was natural that I would learn to fly given all this, and I certainly did so, beginning not long after I could drive myself to the airport in my little Escort. I started in October 1983, soloed the following August, and took my private pilot checkride on a blustery day in February 1985. I slowly built hours during college in the same Cessna 152 I learned in, plus some time in 55R and a smattering of other airplanes. I worked as the Sunday lineboy and Unicom radio operator for my last year at Southwestern, a great job for an airport rat who needed flying funds.
After heading to medical school I flew briefly at Montgomery County Airport north of Washington, then shifted to Andrews Aero Club where I spent the next five years flying as much as my school, and later internship, schedule would allow. I probably gave up a grade or two because of it, but I didn’t suffer any lasting academic harm from the time spent at Andrews working on my flying qualifications. Instrument, commercial, and multiengine tickets came gradually; I continued my airport rat status by taking duty as Supervisor of Flying at the club on Saturday mornings; and I got a good start on my instructor certificate during internship (how I managed that while working eighty-hour weeks and courting your mother I have no idea). The CFI checkride finally happened in San Antonio while attending the Aerospace Medicine Primary Course, and I was off to Kunsan.
Korea was a very unique experience for me aviation-wise, one I would never have experienced had I not become a flight surgeon. In the 1980s the military was extremely particular regarding the physical makeup of their pilot wannabes, and with eyes nowhere near the 20/20 uncorrected vision they required I was out of luck. That restriction didn’t apply for flight docs, though; vision corrected to normal was all that was needed. I suddenly found myself sitting in the back seat of the hottest fighter in the world, an F-16 "Viper" with my name stenciled under the back canopy of D-model 87-378, and for three years I enjoyed some of the best aviation experiences I’d ever see in a cockpit I never thought I’d see the inside of.
Back stateside I began flight instruction at North Las Vegas airport and slowly got more valuable experience in a variety of airplanes and with a spectrum of pilots. Two years later I was doing the same thing at Kelly Aero Club in San Antonio. I soon found a gliderport in Boerne, just north of our house, and I quit flying powerplanes for a time to enjoy soaring. I became a “CFIG” (CFI-gliders) after a year of whittling away at the time requirements, and found myself with more flying opportunities than I could really take advantage of. We had a great time out there, though; you never flew with me in the glider, but I hope to change that soon. We even became aircraft owners for the first time, buying into a partnership in a beautiful ASH-25 soaring machine.
After residency we were off to Maryland. 9/11 interrupted all flying plans for a while, but a year later I was tied in tightly with Navy Annapolis Flight Center, a school our good friends Jenny and Frank built out of the ashes of a dying Navy flying club. Through instructing, then evaluating, then investing in airplanes flown by students and rated pilots, we built strong and lasting friendships with many at Lee Airport, as our learning curve for all things aviation hit its exponential phase. The experience we gained and the financial position we built through our experiences with NAFC prepared us well for the event that changed forever how I look at flying and how we, as a family, view travel: bringing 55R back into the family.
We had taken some airplane trips as a foursome, beginning with a short one out of San Antonio in a rented 172, and one very long one from Annapolis to northern Georgia and back in “Dimples,” the Piper Warrior that was our first airplane we ever owned. 55R changed that with her better comfort and speed, and we traveled all over the place, including Florida (more than once), Georgia, even to Minneapolis to find a house. Those were fun flights, exploring many areas we’d likely not see otherwise, and will be fun to recount later. We’ve met a lot of new friends as well, often through ties with the Cessna Pilots Association, and aren’t lacking for places to go and people to visit.
Minnesota is hopefully our last home for a long while, and it’s a great place to fly. Anoka County Airport, where we’re based now, is less than fifteen minutes from our front door, and only ten from Unity Hospital, unbelievably convenient for family trips and the constant training I seem to be doing. A subscription to Minnesota Flyer magazine introduced us to what seems to be a state pastime: pages and pages listing fly-in pancake breakfasts and mini-airshows all over the state. It’s a beautiful place from the air, too. Its central location makes it a good place to launch trips around the country, and although it’s not particularly close to anywhere we have family, trips to Maryland and Georgia in 55R take less than 7 hours, so they’re doable.
Thus ends the beginning of my apology for how I came to love flying so much. My hope is that some of that rubs off on you and that you two become part of this great community of aviators. If not, well, please enjoy these stories as I pass through life once again, telling you all about the places, friends, and planes I’ve enjoyed through this wonderful obsession.
All my love,
Daddy
Dear Laurel and Madison,
As you have well learned, aviation is in the lifeblood of our family, and seems like it always has been. More than any other single “secular” activity, it has defined who I am, determined what we do as a family, and driven the relationships with others we’ve had. My outlook on the world has been colored by how it can be seen from aloft. I now think of distance not in terms of highway miles but in how long it takes to get there at a “yardstick” measure of 130 knots, or 150 miles per hour, the speed of our beloved Skylane. To a certain degree, I also think of the price of everything in terms of what my good friend and fellow Skylane owner Greg Wright calls the “basic aviation unit:” One BAU equals one thousand dollars. In those terms things seem positively cheap.
Exploring where this love of aviation came from would be fun, and might help you understand that your father isn’t quite the kook you think he might be, or at least isn’t the only kook out there. I’m in good company.
From my earliest memories the thought of flying has been in my mind. I don’t recall exactly when I became aware of Poppa’s history with military aviation, as I seem to have always known about Black Widows and the Philippines and such things. You see, Poppa was both fortunate and unfortunate: Fortunate, in that his interest in aviation (where that came from, seeing how his roots were distinctly hillbilly, is for him to explain, as I cannot) brought him into the Army Air Corps right at the end of World War Two as a pilot candidate; unfortunate, in that he was just too young to get into training before the war ended and suddenly pilots were made surplus. He was “in,” though, and when asked by a pleasant young man behind a desk where he’d like to serve his country, he chose the European occupation force. In true military fashion he was whisked away to the Philippines via troopship, where he spent two years as a radio operator in the 419th Night Fighter Squadron based at Florida Blanca airfield on Luzon Island, not far from Clark Air Base.
Disappointment turned to happiness in his role in the squadron. He wasn’t a pilot, but he did get to fly, and got airborne in several aircraft that I can only dream about today: B-25 Mitchell, DC-3 “Goony Bird,” and the magnificent P-61 Black Widow, the airplane that captured my imagination as a child and for years afterward. He witnessed the transformation of the piston-engined Air Corps into the jet-powered Air Force with the replacement of the Clark P-47s and P-51s with Lockheed P-80 Shooting Stars, and saw an awful lot of types people spend gobs of money to see at airshows today. I’ll flesh out his experiences later, hopefully in his own words, and will stay on track here, but just remember this as the beginning of the Shelton love of all things flyable.
Out of the Air Force in 1947, the demands of beginning and maintaining his career and a succession of businesses kept him from flying until the mid-1970s. Finally, comfortable in his role as PR director at Southwestern and seeing the fruits of his efforts at Weatherford Press, the finances finally caught up with the desire, and he learned to fly under the tutelage of Warren Wagoner in Weatherford. He checked out immediately in a Cessna 172 Skyhawk (a “big step” from the little 150 he’d learned in) and, if my reading of his logbook is correct, Susan, Nanny and I were airborne with him that very day, September 10, 1977, my first recorded flight with him. I wish I remembered the flight, but I don’t; for all I know I was a disinterested backseat passenger. But I’d like to think I was right up front, soaking it all in, so that’s the version I’ll choose to remember.
I must backtrack slightly, as that was not the first time I’d been in, or close to, airplanes. Weatherford was the childhood home of an Oklahoma hero, Thomas Stafford, an illustrious Air Force general and influential astronaut who commanded the Apollo-Soyuz mission in one of the most important moments in spaceflight history. As such, and due to its having one of the best
science-based colleges in the region, the town hosted periodic bigwigs for various functions. One of them was the dedication of the town’s airfield as Thomas P. Stafford Airport. Two pictures hanging on two walls a thousand miles apart came from that day. On Poppa’s office, front and center, is a picture of Spiro Agnew speaking at the dedication with a flight of F-105s passing overhead in salute; right in front of me, in the downstairs office in our Minnesota home, sits the other, a picture of me at the controls of a clean, polished Army JetRanger observation helicopter, shading my eyes with my arm as I always have in sunlight. Poppa took many pictures that day; it was a red-letter day in the town’s history, and is burned into my psyche in some way as well.Even farther back, though, was another time, documented only by a photograph taken of me at a very early age in front of a V-tail Beech Bonanza. Those planes are old now, but the one in the picture looks brand spanking new, and probably was. I don’t know who it belonged to or what we were doing in front of it, or even if we flew in it that day, only that the picture is in Nanny’s photo album and therefore means something.
Anyway, after Poppa learned to fly we were at the airport a fair amount, either flying around locally looking at things or taking trips. He never got his instrument rating, so our trips were necessarily limited by weather, but we managed to get to Arkansas a couple of times and to several towns around western Oklahoma. For that first year the flights were in the Skyhawk and in a Piper Warrior rented from the Clinton airport 15 miles away. Being part of the “in crowd” at the airport was fun; we saw all kinds of airplanes. Poppa’s connections through the college brought him in contact with D.J. Witherspoon, a prominent Southwestern graduate, Omaha businessman and big benefactor to the school (the “Witherspoon Bells” at the college, tolling the hours and playing beautiful music at the end of each day, were named for him and are still there). He owned a Mitsubishi MU-2, and on one of his visits we sat in that plane for quite a while admiring it and talking to him and his pilot. I don’t remember the conversation but I remember the plane, its position on the south ramp at Stafford Field, and that it had a cockpit chock-full of instruments.
Oklahoma was decidedly aviation-oriented, what with the Federal Aviation Administration headquarters right there at Will Rogers World Airport. Wiley Post was as big a state hero as Will Rogers was, got an airport named after him as well, and his exploits in his beautiful white bird “Winnie Mae” were almost required reading. It was almost poetic that the two of them died together in a plane crash. The state was tailor-made for planes of all types, although the wind sometimes hit awe-inspiring speeds over those flat plains. It seemed like every little town had its airport; a night flight at any significant altitude showed dozens of airfield beacons flashing from horizon to horizon.
Sometime in late 1977 or early 1978 airplane fever hit. Ken Reid, the publisher of the Weatherford Daily News and a couple of other newspapers, had bought N2355R, the Skylane we now own. According to Poppa, he then offered up partnerships in it to help defray the expense of ownership; several ponied up to join, “1610 Flying Club” (named for the airport’s elevation) was born, and Poppa joined soon thereafter, beginning our long association with that magnificent machine.
I guess it was natural that I would learn to fly given all this, and I certainly did so, beginning not long after I could drive myself to the airport in my little Escort. I started in October 1983, soloed the following August, and took my private pilot checkride on a blustery day in February 1985. I slowly built hours during college in the same Cessna 152 I learned in, plus some time in 55R and a smattering of other airplanes. I worked as the Sunday lineboy and Unicom radio operator for my last year at Southwestern, a great job for an airport rat who needed flying funds.
After heading to medical school I flew briefly at Montgomery County Airport north of Washington, then shifted to Andrews Aero Club where I spent the next five years flying as much as my school, and later internship, schedule would allow. I probably gave up a grade or two because of it, but I didn’t suffer any lasting academic harm from the time spent at Andrews working on my flying qualifications. Instrument, commercial, and multiengine tickets came gradually; I continued my airport rat status by taking duty as Supervisor of Flying at the club on Saturday mornings; and I got a good start on my instructor certificate during internship (how I managed that while working eighty-hour weeks and courting your mother I have no idea). The CFI checkride finally happened in San Antonio while attending the Aerospace Medicine Primary Course, and I was off to Kunsan.
Korea was a very unique experience for me aviation-wise, one I would never have experienced had I not become a flight surgeon. In the 1980s the military was extremely particular regarding the physical makeup of their pilot wannabes, and with eyes nowhere near the 20/20 uncorrected vision they required I was out of luck. That restriction didn’t apply for flight docs, though; vision corrected to normal was all that was needed. I suddenly found myself sitting in the back seat of the hottest fighter in the world, an F-16 "Viper" with my name stenciled under the back canopy of D-model 87-378, and for three years I enjoyed some of the best aviation experiences I’d ever see in a cockpit I never thought I’d see the inside of.
Back stateside I began flight instruction at North Las Vegas airport and slowly got more valuable experience in a variety of airplanes and with a spectrum of pilots. Two years later I was doing the same thing at Kelly Aero Club in San Antonio. I soon found a gliderport in Boerne, just north of our house, and I quit flying powerplanes for a time to enjoy soaring. I became a “CFIG” (CFI-gliders) after a year of whittling away at the time requirements, and found myself with more flying opportunities than I could really take advantage of. We had a great time out there, though; you never flew with me in the glider, but I hope to change that soon. We even became aircraft owners for the first time, buying into a partnership in a beautiful ASH-25 soaring machine.
After residency we were off to Maryland. 9/11 interrupted all flying plans for a while, but a year later I was tied in tightly with Navy Annapolis Flight Center, a school our good friends Jenny and Frank built out of the ashes of a dying Navy flying club. Through instructing, then evaluating, then investing in airplanes flown by students and rated pilots, we built strong and lasting friendships with many at Lee Airport, as our learning curve for all things aviation hit its exponential phase. The experience we gained and the financial position we built through our experiences with NAFC prepared us well for the event that changed forever how I look at flying and how we, as a family, view travel: bringing 55R back into the family.
We had taken some airplane trips as a foursome, beginning with a short one out of San Antonio in a rented 172, and one very long one from Annapolis to northern Georgia and back in “Dimples,” the Piper Warrior that was our first airplane we ever owned. 55R changed that with her better comfort and speed, and we traveled all over the place, including Florida (more than once), Georgia, even to Minneapolis to find a house. Those were fun flights, exploring many areas we’d likely not see otherwise, and will be fun to recount later. We’ve met a lot of new friends as well, often through ties with the Cessna Pilots Association, and aren’t lacking for places to go and people to visit.
Minnesota is hopefully our last home for a long while, and it’s a great place to fly. Anoka County Airport, where we’re based now, is less than fifteen minutes from our front door, and only ten from Unity Hospital, unbelievably convenient for family trips and the constant training I seem to be doing. A subscription to Minnesota Flyer magazine introduced us to what seems to be a state pastime: pages and pages listing fly-in pancake breakfasts and mini-airshows all over the state. It’s a beautiful place from the air, too. Its central location makes it a good place to launch trips around the country, and although it’s not particularly close to anywhere we have family, trips to Maryland and Georgia in 55R take less than 7 hours, so they’re doable.
Thus ends the beginning of my apology for how I came to love flying so much. My hope is that some of that rubs off on you and that you two become part of this great community of aviators. If not, well, please enjoy these stories as I pass through life once again, telling you all about the places, friends, and planes I’ve enjoyed through this wonderful obsession.
All my love,
Daddy
posted by The Minnesota Sheltons at 3:48 AM
2 Comments:
This comment has been removed by the author.
Laurel and Madison (and Wanda),
I don't have many better friends than your Dad. I think the world of him, and therefore of you, because you're his. He is truely one of the nicest people I have ever met. Consider yourselves lucky to have him.
I do hope that you guys learn to love flying as much as does he. It is difficult for someone that doesn't fly to understand the passion that those of us that do, have for it. If you're lucky, you'll learn to love it as much as he does and you'll spend many happy hours in the cockpit with him. I know that my life is much fuller and happier since my wife started flying with me and sharing trips/adventures with me.
Be safe and be careful.
Blue skies always,
Greg
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