Pilotage

A few months ago I wrote about my father, about his remarkable command of an airplane, about his teaching me to fly 26 years ago, and about how his granddaughter — my daughter — was now his student. A couple of weeks after that column appeared in Pilot ("Pilotage: Like Father, Like..." September Pilot), my father died in an airplane. Like many fatal airplane accidents, his was a public death — only more so. He was involved in a midair collision at the Reno National Air Races. Race spectators saw it happen, a graphic photograph appeared the next day in newspapers around the country and overseas, and the accident was replayed on network television shows the next morning thanks to a Reno station that had shot video.

It happened at the start of the T-6-Class Silver race. As with all T-6 and Unlimited Class races at Reno, the airplanes line up abreast for a flying start. Just as it is in any closed-course race involving at least two competitors, the objective on the start is to get in position for the first turn. At Reno, that means trying to be the first pilot to bank sharply around a brightly painted metal drum stuck high on the end of a pole. That metal drum is a pylon marking the apex of Turn One.

Just as the pace airplane pulled up and away and the six competitors started diving for the starting line, two airplanes touched: the white Mis Behavin' and the cherry red Big Red. A portion of the tail came off the white T-6, and the white airplane slid under the red one from left to right. When the two airplanes separated, the white one pitched up violently. The left wing snapped, folded up, and smashed into the cockpit. Some witnesses said later the pilot probably was either killed at that instant or was at least knocked unconscious. I hope they are correct, because the stricken white airplane helicoptered down from an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 feet like a seed from a maple tree. The pilot, Ralph Twombly, was killed. Jerry McDonald struggled to regain control of his red airplane; the left aileron and wingtip had separated and there was extensive damage to the right wing leading edge. Thankfully, McDonald landed safely.

Many people have said my father died doing what he loved. It's tough for the family left behind to draw comfort from that thought, but I'm sure my father would agree with its premise. He had said more than once that given the choice, he would prefer that his life end quickly. And although I may be putting words in his mouth, I seem to recall him playfully attaching a condition: That the exit be accomplished in a blaze of glory.

Unlike so many other fathers, he did not have to fight a long, losing battle with illness, disease, or time. He simply was here one minute, smiling as usual, then gone the next. The suddenness of his death has made it difficult to comprehend. Sometimes when I call home I expect him to answer.

Not everyone in the family was in favor of my father's racing, but it was his decision to make. He knew the risk inherent in low-level, closed-course pylon racing. In his 25 years of involvement in air racing he had witnessed a few accidents, some that claimed friends. But the accidents did not significantly diminish his enthusiasm for the annual arrival of mid-September and Reno Air Race week. Racing was his thing. So be it.

After the accident September 18 something wonderful occurred — two things, actually. First, I received lots of cards and letters from AOPA members and Pilot readers. I was astonished at their eloquence. These people had never met my father, and most knew me only through the magazine. Perhaps because it was splashed all over the news, the accident touched them in a way that caused them to assess their own lives, and the effect that flying has had upon them. Some wrote about the loss of their fathers. Some had experienced a personal setback, and some even tragedy, involving aviation. But none was despairing. These were messages of hope and encouragement, of a shared vision of personal flying as a powerful, positive force in a person's life. "Don't look back too much," one person wrote. "Cockpits face forward."

Second, I believe my family gave my father a proper farewell, one befitting an aviator. His body was shipped back from Reno in a plain wooden casket loaded into the cargo hold of an airliner. My brother Steven, who had witnessed the accident, accompanied my father on the circuitous, day-long flight (there were many stops) from Reno to Buffalo. The flight finally arrived at about 11:30 on a cloudless, crystalline night. A full moon cast shadows on the ground.

Originally, a funeral home in my parents' home town of Wellsville, New York, was going to drive the 90 miles to Buffalo to pick up the casket. We had a better idea. Ten of us piled into three airplanes — my sister-in-law flew her old Cessna 182, I had a Bonanza F33A, and my brother Gerry was in the left seat of a Piper Lance borrowed from a family friend. Thanks to helpful controllers and the airline's station crew at Buffalo, we met the flight from Reno.

We helped the ground crew load the casket into the Lance, then climbed back in our airplanes — Steven flying the 182 now — and taxied out in formation. The tower cleared our flight of three for takeoff, and we launched into the bright, calm night.

At first the frequency carried some nervous chatter between the three airplanes, but it quickly waned. We flew in silent formation with the Lance in the lead, the Bonanza off its left wing, and the Cessna off its right. My father loved to fly in close formation. We felt his presence.

Earlier we had agreed upon a flight plan. Approaching Wellsville, the Lance entered a shallow bank to the left to align with the main street through the middle of the small town. We turned with the Lance and overflew the short stretch of stores and dimly lit residential streets. At the south end of town we banked steeply left in unison and made a wide, nearly 360-degree circle over my parents' home. That set us up on a perpendicular course for the hilltop airport just southwest of the village. We crossed over the field and, allowing time for spacing, turned east on the downwind. Later we compared notes and discovered that each of us wished we could have circled the town until that big moon disappeared over the horizon.

The Bonanza touched down first, followed by the Cessna. The Lance was last to land. My father was home, his final flight over.