NAME: Marie Lopez del Puerto
AGE: 32
EVENT: Conversion to U.S. private pilot certificate
WHERE: Richard E. Fleming Field (SGS), South St. Paul, Minnesota
AIRPLANE: Cessna 150
Sixteen years ago, at the age of 16, I completed my first skydive at Fremont County Airport (1V6) in Canon City, Colorado. I wrote a story about my experience in a monthly newsletter published by my home airport’s pilots association, which was then edited by my maternal grandfather—a doctor and private pilot. I wrote, “Nada habría major que permanecer en el cielo eternamente.” Nothing would be better than to remain in the sky forever.
El Lencero (MMJA), my home airport, is in Jalapa, Mexico. A few months before that first skydive, I had soloed over Jalapa in a friend’s Cessna 150. I obtained my Mexican private pilot’s license a year later, when I was 17. My father was the one who taught me how to fly. You could find me at the airport every Sunday, some Saturdays, and most Tuesdays when school was out. I loved to fly. When we were not flying, I also loved sitting around listening to the pilots’ conversations, which ranged from airport gossip to politics, from the weather to my grandfather’s medical advice.
After I left for college, I couldn’t fly as much, but did so any time I went home. Then my grandfather died. My parents divorced. I moved to Minnesota for graduate school, got married, and had two daughters. Somehow 10 years went by.
The cabin of the 150 felt so unfamiliar during my first flight out of Richard E. Fleming Field (SGS) in South St. Paul, Minnesota. I was happy to see I hadn’t forgotten everything I once knew, but I had a long way to go before the checkride for my U.S. certificate. Not only did I have to become a proficient pilot once more, I also had to learn new rules and regulations and satisfy different requirements. There were many firsts: first landing at a grass strip, first night flight, first time getting fingerprinted at a police station (to register as a flight student, since I am not a U.S. citizen). The pilots at Fleming are as welcoming and encouraging as I remember the guys back home, always quick to wish me a good flight. A year has gone by since I started flying again.
Recently I found myself flying alone on the way back to Fleming. I saw skyscrapers instead of Marie at age 16, after her first skydive. There were mountains, a river where the highway would have been. But the clouds looked familiar and, as the radio crackled through my grandfather’s old headset, I found comfort in the thought that we all fly under the same sky after all. Inspiration struck. I started writing this story in my head. Then, as I reported six miles south by the refinery, I wondered whether there is a pilots association at Fleming Field and whether they publish a newsletter. I followed the river north, and found my way back home.
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