Waypoints

Editor in Chief Thomas B. Haines soloed at age 16 and earned his private pilot certificate at age 17. He later earned instrument and multiengine ratings.

The professor in my feature-writing class knocked off four points for a couple of typos, but aside from that his only comment on the paper was "Very good," written in bright-red cursive across the top of the page. There is no headline, but instead just the words "Profile: John Julian" typed at the top. Unlike most features I wrote in that class almost 20 years ago, this one wasn't just to check a box on an assignment sheet: personality profile, news feature, business profile. No, this one was personal. The other work has long since visited the trash can, but this one is in a file with only a few other college papers I've kept.

Outside of immediate family members, few people touch a pilot's life the way a primary flight instructor does. There in the confines of a small training airplane, a student, regardless of age, reveals a range of emotions and capabilities — or lack thereof — to a person who can either understand the intricacies of the learning process and mold that student into a safe, confident pilot, or who can break the student's spirit and desire with disparaging or ridiculing remarks. Good flight instructors, and there are some remarkably good ones out there, understand their role and the importance of it. They know that if they can nurture this fledgling and fumbling student into the fraternity of pilots, the person's life will be affected in a positive way forever. For you can't emerge from the flight- training process untouched by the experience. Even if you never grasp the controls again after that first checkride, you will always carry the title: Pilot. You will have achieved something that many dream about, but few attempt.

The flight-training process has changed a great deal over the years. These days it's the rare student who moves from first flight to checkride with only one instructor. More often, the flight instructors are working their way toward the left seat of an airliner and their days in the flight-training environment are simply to build time. When the next better job offer comes along, they're gone. And who can blame them, given the pay, hours, and respect that CFIs have received? Times are a-changing, though. The airlines snap up flight instructors quickly, leaving a void at flight schools. As a result of the shortage, CFI pay is improving slowly and in some cases, young instructors are discovering that life at a flight school can be rewarding in ways that an airline career can never be.

John Julian learned that almost 30 years ago when he and his wife, Bernie, took over a sleepy FBO and flight school operation at the Greenville Municipal Airport in northwestern Pennsylvania. They both had just retired from the U.S. Air Force after seeing the world on Uncle Sam's nickel, including such exotic places as Southeast Asia during the Vietnam conflict. John was a mechanic, often maintaining aircraft for VIP fleets. He spent one stint in the mid-1960s maintaining a fleet of five Douglas DC-6s for 30 generals at the Air Force Academy and the North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado Springs, Colorado. This was after maintaining a jet dedicated to Gen. William C. Westmoreland.

Not bad for a kid who grew up in the Depression years in a small South Carolina cotton mill town. His father died when John was just four months old. At age eight he went to live with an uncle who ran a "custom farming" operation, similar to sharecropping. Aircraft maintenance school in the Air Force was a breeze for a teenager who had spent years looking after cantankerous old tractors.

While writing the profile back in college, I asked John how he ended up being the flight instructor who would make such an impression on me and the 400 others he has taught. He replied with that bit of South Carolina drawl he manages to hang onto: "When I had been in the service about 10 years I kept looking at the old people who were retiring out of the military. I could see the light going out of their eyes. They didn't have any reason to get up and go to work in the morning, and they didn't have too much. So, I decided that wasn't going to happen to me, and I tried to figure out what I was going to do when I got out of the service. And finally I decided I might as well fool with airplanes because I've had 27 years' experience with them. So, that's when I started working on my private pilot license, about 1962."

Demands of the job kept him from continuing his flying until just before he retired a decade later, when he finally earned his certificate. Over the next year, while Bernie completed her last year of service before retirement, John earned his advanced ratings and his civilian maintenance certificate.

Shortly thereafter, in 1973, they began operating the FBO and flight school at Greenville, working under the corporate name of Motovation Air Inc. Six days a week, they pumped fuel, managed the terminal building, and John provided maintenance services between flight lessons. The school operated a number of training aircraft. By the time I stumbled through the door in 1977, he had trained several dozen pilots. I soloed that summer at age 16 and took a full two years to complete the private pilot curriculum, earning my certificate at age 17 — just a few days short of my eighteenth birthday and only one day before my written exam expired.

One of the trainers in the fleet was a yellow and white Cessna 150, N66089. This particular one came with the little-known ground repellent option. It refused to land, and when forced near the ground, it bounced repeatedly before relenting. I demonstrated this time after time as John and I trundled around the pattern lesson after lesson. While any other instructor might have run screaming from the airplane, John kept up his unrelenting mantra of: "Just relax. You'll get it. It will all fall into place." And, sure enough it did. One landing, everything clicked, I greased it on, and then flying became fun again.

Over the years, the little business grew, although it's always maintained the mom-and-pop atmosphere of a small airport. About 15 years ago, the borough-owned brick terminal building — basically one room with a set of restrooms — became too small for the operation. The borough couldn't afford a new building, so the Julians and a group of volunteers set out to enlarge the building on their own. Through a lot of work, the group drummed up donated or discounted labor and materials to expand the facility. Today it includes a new set of restrooms, a classroom for ground school classes, an office, kitchen, pilot lounge, and a big back porch from which to judge landings. A healthy injection of federal and state dollars have built hangars, expanded the ramp, replaced the fuel pumps, cleared trees, and rebuilt the crosswind turf runway. A pilot visiting from 20 years ago wouldn't recognize the place.

Last year, in an effort to slow down a bit, John and Bernie sold the business to another operator, but they both stayed on. John still instructs, and Bernie shows up with lunch and to help out around the office in the afternoons. During my interview while in college, I asked John about his future plans. "I don't plan on doing anything. I wouldn't think of retiring," he said. To which Bernie quietly replied, "By the time he leaves here, he'll be too old to do anything else."

Twenty years later, that time still hasn't come. To commemorate the couple's long service to the community, the borough recently named the road leading to the airport Julian Way. There are about 400 of us out there who learned to fly the Julian way. And every day, whether flying or simply gazing up at a passing airplane, we are grateful that our lives were touched by someone who has dedicated a career to bringing others into this fraternity we call aviation.

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