Airborne: Always Make Sure Your Destination Airport Is Open

MH, Ralph, and Ella
January 2019

When MH told another pilot that he'd like to become a pilot himself, this friend told him he had to meet Ralph -- he was the very best. This was back in 2010.

Ralph indeed taught MH to fly, and over the next 10 years, they spent probably 300+ hours in the cockpit together. The first 120 hours were all instruction, and then MH started taking him along nearly every time he’d fly. “Loved having him in the right seat,” MH shared. “I’d call him with no notice and say, ‘Hey wanna go play in the sky?’ Ninety-nine percent of the time it was an instant YES.”

Ralph was often in the right seat, where the instructor sits. But sometimes MH would sit on the right, and just let Ralph have fun as pilot in command, and MH would pretend to be his instructor.

Over their time together, they developed a close bond, and MH held Ralph in the highest regard. MH shared that Ralph “is a legend in the flying community,” and he “is one of the best men I’ve known in my entire life, and I love him like he’s my dad.” There isn’t a better compliment than that!

They sure had fun together too. Just try to not laugh at the experience that MH shared, recorded below.

……….

Back when I was Ralph's student - this would be toward the end of my experience as a student pilot - he set me loose on several cross-country adventures. ... He always asked me to create my flight plan, map it out, and show him what I was going to do. Part of that planning process, obviously, is to check at each airport that you’re going to, to make sure that they’re available to land at. 

He gave me the directions to fly to Nephi, then to Delta, then back to Salt Lake City. He knew that Delta was closed. I think he was just testing me to see if I checked. 

I was up in the air, and I’m a rookie pilot, and I’m a second or third or fourth cross-country. I got to Nephi, I landed, I did my thing. I take off to go to Delta. I get to Delta and there’s X’s across the entire runway. And I knew from my studies that that meant that the runway was closed. And I was in a total panic because I didn’t understand why I couldn’t land there. 

So I actually called Ralph, and he was at lunch with his beautiful wife. And I said, “Ralph, Delta’s closed.” And he said, “Why did you fly there then?” [Chuckles] So I kind of failed my test. I learned from that point forward to always check ahead of time if the airport you’re flying to is available to accept you. 

Just one of many many lessons that Ralph taught me along the way!

KF: I guess you had a safety net of enough fuel to figure out an alternate plan?

Yah, no problems there. I had enough fuel to get there and back and there again probably, so that wasn’t an issue. It was a perfectly safe and fun way to kind of tease me into planning better. 

KF: You probably didn’t make that mistake again!

I was mad at him all the way home. [Chuckles]

……….

In 2018, MH presented Ralph with the best birthday gift: Two hours in the left seat (as pilot in command) in MH’s airplane. MH shared:

For years he was always the instructor in the right seat but he never got to fly in the left seat with me. I told him he could go wherever he wanted for 2 hours and I would grade him on his takeoffs and landings! He told me it was the most fun he had in the air in years, and that’s saying a lot! … He was like a little kid that day. Giddy!

Check out this footage. All of the pictures and videos of final approach were Ralph’s landings, at 3-4 different local airports that day.

Ralph and MH on Ralph's birthday flight.

Filmed 15 January 2018, near Bountiful, UT.

..........

Sources: 

• From a phone call with MH on 2 November 2020
• From a text exchange with MH on 25 March 2022
• From a text exchange with MH on 1 September 2022

Evidence of the Stories They Told and Lives Well Lived

Ralph with a model airplane, late 1940s.

In February 2021, over the course of several cold and dreary days, I gathered with SM and LM and their children at Ralph and Ella's home in Centerville, Utah. We were there to help in the continued effort to sort and find new homes for Ralph and Ella's belongings and mementos, as the family was preparing their home for sale. 

I brought my scanner as a carryon, and set up shop in Ralph and Ella's office. We organized photos and documents, and I scanned and scanned and scanned for days (and twice all night), creating digital versions of these priceless treasures, to be able to document and share these files with the broader family.

The days I spent there were so sacred, to be granted a peak into what Ralph and Ella saved, what was most important to them, what they hung on to, and what they wanted to remember. Each item made a statement about what they valued. 

But what touched my heart most was to find concrete evidence of the stories that Ralph and Ella told. The stories were already real, but these relics brought them to life.

Here are a few examples:

• Ralph's folio of business cards from different jobs and positions - he worked so hard to provide for his family.

• The receipt from when Ralph bought the electric oven for his mother.

A range that Ralph purchased from his uncle Ray's shop, Inglish Electric. 
Paid in 30 monthly payments of $8.56.

• Snapshots Ralph took while flying above Mesa, Arizona, as a kid - at the airfield where he would pick glass up off the runway in exchange for airplane rides.

View of Mesa, AZ, from the air, of Rendezvous Park
(coincidentally, where Ralph and Ella met)

This was labeled on the back, "My hobby."

• The huge family tree that Kate Findlay (Ella's mother) had created. She was ahead of her time with her genealogical research! This chart starts with George and Kate Findlay (born in 1903 and 1904, respectively), going back I'm not sure how many generations, but the earliest date listed is 1080 AD. (See a video of it here.)

Kate Findlay's handwritten family tree.
For context, this chart measures about 5-feet wide and dates back to 1080 AD.

• Photos of Ralph's infamous Cushman scooter. He sure loved it!

Reclining against the handle bars.

On two wheels!

• The invoice of the Findlays (Ella's family) selling just about all they had at the auction house, to help pay for their passage to America in 1949.

• Ella's school notebooks and study guides from Scotland, while a student at the Aberdeen Central S. S. School as an early teenager. Ella talked about how when she emigrated at age 15, she was ahead of the schooling standards for the same grade in America. But the Scots really set the bar high for their students! 

Ella's notebook for English exercises, filled with essay she wrote
on various prompts.

An essay Ella wrote about a week-long school camp to Kemnay, Scotland.
(Other stories and photos of Ella's family in Kemnay, here.)

Note how spelling and grammar were corrected, and then Ella had to 
rewrite the corrected words at the end of her essay.

Ella's English and Arithmetic exam book

"Mental Arithmetic" - I wonder whether this was a focus in the US curriculum for this age
in the late 1940s. Ella was really good at doing mathematic calculations in her head.

• Files and files and files of family history work, for both Ella and Ralph's sides. 

Just a sampling of the many files of family history work
that Ralph and Ella saved. 

• Sweet correspondence with loved ones far away - grandparents, cousins, friends, and even Ma Pat, the sweet woman who lived upstairs from the Findlays on Prospect Terrace in Aberdeen, and who assisted in Ella's birth.

A letter from Ma Pat to Ella, 15 January 1952

• Every card, note, photo - it seems like that they ever received - saved in shoeboxes and plastic bins. Including children's art projects, letters to Santa, notes from children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.

A note to the Easter Bunny,
from Ralph and Ella's daughter BR.

These, and many more artifacts, are physical testaments -- evidence of the stories they told and lives well lived. (May I live my life as well, and with the evidence to show for it.)

Airborne: Flying as a Second Religion; A Regal Soul

Ralph, when he worked for Interwest Aviation

This is a story of a loyal friendship, with tales of laughter, hair-raising experiences, and a high regard for each other that spanned 40 years, summed up in this phrase: “[Ralph was] just a neat guy to fly with.”

It was 1976 when JM and Ralph first met. JM was a school teacher living in Salt Lake City and he had just started his flight training. At the time, Ralph was selling airplanes for Interwest Aviation in Salt Lake, and the friend who had introduced JM to flying shared JM’s contact information with Ralph.

JM wasn’t in the market to buy an airplane - or so he thought. After all, JM didn’t have many flight hours logged and hadn’t even solo’d yet, but JM and Ralph still met and Ralph showed him some planes and pitched “the advantages of airplane ownership” as a business investment. 

That day, a new plane had just been delivered from Florida where it was manufactured  - a 1976 Piper Warrior. This particular model was painted red, white, and blue, in honor of the United States Bicentennial, and it also had an easy-to-remember call sign: 75123. JM recalled: “When you see something like that, you just got to have it!” JM was sold! Ralph described JM as giddy when he was handed the keys! (JM was actually one of Ralph’s first customers.)

A 1976 Piper Warrior, similar to the one JM bought
(Image Source)

JM would continue to stop by Ralph’s office when he was visiting Interwest Aviation. Ralph was such a people person and fun to talk to, they would chat for a long time and they became close friends. 

When JM was ready to pursue getting his multi-engine rating, Ralph was JM’s instructor. JM progressed through all his previous ratings with another instructor, a friend who was a retired US Air Force instructor. When that friend went to work for the airlines, Ralph “took me under his wing.” (Love that metaphor in this context!)

Professionally, JM was a teacher at a local high school, dabbling in real estate on the side. When JM learned to fly, he never anticipated or desired going beyond getting his private pilot’s license. However, because of Ralph and relationships with other encouraging pilot friends, JM caught a vision and would keep pursuing aviation. 

It was a career path he had never anticipated, but this path included teaching his own ground school (he collaborated with Ralph to write the curriculum and Ralph helped teach as well); starting his own flying club and flight school (Ralph would outfit JM and his business partner with planes as needed; they acquired 17 airplanes altogether); earning additional certificates and ratings (including two airline transport certificates, which is the highest level of aircraft pilot certificate); and JM eventually became an FAA flight examiner and the chief pilot in the aviation department at a local university.

JM recalls that Ralph never pushed him, but “showed me the light, so to speak,” inspiring him to keep advancing.

……….

Over the years, JM and Ralph had many memorable moments together. Here are some highlights:

In the mid 1970s, early in JM’s training on a twin-engine aircraft, Ralph had to deliver a twin-engine airplane—a Piper Seneca—to another location and he invited JM along to gain more experience. JM recalls:

“I don’t think I had more than 20 hours, and he threw me in the pilot’s seat, and I could hardly keep the thing on the taxiway because I had one engine operating at a higher RPM than the other, so the thing kept trying to pull off the taxiway. And he just kind of sat there and smiled! [JM chuckles.] That was my first encounter with him.

“He let me fight it for a while then he finally showed me what to do. He told me what was going on. I didn’t have a clue! [JM chuckles.] He was always putting me in something that was bigger and letting me get the feel of aviation. He wanted everyone to know what he knew.” 

A Piper Seneca
(Image Source)

……….

In the early 1980s, JM was renting an airplane to work toward his multi-engine training (a Piper PA-44 Seminole), Ralph was helping him, and in this particular plane, they had two particularly memorable incidents. 

One time, the airplane had brand new tires installed, but in the process, the mechanic had inadvertently pinched one of the tire tubes. At ground level, the tube had probably 35 pounds of pressure in it. By the time they were at 8500 feet, the air pressure had diminished outside, and the tube probably went up to 55 or 60 pounds. In this process, where the tube was pinched, it became weakened and blew out. 

Was there an explosion? No. In fact, they had no clue what had happened, until they went to land. JM related:

“I think the black streak is still on the runway as that tube came apart as we were rolling down the runway. But the hard part was trying to keep it on the runway! I think both of us were standing on the rutter to try to keep the airplane on the runway, because we were headed off the runway - there was so much drag with that tire flat. I remember the owner came out and brought a new tire out and he says, ‘I’m sure glad you guys were flying this airplane. If anyone else had been flying it, it would have been rolled up on the side of the runway somewhere.’”

A Piper PA-44 Seminole

(Image Source)

……….

For one aspect of the multi-engine training, the pilot has to fail one of the engines and fly on one engine. The pilot will manually cause the engines to fail and then put it in the “feather mode” on the propeller, and then you can restart it and go about your business. Or at least, that’s the way it should work. (See a demonstration of feathering a prop in flight here.)

JM and Ralph climbed into that same airplane—a Piper PA-44 Seminole—on another day (in the early 1980s), and they successfully took off and were going through the training script. Ralph helped JM fail the engine and put it in feather mode...but then they couldn’t get it restarted! Chuckling, JM explained: 

“We could not get that engine restarted! We actually had a real emergency! We landed at the airport with one engine going and the other one feathered.”

I had to ask, what is Ralph like in situations like that? Without hesitating, JM replied: 

“Just as cool as a cucumber. Nothing ever shook him in the air that I ever saw! I’ve never seen him flustered or anything like that. He was just, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ A professional pilot just doesn’t get shook up at all, and I learned that from him...He was just a neat guy to fly with!”

The day that JM took his multi-engine transport check ride, Ralph was in the back seat, offering his support in person.

……….

In the late 80s/early 90s, JM had a 1946 Piper J-3 Cub. It was a little tandem airplane, where one seat was behind the other. If you’re flying it solo, you’d have to fly it from the backseat - to help keep the weight and balance level. If there was a passenger, then the passenger would sit in the front; an instructor would sit in front as well.

This airplane had a steel frame, and that steel frame was wrapped in fabric. The fabric was painted, which gave a stiffness to it, but over time, the material eventually wears out. When the plane would go in for an inspection, there was a tool that the mechanic would use to poke a hole in the fabric to check the tensile strength. It was now time to replace the fabric - which was a lost art! Most mechanics didn’t know how to do it. 

A Piper J-3 Cub
(Image Source)

They were able to find a mechanic to do the work, in Parowan, Utah, about 240 miles away. They took the plane down there - they had gotten a provision from the FAA to fly it down - a “ferry permit.” Then they had to get the plane back to Salt Lake. 

JM considered who would really have the experience to fly this type of plane such a distance, Ralph came to mind. 

Ralph agreed and asked, “I’ve got this friend that I’d like to give some experience in flying a Cub. Do you mind if he comes with me?” 

The three of them - JM, Ralph, and Ralph’s student - hopped into another of JM’s planes, a Piper Turbo Arrow, which was a pretty fast airplane. They left Salt Lake City about 6 am, as JM had to be back to teach school by 8 am - hence the fast airplane. Their outbound flight took them about 30 minutes. JM flew solo on the return flight, taking him 50 minutes as there was a headwind, but he made it back to school in time. 

Coming back, Ralph and his student had the same headwind, which was troublesome considering that the Cub had a much smaller gas tank. 

Realizing that they weren’t going to make it all the way back to Salt Lake on that single tank of gas, Ralph made a calculated decision and landed the plane in the best place available: a dirt road in Payson, Utah.

Unflustered, Ralph and his student taxied the airplane into town, pulled up to a gas pump, fueled the airplane with car gasoline, then taxied back onto the dirt road and flew the rest of the way home.

Ralph always kept a camera with him, and this day he used it to document that dirt road out in the middle of a pasture, with the Piper J-3 Cub in the frame. Ralph gave a copy to JM, inscribed on the back: “Payson International Airport.”

A plane in a similar situation, fueling up at a gas station.
(Image Source)

..........

About 1978, Piper came out with a new trainer called the PA-38 Tomahawk. It was a little 2-seater with a small engine, and being a Piper school, JM had to have this type of plane, buying the ‘79 model and later an ‘81.

A Piper PA-38 Tomahawk
(Image Source)

It was a hard plane to fly, but if they could fly that, they could probably fly anything - it was that good of a trainer. Nicknamed the “Traumahawk” because “if it got away from you, it would really scare you!” In 1981 or ‘82, they bought another one, which had an improved design. 

They put a lot of time on that plane, and occasionally Ralph would use the plane for his students. Eventually, the plane had so many hours on the engine that they needed to trade it out. 

They didn’t want to put money into a new engine, so JM bought a used engine that still had plenty of hours on it, and he and Ralph changed it out. They did the work themselves, and had a mechanic look over their shoulders to sign it off. 

One day a student was flying it all by himself when the engine broke apart. The student was in the pattern so he landed and called JM and said, “Guess what! Your engine doesn’t work anymore.” 

Ralph was using his plane to train students, so it was imperative to get it operable again as soon as possible. 

A new engine was cost prohibitive at the time, so JM bought a technical manual about engine repair, he and Ralph tore it down and tried to salvage it, again working with a mechanic to double check their work. They rebuilt the entire engine themselves, except for calling on a mechanic to overhaul the cylinders for it. 

Once the engine was rebuilt, it needed to be test-flown for 50 hours, to break the engine in. JM explained: “I guess they figure if it doesn’t doesn’t blow up in 50 hours, it’ll be ok!” Ralph would fly that plane “sometimes all day long.” (I can imagine Ralph loving the excuse to get more hours in the air, needing to break in the refurbished engine!) He had to fly it close to the airport and at full throttle, for 50 hours, to certify it. Once the 50 hours were logged, Ralph started teaching in it again. “I’ll never forget that,” JM said, problem solving and working together on that project.

..........

A few years later, JM and his business partner decided they wanted to buy a really nice airplane—a top-of-the-line Piper Archer, all decked out—selling their existing two airplanes to acquire this new one. JM naturally called on Ralph. 

Because JM and his partner were jointly buying the plane, they wanted it to have a call sign significant to them. They wanted C and M…”C” for his partner’s first name, and “M” for JM’s last name, or “Charlie-Mike” in the military phonetic alphabet. Ralph researched call signs on planes and then called JM up: “I’ve got your airplane!” They ordered the plane, and the call number was 231CM...Charlie-Mike. 

Looking to save some money, JM found a radio shop in Salt Lake City that would give them a better deal on a radio for the new plane than the factory would. But they would first have to fly the airplane back to Salt Lake City without any navigation or radios to communicate. Ralph said, “Well, you can do that! You’ll just be flying it deaf and dumb.”

So JM and his partner flew back to Florida on a commercial flight, where the factory was, and picked up Charlie-Mike. Then they flew the plane all the way across the country, back to Salt Lake, by following roadmaps and compass headings. Once back in Salt Lake, they had the radio shop put the latest radios in. Success!

In the meantime, they weren’t able to sell their two other planes, so instead they decided to start a flight school. They figured they might as well start renting them out and make some money! So JM and Clint formed a partnership and Ralph introduced them to the banker that helped them finance several more planes.

..........

After JM got his airline transport ratings, Ralph would call him “Captain.” JM loved that. (Ralph did this frequently, it seems, with his students. But no matter how often Ralph called his students “Captain,” its specialness was never diluted.) 

For JM, aviation eventually became a full time job, and he’s now logged over 13,000 hours. It was a career path that he didn’t anticipate, but it happened because he knew people like Ralph. Ralph had such an influence on him. Ralph was always showing him something new, something more, expanding JM’s horizons - never pushing but introducing him to new things, nudging him a little bit past his comfort zone in his learning and experience.

Ralph even encouraged JM to keep flying into his 80s, so that he too could become a member of the UFO (United Flying Octogenarians).

Later on, JM was a flight examiner and it was JM that issued the instrument rating for Ralph. Things had come full circle. 

There’s no doubt that Ralph was passionate about flying. JM described:

“He lived it, he breathed it. I’d say that it was a second religion!...When it gets in your blood, it becomes a religion. That’s when you become a real pilot.”

Ralph was involved in so many different aspects of JM’s aviation journey. Remembering back on these shared experiences with JM, Ralph said, “I’ve been richly blessed with great friends.” And JM shared, “He’s a regal soul.” 

JM (left) shaking hands with a flight instructor
(Image Source: JM's personal photos)

A ceramic statue that Ralph and Ella made for JM
(Image Source: JM's personal photos)

……….

Sources: 

• From conversations with Ralph on 13 January 2020 and 6 November 2020. 
• From phone interviews with JM on 17 November 2020 and 6 February 2022.