Pilots

For a decade, Summer Martel's students have been people of various ages and both genders, but all were drawn by her infectious enthusiasm for flight and then reassured through the rigors of flying by her compelling confidence.

My wife approached her first lesson in white-knuckled terror, but she was charmed by Summer into other sessions. Her instructor recognized the anxiety but repeated into the headphones — softly, gently, but positively — "Maureen, you're going to fly."

For months, my wife had noticed people unfolding from the little Cessna trainer with Summer. A few were too young to take their checkride yet. Most were older, from initial students to flight review and IFR refreshers. One was a retired nursing school instructor who wanted to fly as a capstone of a successful career.

Ordinary civilians just showed up at Jefferson County International Airport in Port Townsend, Washington, to see if Summer could take them sightseeing in her yellow 1931 Student Prince biplane. She graciously accommodated everyone with a schedule that must have left little room for regular meals, weeding the garden, or other activities. Summer would rather fly than eat or sleep.

Walking away from your lesson, the ink drying in the logbook, you feel genuine accomplishment. Frequently, pilots remember that she had explained something clearly for the first time — a new principle or a stubborn habit — and then just sat hands folded, inspiring them to do it right. Aloft with the usual CFI, many of us have endured cocky bravado or ego-crushing superiority, and moments of humiliation. What a nice change to be lulled into emulation by such a quietly enthusiastic person. Maureen once ended a solo flight in tears after a crosswind puffed her into the grass. Summer put her arm around the student's shoulder. As they wandered off, you could just hear the whisper: "Boy, I know how that feels, it happened to me just like that last summer, after my act at an airshow."

Appearing to fly like part of the machine, she evolved as an aerobatics instructor and then airshow competitor. During 1996, she flew a Cessna Aerobat at local airshows and was compensated only with fuel. However, by the EAA's regional fly-in in Arlington, Washington, in 1997, Summer was featured on the program with Bob Hoover and other well-known acts.

While she would have flown just to be included, friends heard her exclaim in disbelief, "They are paying me, and look — a car, meals, and a room." Surrounded by airplanes, pilots, and the respect of her peers, this pilot's pilot was in heaven.

It's never easy to eke out an aviation living, so it was lucky that flying became her life at all. Twenty years ago, while she was a tomboy in grade school, a friend of her father's provided her first flight in a prewar Taylorcraft. Seized by his own first flight, her father searched for an antique for himself. A colorful character in a small town, he wouldn't allow his choice to be just an average airplane. Far off, the elder Martel, a student pilot, located the Student Prince and persuaded the owner to deliver it. There are some who say that he had to be talked out of pretending to have more experience and attempting the journey himself.

His young daughter was fascinated. She insisted on rides as soon as her father had earned his certificate, while underseat pillows raised her feet off the floor. Becoming a teenager, while other girls were wishing for horses, Summer washed, waxed, learned to change the oil, and devoured the eccentricities of both biplane airframe and belching Kinner motor. Her willingness to offer teenagers lessons today must allow her to remember those days when she could fly the wonderful biplane, with her father just riding along.

Tragically, her father died during this period of her life. Recalling their many happy flights and tinkering together, the young woman was determined to save her father's plane even as the budget challenged her daily. But she found a mountain of energy for a multitude of after-school jobs. Imagine a teenager struggling to hangar and maintain a plane, much less an antique that some would send to a museum. Of the six constructed almost 70 years ago, only this one and another are still airworthy.

She never left the airport grounds. She aced her certificate and persevered through the ratings, becoming an instructor after high school. Still younger than 30, Summer is popular and in demand for myriad junkets. In October 1996, she found herself in Europe as part of an eager crew of friends planning to ferry back to the Pacific Northwest the last new Antonov AN-2, the world's largest production biplane, from its factory in Poland. Ultimately the trip was a bust.

Sometimes things happen unexpectedly. Three years ago instructor and student fell in love, though Summer and Steve differ on details. Together they designed a modest home and constructed it on nights and weekends. The garden pond is the scene of a friendly skirmish over the temporal legitimacy of her fish or his frogs.

Anyone can see that Summer infused Steve with passion for flight. He crafted a Fisher experimental plane and a hangar. They have two airplanes to carry gear to airshows or camping fly-outs. Half goes in the biplane's front cockpit, and Steve flies the rest, along with the dog, a clever Jack Russell terrior named Pitot — what else?