Loss to legacy

“Greg, this is your Uncle Charley. I’m afraid I have some bad news….” Long pause. Why would my uncle be calling? With bad news?

“Your dad has died.”

Another long pause as I took in the words. Blurry details followed. A freak accident. Something about a fall. The specifics could not overcome the slowly dawning realization that my father was gone. Forever.

It was the Saturday morning of Labor Day weekend in 1973. I was 23 years old, single, an Air Force 2nd lieutenant just a few months into pilot training at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia. A gloomy week was in store. Emergency leave from pilot training. A long flight home to Wisconsin. As the oldest child, I did the best I could for a grieving mother and four younger siblings. Innumerable details and decisions had to be made, all except for two seemingly unanswerable questions: “Why?” and “What now?”

The first question, “Why?” would remain one of God’s mysteries. With time, I would come to understand we weren’t designed to be good enough detectives to solve that one. The best we could hope for was to trust in God, and to be blessed with someone in our lives who could help deal with the second question, “What now?”

My father was that someone. Family and friends were kind and consoling. But Dad was missing. He could never be replaced. And life had to go on. I had 50-plus years without him ahead of me. Would 23 years lived with him be enough to draw on? I came to believe that what we remember and hold in our hearts can be more important than what we see with our eyes. Rather than endlessly wondering about how and why he died, the more important question was, how and why had he lived? Was there something I could do with my life that would give meaning to his?

Answers began to form during my flight back to pilot training. A half century later, I remember gazing out the airline window when a strange sort of spiritual intuition made me feel close to Dad. He wanted the best for me, and he had always helped me find the best in myself to overcome whatever challenge came my way. Who was I to feel sorry for myself? All those people I was flying over were living with challenges of their own. Pilot training now had another motivation. The first business for me was to appreciate my upbringing, become the pilot I wanted to be, and make my father proud.

I grew up dreaming of flying carpets, fascinated by television shows like Superman and Sky King. The closest I came to flying as a youngster was when my sister and I jumped off our grandparents’ picnic table to race around the yard with arms extended. We tied Grandma’s kitchen window curtains around our necks so that they flowed behind us like Superman’s cape. I made Revell plastic model airplanes. On Sundays, Dad drove us to the airport across town to watch real airplanes fly.

A family trip out west included a visit to the U.S. Air Force Academy. I realized acting on a personal desire to serve my country could also be a way to make flying a way of life. I pushed myself to excel in studies and sports, and I somehow managed to get an appointment. Dad was bursting with pride when I left for Colorado, and I remember him shedding the first tears I ever saw.

The Academy, as well as pilot training, require a strong motivation. You wouldn’t want it any other way. Dad had a term he called “PMA”—Positive Mental Attitude. He and Mom grew from humble roots, had no college education, and married young. Dad held down a couple jobs, and Mom stayed with us kids. Both parents had to have PMA to raise a family whose five kids would all graduate from college and lead their own successful families. I was the first of my five siblings to enter adulthood, and I was becoming the first-ever pilot in our family.

I would call on PMA often to complete pilot training. I soloed a T–41 (civilian Cessna 172) at the Academy. But jet training in T–37s and T–38s was a whole new ballgame. High performance, multiengines, instrument procedures, aerobatics, formation flight—all would demand my best. Sometimes my best wasn’t good enough. Eye strain during pitch-outs and rejoins led to glasses that I had to adjust to. Navigation after high Gs, when your head was spinning faster than the instruments, was no piece of cake before GPS came along. I struggled to maintain tight two-ship formation, adjusting power and position to keep the wingtip of my lead’s T–38 visually aligned in the star insignia below his cockpit as a reference, and I “pinked” (flunked) a sortie late in my training.

But I took my lumps as lessons. Our instructors were tough, but fair. I grew to appreciate the structure of military flight training—goal-oriented, step-by-step, and always based on the checklist. The camaraderie of my classmates was huge. We encouraged and celebrated one another.

And I discovered joys of flying I still remember. Twin afterburners kicking in was a kick indeed. Bringing a T–37 down the backside of clouds was like skiing down the biggest Rocky Mountain ever. Taking a T–38 “high into the sunlit silence” around 50,000 feet for a supersonic descent showed the curvature of the earth and a purplish sky hinting at the black reaches of space.

At such times, and often today, I can feel Dad’s presence in the cockpit. Remember in both Top Gun movies, when Maverick says, “talk to me Goose”? It may be stretching a point, but starting as kids, we are always looking up to adults for advice, people we want to follow. It’s almost like they are calling us up to be our best, up to wider horizons—and yes, up into the sky. To this day, I feel welcomed into the sky by all who have gone before me, including those who have “flown west.” It’s like having a ghost squadron of legends and loved ones giving me a smile and a thumbs up.

Aviation’s special breed has a creed about high standards. Everyone who flies inherits that spirit from others before us. We can overcome their loss by honoring their legacy. And by sharing it with others to come. Whenever I share a flight experience with a young person, I see his or her eyes open to wider horizons for whatever walk of life they choose. It is a gift from both of us—me and my father.

Greg Anderson is a retired air and space museum CEO, EAA executive, and Air Force pilot with more than 50 years of life lessons from flying. He currently flies a Lockwood AirCam.