Fleeting Permanence
By William Garvey
Editor-in-Chief
william_garvey@aviationweek.co
Don’t be blinded by familiarity.
MINE IS AN OLD NEW ENGLAND TOWN, COMPLETE WITH A CENTRAL green, stone walls, colonial tavern, the works. Revolutionary War skirmishes were fought on Main Street — a British cannon ball remains lodged in the old tavern’s wall — and combatants, both Patriots and Redcoats, rest in the Burying Yard.
Yes, George Washington really did stop here, as did Comte de Rochambeau and Benedict Arnold (when he was still fighting for the home team).
While modernity, with its sports bars, McMansions and nail salons, prevails now, there remain quite a few icons attesting to the town’s rich heritage.
On their way to wreak us havoc, the British passed a modest, pink colored farmhouse that would soon become home to the same family through six generations. Nearly 300 years later, the farm was long gone to development, but the house, albeit dilapidated, was still occupied by the family, and still pink. I drove by it regularly, and knowing some of the family members, felt a connection to all that history. But I confess, more often than not when I passed by, my thoughts were on more immediate matters.
One day as I zoomed along, I caught notice of yellow construction equipment in the pink house’s yard, but gave it no thought. The next day the awful news flashed through town; the family had sold the pink house and the new owners had demolished it in a matter of hours. There was nothing left standing.
In the uproar that followed, there was finger pointing in every which direction, but the results were unchanged. The pink house was gone forever. Now when I drive along that road, I am keenly aware of an emptiness at a place that once stirred my imagination and provided a sense of firmament.
That kind of loss happens to us all one way or another. Something integral and assumedly permanent quite suddenly disappears. And now that has happened to this publication.
A few weeks ago I was preparing to moderate a panel at an FAA conference in Washington when my BlackBerry began vibrating. The caller was John Wiley, a contributor and friend of long standing. He said he was going to an Atlanta Aero Club luncheon featuring the head of Delta Air Lines, and what questions did I want him to pose. I came up with a couple, for which he thanked me. After the call, it occurred to me that Wiley had just got me to buy him a free lunch.
I never learned the answers to those questions because John died suddenly a few days later.
Weeks have passed since the terrible news, but John’s absence hasn’t fully registered. Even though ours is a disparate staff and we didn’t see each other often, John’s presence was real and always welcome.
A Mensa-sharp Southern gentleman, he was given to self-deprecation and laughter, loved lampooning the self-important, and befuddling bureaucrats. His wit was wonderfully wry and sometimes zany. Robert Sumwalt, now an NTSB member, recalls a story John shared on a layover when they were junior pilots with Piedmont Airlines. Earlier while passing over Atlanta, John had kept staring out and downward from his side window. The fixation of the right seater finally prompted the captain to ask what he was doing. John deadpanned, “I’m looking at my house to see if I’m home.” The nonplussed four-striper “gave him a real funny look,” Sumwalt said, but was mute.
John had a special love of literature, ideas, his wife and two daughters, and airplanes. He was a pilot’s pilot — military, airline, corporate, genav — with an uncanny recollect, as demonstrated last summer at the Farnborough air show while working for Show News, a sister publication. Paul Jackson, a Show News colleague who more significantly serves as editor-in-chief of Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft, recalls John’s authority and strong opinion about almost everything aeronautical.
At one point, Paul says, John was at his computer “squinting at one truncated fin and wing in the background of a screen photo and asked, ‘Isn’t that a Gloster Javelin?’ John’s undying place in my affections was guaranteed that instant by the fact I am not worthy to touch the hem of the flying suit of any Yank who can recognize a fragment of Gloster Javelin.”
In addition to all that, John was a consummate storyteller, both spoken, which kept listeners enthralled, and in print, which garnered him awards and a following. His final yarn, among his best, resulted from his lifelong curiosity about the world and its inhabitants. It begins on page 42.
A lesson from John’s passing and the pink house’s destruction is to not let familiarity blind you to the solidly good. And, happily, I took that lesson to heart.
The Corporate Angel Network was co-founded in 1981 by the late Leonard Greene, the brilliant inventor-head of Safe Flight Instrument Corp. When his son, Randy, took over Safe Flight, he could easily have cut ties with CAN to step away from his father’s legacy. But he did not.
Rather he invested his own time, heart and treasure in the charity and has actively recruited some of business aviation’s best to help ensure CAN has the lift, funding and facilities to flourish. And it has. Last year, CAN arranged free travel aboard business aircraft for more than 3,000 cancer patients, a record.
For his singular commitment, Randy received this year’s Aviation Week Laureate for Business and General Aviation. I handed him the trophy at a fancy gathering last month in Washington.
John Wiley was surely smiling. A good man got recognized, and I got a free dinner.
Business & Commercial Aviation