Down on Turkey Mountain

“We bought the airport to preserve and promote general aviation,” Reynolds said, “not as a money-making venture. But we’ve been successful at all three,” she added, laughing.

Although Reynolds’s private airstrip isn’t the longest in Missouri, it comes close, with 3,950 feet of level terrain tucked between the foothills of the Ozarks and the glistening waters of Table Rock Lake, and can comfortably accommodate the Beechcraft King Airs and other twins that occasionally fly in.

Reynolds became the owner of Turkey Mountain Airport accidentally and has come close to divesting herself of it twice. Both times, she says, fate intervened.

Reynolds’s late husband, Marshall Reynolds, a pilot from near Kansas City, migrated to Shell Knob after his retirement.

“Before I married him, Marshall told me he owned a hangar at Turkey Mountain that just happened to have a house with it. The house was a plus,” Reynolds laughed, “so I said yes.”

A retired middle school teacher from the Belton (Missouri) School District, Judy isn’t a pilot herself.

When the airstrip alongside Marshall Reynolds’s hangar came up for sale shortly after the Reynoldses were married, they teamed up with a neighboring couple and purchased the property.

Two years after the purchase, Marshall Reynolds had a stroke, then died two years later. Judy was then faced with the decision of what to do with her interest in the airport.

“I still wanted to promote general aviation,” she said. She liked the idea of hosting community fly-ins, but her neighboring co-owners did not and offered to buy her out.

“I almost accepted,” she said, “when I got a surprising offer from some area pilots who offered to help if I wanted to retain ownership.

Reynolds later bought her neighbors’ interest and hosted her first two fly-ins in 2003. The frequency of her fly-ins and the attendance at them increased as word got out about her MO00 burger lunches, signature Omelet-in-A-Bag breakfasts, and the spirit of camaraderie present.

“Once, I had 64 airplanes here at one time,” Reynolds said. “I have a lot of help with the fly-ins from friends. It’s definitely not something I could do alone.”

She learned that the mowing of her airstrip is not a one-woman job either. When a neighbor who had helped with mowing later moved, she put the airstrip on the market, but it proved to be a slow ticket item. Her son came through with an offer to drive down from Kansas City to help with the mowing, one she gladly accepted. She promptly removed the airstrip from the market.

“I’m here to stay now,” she said.

As a substitute teacher at the school, a part-time hostess at the local steak house, and an avid promoter of chamber events, Reynolds offers solid support to her adopted community. The fly-ins she hosts are but one more facet of that.

Sheila Harris, a freelance writer, lives in southwest Missouri.

People

Here's Waldo

Feisty instructor still sought out at 88

By Dave Hirschman

“Where’s Waldo?” is more than just a children’s book and TV show. It’s a question Minnesota seaplane pilots earnestly ask, as do participants in Beechcraft Pilot Proficiency Programs (BPPP) around the country. And the riddle can be surprisingly hard to answer because Ralph Waldo Anderson—the 88-year-old aviator they’re looking for—is a habitual rambler.

“I spend winters in Arizona and summers in Minnesota, but I like to stay busy and seldom stay in one place very long,” said Anderson, who was teaching at a BPPP clinic in Lakeland, Florida, the day I found him.

That morning, the impish former FAA designee, who administered checkrides in the Midwest for 47 years, was giving introductory seaplane rides to other flight instructors. At midday he provided an instrument proficiency check in a Baron, and that evening he gave more dual instruction for another Baron pilot headed to South Florida.

Anderson taught at the University of Minnesota’s aviation program for 37 years, and he’s sought out today because his practical lessons go far beyond academics.

“You don’t want to be in the midst of an actual engine failure the very first time you shut down an engine in a Baron or a Beech 18,” said Anderson, who learned to fly in a U.S. Air Force flying club in Salina, Kansas, in 1957.

“Every pilot should get to experience that during their checkout so that they know exactly what to expect if and when it ever happens for real. Once pilots see it and practice it, they realize they can handle engine failures just fine, and that makes the rest of their flying more enjoyable because they’re not stressed out about it.”

Anderson, an A&P mechanic, gets down on the ground to shake landing gear doors and sump fuel tanks during each Beechcraft preflight. He climbs surefootedly on slippery seaplane floats and wet docks without hesitation.

Flying with Anderson is a contact sport. If you’re not applying enough right rudder, he’ll slap or punch your right thigh as a hint. If he wants you to press a button, he’ll grab your hand and guide it to the button he wants pressed. His cockpit demeanor is casual, energetic, and sprinkled with a few F-bombs and lots of laughter.

He’s got encyclopedic knowledge of avionics ranging from the long-obsolete to the most modern, and he delights in quickly filing flight plans on his ever-present iPad.

“I don’t know how we ever flew airplanes for all those years without these things,” he said. “I know how to tell the iPad what I want, and once I’ve done that, I do exactly what it tells me to do. When you’re as old as me, you don’t waste your time arguing with the technology.”

Anderson was named for Ralph Waldo Emerson, but it’s the middle name that stuck.

He lost part of his left pinky finger in a machine-shop accident long ago and says the emergency room doctor asked at the time whether he played the piano or a stringed instrument.

Anderson told him no, he flew airplanes.

The doctor looked relieved and tossed the severed portion of Anderson’s finger in the trash can.

“He told me I wouldn’t be needing that in my line or work, and he was right,” Anderson said. “I haven’t missed it a bit.”

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