Flying My Father

In the winter of 1998, my Father and I watched the original Star Wars trilogy together. My Dad’s decision to show me these films at such a young and impressionable age changed the course of my life, then in the spring of 1999 The Phantom Menace came out, and I was all in. Everything I owned was Star Wars themed, entire days were spent romping through the acres of rainforest behind our house playing with plastic lightsabers, chased by pretend Tie Fighters while piloting my own imaginary X-wing between the maples and pines of the Pacific Northwest.

My Father had always wanted to be a pilot, and that was instilled in me at a young age. After graduating from high school he had planned to join the Marines and fly jets, but a bad knee cut those hopes short, and instead he became the first of his family to graduate from college. He spent a few years at Central Washington University where he met my Mother and earned a degree in Construction Management.

He went on to a prosperous career in construction, and my Mom worked as a Flight Attendant during my formative years. She too helped sow the seeds for my future in aviation.

While growing up my dad read to me, mostly Harry Potter, some Stars Wars novels, a few of the classics, and various first person accounts of military pilots. His dream of cruising the skies ingrained itself in me, and as I ran through the forests in our backyard, piloting my imaginary Millennium Falcon, my own dreams of conquering the skies bloomed.

For years my Father helped water the sprouts of aviation in my mind. Promoting the Air Force and suggesting various routes of acquiring training and fulfilling the tedious hour requirement to fly for the airlines. When my grades in high school didn’t live up to expectations the Air Force Academy fell off the table. So when the time came to apply for colleges, my Dad suggested Washington State University, where he’d spent the first year of his own higher education career before transferring to Central. When I got into WSU I called it good enough and didn’t bother applying anywhere else, despite my Father’s suggestion of applying to Central for their esteemed aviation program. Call it laziness if you’d like, but I think it truly lies in the principle that all young men and women at that age hold a certain level of disdain toward their parent’s advice, a distrust in what their wise elders have to provide, an immaturity I believe we all go through. So Washington State it was.

Freshman year I joined AFROTC at the suggestion of my Father in the hopes of becoming a pilot through the ROTC route. After a semester of AFROTC debauchery, my commanding officer told me I wasn’t going to be an Air Force pilot and I promptly dropped out, both mine and my father’s dreams beheaded at the weekend warrior guillotine.

I graduated from WSU in 2017, moved to Utah and enjoyed a tumultuous few years of ski bummery. Dad came down to visit twice a year, during the summer to ride mountain bikes in the beautiful desert wastelands of Moab and during the winter to ski the best snow in America up Big and Little Cottonwood. I cherish these jaunts and some of my fondest memories spent with my Father have come from the long car rides to the desert or stuck in the inevitable traffic of the Cottonwoods as we each silently suffered our road rage together and attempted idle conversation. Most of these conversations led back to aviation.

In 2018 he began suggesting smaller local flight schools, less daunting and expensive than going back to a University for another degree, and in 2019 I caved and started a Private Pilot Ground school. I’ll leave out the turbulent three year journey that started at Avian Flight Center at small town Bremerton Airport in Washington, to completing ground school at Cornerstone Aviation out of Salt Lake International in Utah for another time. In 2021, after three long years and over a hundred hours of flight time I received my Private Pilot’s License. I had achieved what I'd begun to think impossible, though it all my Father never gave up hope, he always had faith, even through the darkest days of training he knew I could do it.

In the late summer of 2021, during the one of the many heights of the Coronavirus Pandemic, my Father came down to visit Utah once again, he drove the fifteen hour ride through the fires of eastern Washington and northern Oregon to join me for another mountain biking excursion to the desert.

For years now we’ve ventured down to the cruel heat and the harsh sun stained rocks of the south. The arid wasteland of Utah the closest either of us will get to experiencing the Martian landscape of the distant red planet. We revel in the hot sandstone, the soft sands, the scarce but lush brush, the reptilian wildlife, the small chittering birds and the occasional antelope along the plains, the Utah deserts are thriving villas of hidden life, one need only know where to look. The bitter heat of the rusted rocks a stark contrast to the evergreen rainforests of the Pacific Northwest in which my Dad and I spent most of our lives.

Before we drove down to the ever growing small town of Moab, I took my Father flying in one of my school’s rental Cessna 172s, my own X-wing. There was a glimmer in his eyes that I’d only seen once or twice before in my life as we cruised over the Great Salt Lake. Flying through the Tooele Valley I showed off some maneuvers and overflew desolate Stansbury and Antelope Islands, where the buffalo roam. I knew then he was truly proud of me, and I couldn’t be more thankful for all the support he’s provided over the years.