The Star - News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area

My love for flying in a small plane came gradually.

The first small plane ride was when I lived here the first time, in 1954.

I was a lumber grader at the small planer mill above the dam. There was a guy working on the crew who had been a bush pilot in Alaska who had his own plane.

The guy invited me to go along with him on a Saturday flight. We flew to Spokane, Missoula, Orifino, to the Pullman-Moscow airport, and then home. We took all day.

That was my first experience in a small plane. 

The next time was when I started writing for the Idaho Free Press in Nampa.

There I had arranged to fly with the Fish and Game people on a migratory fowl bird count.

We flew over Lake Lowell, and they took photos. In their lab they blew up the photos and with a grid cover sheet counted the water fowl. I did this on a couple of occasions.

I was doing a story on the small population of Owyhee County and had an all-day flight with a pilot who only wanted his name mentioned. Owyhee County lies on the southwest edge of Idaho and for the most part very rugged terrain.

A plane went down that was taking a group of Boise Valley boxers to Missoula. I was asked to be a spotter on one of the search plans. Each pilot was assigned an area on a grid, and we took off for a day of flying. Our assigned place was in central Idaho, a very primitive area. 

We didn’t see anything but covered our assigned area well. The pilot had to go to the toilet and he spotted what had been an emergency field on his aerial map.

He flew over the makeshift field low and said it was okay to land. It was a bumpy ride but turned out okay.

They found the plane about a half hour out of Boise.

While living in Bothell and working at the newspaper there, I made friends with a couple of pilots. One had a land plane and the other a seaplane.

They would call and invite me to fly someplace with them for lunch break. That was when I could take long lunch breaks. On the seaplane, we often flew to Friday Harbor in the San Juans. On the land plane, a favorite spot was near Bremerton.

The land plane pilot, Phil Strathy, had property at Bissell Lake here in eastern Washington. The property used to be a resort, and there was a farmhouse, a run down vacation structure and a small lake. I flew several times with Phil, and my oldest son Paul flew with us once. 

Phil had developed a fairly level spot that he called a landing field that overlooked the Columbia River. He offered the farmhouse to us, and the family drove over to stay in the farmhouse and fish.

The farmhouse was alive with mice and the family members decided they would rather put their sleeping bags out on the hill rather than stay in the house. You could feel the mice running over your sleeping bag. But the fishing was good.

We went on a vacation and were anxious to see what had happened while we were gone, so I got the two issues we missed and discovered that Phil and his two daughters were killed when their plane crashed into the side of a mountain.

The last small plane I was in was with Bob Babbler, the airport manager here.

I had gone out to Bob’s place when he was building his plane, and I was surprised a few years later when he asked me to fly with him. We took off from the airport and he said he was going to Wilbur to fuel up. Shortly after takeoff, he wanted to know if I wanted to fly the plane. I said sure, and he turned it over to me with a few instructions. I flew over Steamboat Rock and then headed to Wilbur. I asked if he wanted me to land the plane and he just chuckled.

After fueling, Bob let me fly to Davenport and then back to the airport here. Great experience. Thanks Bob.

I have flown as far away as India in a commercial plane, but woul