"THE PILOT"
Death never takes the wise man by surprise,
he is always ready to go.
quote from Jean de La Fontaine, French poet.
My friend Jacques was a wonderful old gent I'll be forever honored just to have known. He was one of those few Americans who volunteered to go to England and fly against the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, before the U.S. entered WW II. With all of that for starters, during decades of rising to colonel in the Air Guard he flew search-and-rescue missions all around California’s mountains.
Coming to gliders in his eighties, Jacques' possessed the pure blood competence of sixty-plus years in the sky. Once while overseeing his preparation for an early solo flight, I cautioned that getting back on the ground that afternoon could be difficult. In his inimitable manner Jacques growled, “From what I’ve read (and he was an avid collector of aviation books), nobody’s ever been stuck up there yet.”
Jacques owned a 2-seat Pitts Special aerobatic plane and flew it every week. Supposing he might fail a physical, he avoided flight surgeons and always flew with a safety pilot. At 89 he was also actively taking lessons in a helicopter.
When he opened the canopy after his first landing in a single-seat sailplane I asked Jacques, “What was the worst thing about it?” His smile widened, “The pilot.”
Modest?
One day he had already flown and was sitting quietly, gazing across the runway in geriatric contentment. I sat down by him and said, “Jacques, you owe me some war stories.”
Immediately and with no expression, he mumbled, “Nope.”
“Seriously,” I pressed, “I wanna hear anything you have to say about all that happened before my time.”
His response was the only thing I ever heard him say without good humor, and even it was entirely gracious. He continued staring into space and murmurred with the faintest trace of scorn, “My one remaining aspiration is to be the only World War Two pilot to not write a book about it.”
[for maximum effect, cue LOCAL HERO / WILD THEME (live version) by Dire Straits]
Jacques continued to soar even when he needed help getting in and out of the cockpit. He would wobble from his car with two canes and we’d deliver him to the flight line on a golf cart. His giant feet could barely fit in the glider's narrow nose cone, so he wore the same specialized shoes he used for aerobatics in the Pitts: petite red race car numbers that made a scruffy, superannuated fat guy look risibly gay. Like many older folks, Jacques had most difficulty getting out of the cockpit, so he flew with a flattened inner tube under his butt, for inflation after landing to raise his heft high enough that we could reach under his arms and lift him out. It takes a real man (or woman) to put yourself in a situation like that and not bother to be embarrassed!
A year later, Jacques was landing, perfectly as usual, unaware that he was in the blind spot of another sailplane overtaking him from above. It happened directly in front of me, and I was horrified. The pilots might survive a low energy collision at or near ground level, but both aircraft would be lost. Then at the most critical moment, ninety year-old Jacques glanced over his shoulder (the last thing anyone would do during a landing). In a heartbeat he coolly slipped his bird to one side and both ships landed a second later, wingtip-to-wingtip. Had he seen a shadow? No, those were behind them. This was seven decades of intuitive avian awareness, diamond sharp.
That other pilot, stunned when Jacques appeared on his right, was understandably distressed. But in the animated discussions that followed, Jacques, the potential victim, was blasé. He had learned generations earlier to always fly his best and not worry over things beyond his control.
That’s most of what I know about Jacques, but it’s not his whole story to be sure. Take a moment and imagine all the unique adventures this one individual lived through, the exploits of youthful derring-do, indescribable events he witnessed and took part in that none of us will ever know. Now multiply that by untold numbers of Jacques' cohorts who are no longer with us. Our parents and grandparents, uncles and aunts. Shed a single tear for each and you’ll be weeping forever.
For reasons unrelated to the catastrophe I watched Jacque avert, that was to be the final sortie of the grand old aviator’s life in the sky. (No surprise that even it was marked by improbable heroism.)
The next week a fellow pilot who lived near him reported that Jacques had fallen gravely ill, had only days to live, and insisted on no visitors, no exceptions. His last wish: this quiet hero who had done so much demanded no flyby, no memorial, no nothing. I can visualize portly old Jacques in that crumpled hat, his gravelly voice insisting, “Just put out the rubbish and get on with life.”
But sir, with the highest admiration, gratitude and respect we must deny your last wish. You cannot be forgotten!