Airport Owner: Bob Goode

“In a couple of years I had tripled the salary I was making as an engineer at Bell,” he said. “I built it, and as A&P and IA, I did all the maintenance and inspections at the airport,” he said. “I worked night and day and enjoyed it all.”

Goode was born April 11, 1923. “In World War II I went to a recruiting office to be a flier,” he said. “The recruiter told me not to come back, because I’m color blind.” He still joined the Army Air Forces and spent the war as an aircraft mechanic. At the same time, about 1943, he took a wrecked airplane and rebuilt it. After the war he taught vocational aeronautics and aero mechanics. In 1947, he earned his pilot certificate. “I had to go out on the airport ramp and the FAA inspector crawled into the tower and showed me all the lights at the tower,” he said. “I didn’t miss one, so they signed the log and I passed the test.”

In the 1990s, Goode’s busy Southlake, Texas, airport felt pressure from Dallas Love Field and neighborhood developers. “My AOPA representative said, you don’t realize how much revenue the airport brings into the city. Lot of airline pilots had airplanes out there. But the mayor said, ‘I don’t know how to count that money,’” Goode said. He closed the airport in 1998.

With his son, he bought 240 acres in Canton, Texas; built a 3,200-foot, 50-foot-wide grass strip; and called it Goode Field (TX43).

The nonagenarian recently bought a Diamond motorglider. “I didn’t find anyone in Texas to teach me. At Sky King Soaring, Payson Airport, Arizona, this guy…he looked at my license and looked at me and he said, ‘92 years old. You better not flunk this.’” He trained with the instructor for seven days, had Sunday off, and Monday morning the examiner came from Phoenix. “And he signed me off,” Goode says. “Now I’m a legal glider pilot.

“I called another guy and asked if I could get a motorglider rating, and he said ‘You’d better straighten up and fly right.’”