Time to name drop

Captain,

I started from the ground up in aviation. ie; basic line crew who took care of a lot of teams and celebritie's planes. Never wanted to meet or greet them. To me they were just another customer regardless of how important they thought they were. Back then I handled lots of planes full of egotistical athletes and "stars". Tom me they were just another load of self loading freight. Not a single one of them ever thanked us for our services even though we did our best to accommodate them. Thankfully, the pilots of those charters were much more gracious and appreciated our efforts.
 
Started out in 68 in PSP so got to see practically everybody. Mr. nice guy Bob Hope swinging his golf club.....Red Skelton always in and out of the port, Kirk Douglas who after watching Spartacus I though he must be 6ft 5' but in person was shorter than me....received a personally signed bottle of champagne from Sinatra, with my usual foresight I drank it. Most of the big stars were nice in person, they had nothing to prove. Later in RDD Charlton Heston was up for a tennis match and wanted to hang out in our ops room waiting for his jet. He was there late until after 9pm and our last flight came through. Pitch black on the ramp Heston was about 30ft away but you couldn't see him, I asked the flt attendant if she would like to meet Heston.....she just laughed.....til this day she doesn't know he was really there. Jerry Lewis ended up at RDD and he was always "on" even for an audience of 3. The owner of the restaurant wanted to throw him out, my buddy who flew charters in a Navajo at the time took him to LAS......he said Lewis sat in the back and clipped coupons the entire flight. I used to fly radio control in front of the RDD Civic Auditorium in the 70's and one fine Summer afternoon I caught a small group moving my way to watch. When I turned around it was Conway Twitty with his pompadour and Twitty birds...lol. In the end they're all just regular folk like us.....just with more money and jets.
 
I once flew Wolford Brumley out to a fish camp in south west Alaska. Talked to him about fishing like I would any other customer. He showed me the latest Loomis rods he was trying out. (which probably cost more than I made in 2 months)

I was not able to land on the landing strip due to the great crosswind, so I landed on the dirt road between the landing strip and the fish lodge. He laughed and said that was good thinking to use the road. (no tip though)
 
Some of you may remember Robby Benson, the actor.

He married Karla deVito:

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You may recognize her from this (in)famous Meat Loaf video:

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Yes, "Paradise by the Dashboard Light"!

Anyway, Robby is my second cousin, in that his grandfather and my grandfather were brothers.
 
My meets are pretty mild compared to some of y'alls....I've chatted with a handful of singers and band members before and after concerts but my claims to fame for this thread are 1) i ran into Leland Chapman from Dog the Bounty Hunter in a gun store (i was picking up a purple LCP for my lady and he was buying a pink something for Beth, including a pink holster, ugh!) and 2) my lady has known since high school John "Tig" Tiegan, one of the Benghazi survivors and we go every year to his hog roast (which is way, WAY more than a backyard bbq!)
 
I met Cole Palen when I was ca. 10 or so - recall asking him if he planned to be doing the same thing when I growed up!
Still planning to run away to wrench on ORA's collection someday soon.....mmmmmmm Castor Oil!


Supplier of mine owned a SPAD and flew with Eddie Rickenbaker (in another plane!) - many years ago. I was amazed to have 2-3 degrees of separation between me and the WW1 US Leading Ace.


BRIEFLY Met Neil Armstrong at a banquet held in the Waldorf-Astoria - Gimmick of the night (Explorer's Club Annual Dinner) was a Bald Eagle flying around the hall & landing on Neils' Arm. Cheesy, but memorable. Walter Cronkite was there. He liked his scotch.

Carl Icahn served me a burger from his grill at his kids school fundraiser.
 
Wellllll I'm back, again. Long ban this time lol.

I've met many biggies but the best for me personally was having Mario Andretti on my flight from Allentown to ATL. And once headed for my gate I saw a member of Lynyrd Skynyrd and got to meet my guitar here, Gary Rossington, the only original member left. Sherly Crowe was on one of my flights and was a beotch, and Michelle Phieffer was all camo so didn't even bother her.
 
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