Reminiscing about my first student

dtuuri

dtuuri

Final Approach
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dtuuri
At 19, I had just returned to the Cleveland area from Florida with my commercial and flight instructor licenses. The local airport said I could teach part time, no salary, no benefits. They called me soon after and assigned a young black man to me for his commercial training because, since I just finished taking my commercial flight test, they reasoned I would best know what was on the test.

Gil was about the same age as me, IIRC. A very nice person and good pilot. Great sense of humor, too. We got along very well.

It was the summer of 1967 and race riots were occurring all over the USA in big cities. Gil told me his father and mother were divorced and his father had moved to Detroit. His dad was a CFI, up there across the lake, and took a bullet through the wing of his airplane while landing at Detroit City Airport.

Gil mentioned the fact that his dad had some radio navigation aid named after him. Secretly, I thought, "Yeah sure he did." At the time I didn't know that famous people were often honored that way.

Gil passed his flight test and came back to the airport to visit and graciously thanked me. I'm sure we celebrated with a vending machine cup of coffee or a Coke.

I've thought a lot about Gil over the years. Why? Because as I advanced up the career ladder I flew more times than I can count into Detroit City Airport and right over the top of the Cargill NDB on the ILS approach to runway 33. You see, Gil Cargill senior was a flight instructor for the Tuskegee Airmen during WWII and very well respected locally.

Here's an article about my first student's dad, see page #8: dd214JanFeb2016.pdf (dd214chronicle.com) . I just thought I'd share it here, he was quite a guy.
 
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Nice story! Thanks for sharing.
 
Very cool, thanks for sharing! I really like interesting history like this.
 
dtuuri said:
At 19, I had just returned to the Cleveland area from Florida with my commercial and flight instructor licenses. The local airport said I could teach part time, no salary, no benefits. They called me soon after and assigned a young black man to me for his commercial training because, since I just finished taking my commercial flight test, they reasoned I would best know what was on the test.

Gil was about the same age as me, IIRC. A very nice person and good pilot. Great sense of humor, too. We got along very well.

It was the summer of 1967 and race riots were occurring all over the USA in big cities. Gil told me his father and mother were divorced and his father had moved to Detroit. His dad was a CFI, up there across the lake, and took a bullet through the wing of his airplane while landing at Detroit City Airport.

Gil mentioned the fact that his dad had some radio navigation aid named after him. Secretly, I thought, "Yeah sure he did." At the time I didn't know that famous people were often honored that way.

Gil passed his flight test and came back to the airport to visit and graciously thanked me. I'm sure we celebrated with a vending machine cup of coffee or a Coke.

I've thought a lot about Gil over the years. Why? Because as I advanced up the career ladder I flew more times than I can count into Detroit City Airport and right over the top of the Cargill NDB on the ILS approach to runway 33. You see, Gil Cargill senior was a flight instructor for the Tuskegee Airmen during WWII and very well respected locally.

Here's an article about my first student's dad, see page #8: dd214JanFeb2016.pdf (dd214chronicle.com) . I just thought I'd share it here, he was quite a guy.
Click to expand...

You're a piece of history recorded right there in his Log Book. Betcha he still has it. I always love it when Aviation principals are applied to other things like he did in his current job. Here's one, scroll down a bit to "I Learned About Sailing From That"
https://searchingforacheeseburgerinparadise.com/blog/
 
Nice story. Not my first student, but one of our instructors and APD was the son of one of the original Tuskegee airman. Was really great to meet him. One of the b-17 drivers that taught me to fly, had a few friends from the Tuskegee group. I only new them as "just some old pilot friends". I didn't know at the time, wish I would have. But i do remember sitting around hearing the stories when i was a kid.
 
Cool story thanks for sharing
 
How cool would it be to reach out and take a ride in "Redtail Too"?
 
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