A Pilot's Story: An Autobiography of a Pilot

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A Pilot's Story

Trafford Publishing

Chapter One

I was born on January 2, 1933, in Detroit, Michigan, and named Donald Harold Volz. My father's name was Harold (most of his friends and acquaintances called him Scoop or Scoopy), and my mother was Lorena, whose maiden name was Spring, an English derivation of a Swede/Finn name. My father's parents were German from the Southern Württemberg area of Germany, and both of my mother's parents were Swedes. When I was about three years old, my family moved to Saginaw, a small industrial and rural town about eighty miles north and a bit west of Detroit, and this is where I grew up and spent my early years. I imagine I had a relatively average childhood, but I was known around the neighborhood and among the family as being rather mischievous and into many things—perhaps in the manner of Chuck Yeager's young life. As an only child, I may have been used to getting my own way or at least trying to.

I don't imagine I was the easiest child that parents had to endure. I always seemed to want to do things in what I thought was the right or best way. Maybe I had the opinion that there were two ways of doing things: the right way or the wrong way, or should that be "my way or the wrong way"? It seemed I always wanted to find what I thought was the most logical, rational way to do things, and because of this, I suppose many people considered me a perfectionist, but I'm sure I was far from perfect in many of the things I did. This trait may have been instilled in me by my father, who often tried to show me how to do things properly. But he didn't have the most patience, and I probably wasn't the best student to work with.

As I said, I sometimes had the reputation around the neighborhood for being rather mischievous. I don't know if I would say a troublemaker, but in some ways, trouble did seem to follow me around at times, probably due to my actions as well as anything. For instance, we had moved to Saginaw when I was about three years old, and I can recall an incident when I was perhaps four or five. My mother had taken me with her to visit some friends who had a son about my age. These people lived two to three miles from our house, and there were some railroad tracks going by the friend's neighborhood. There were also some tracks near our house. I guess I knew or assumed that these were the tracks of the same railroad. Several days later, I decided to go and visit my new friend (without telling my mother, of course), so I set out to follow the tracks to his house. I was right, and the tracks led to his neighborhood, and I found his house. However, my mother became frantic, not knowing where I was; I don't remember how she found out, whether I walked home or my friend's mother called her, but I was having a good old time while my mother was getting gray.

A few years later, we had moved to a house just outside of the city limits. It was an older farmhouse in a subdivision that was one of the first in the state, and I went to a four-room country school about a mile and a half away. My dad usually drove me to school, but I usually walked home, past an area that we called the swamp (which it was) and through some backyards when I went the back way, rather than by the main road. Of course, going the back way was more fun, even though I sometimes came home soaking wet after falling off a raft that we used to cross the swamp. One time during school recess or lunch, I heard some of the kids hollering and making a big commotion about something, so I went over to see what was going on. Well, they had trapped a little ground mole in the corner of the school building. I was always sort of an animal lover, and I was afraid they were going to harm it, so I said, "No, don't hurt it. Let me catch it." It was chilly weather, and I had some mittens with me, so I put them on, got my lunchbox, and caught the little critter and put him in it. (It was the old black model with the rounded top with thermos bottle.) I guess I was intending to let it go on my way home past the swamp. This was after lunch, so I put the lunchbox in the place where we kept them in the classroom and promptly forgot all about the mole. After school, I picked up the lunchbox and trudged merrily on home, walked in the door, put the lunchbox on the kitchen table, and went up to my room, probably without a care in the world. A short time later, I heard a bloodcurdling scream from my mother, and I raced downstairs to see what had happened. There in the kitchen, standing on a chair, was my mother, the lunchbox was on the floor open, and the little mole was scampering around in fear of its life. I can just picture the scare my mother got as she opened the lunchbox, and there was this critter with its little beady eyes looking at her, and she most likely thought it was a rat—more gray hairs for my poor mom.

Then there was the time a few years later, at this same house, when I was maybe eight or nine years old, there was a detached garage or barn with four or five stalls for vehicles. The owner kept an old Ford tractor and some other equipment in it. One day, a friend from down the street and I decided we wanted to monkey around with a little fire. So I went into the house and sneaked a pack of matches. We went into this garage or barn and built a fire under a piece of metal bent in the shape of a tent. We were feeding the fire with strips of tar paper and small pieces of wood. In a corner of the building, the owner had some old 15-gallon metal milk cans (some older readers may remember them) that he kept gasoline in. Now this neighbor friend of mine was a year or two older than me, and as I was sitting tending the fire, he picked up a burning piece of tar paper and walked behind me to where the milk cans were. As I recall, I'm certain he knew what the cans were used for, but I heard him say, "I think I'll put this in the can and see what happens." He took off the lid of one of the cans as I realized what he was going to do. I turned around and said, "No! Don't!" But he dropped the burning tar paper in the can. It only had a small amount of gas but a lot of fumes. A dull boom sounded as a small explosion of flame came out and singed his hair and eyelashes. He yelled and ran home screaming to his mother. Well, you can imagine what hit the fan. I was branded the firebug of the neighborhood (since I had procured the matches, and it was at my house), and the word was out to "watch out for Donny Volz." Never mind that my friend was involved in it as much as I was and he was older and the dummy who put the fire in the can.

My first experience with flying came when I was about twelve or thirteen years old. Our next-door neighbor owned a V-tailed Beechcraft Bonanza (single engine airplane), and one day, he took me up for a ride. I remember enjoying it very much until descent when I got a tremendous ear blockage and was in pain for about a day from that. I do not recall thinking too much of flying for a while afterward, but I did enjoy it and was looking forward to another flight when my ears weren't giving me problems. Sometime later on, perhaps when I was in high school, I asked my dad if I could send for some books on flying, and he said okay. I studied these quite a bit and learned a lot about airplanes. One day, at a local airport, my cousin and I were looking at some planes. There was no one around, and I remember having a strong inclination to try to take up a small trainer. I said to my cousin, "I think I could fly this thing." Fortunately, I didn't try.

During my high school years at Arthur Hill High, I got average grades (Bs and Cs, I guess), was in college prep courses, and played sports (nothing special)—football (halfback and end, second string or so, but I was the fastest guy on the team but also on the small side), baseball (first base and outfield), and track, where I ran the 220 and 440. I was very promising in track and attended state finals in the quarter mile of my sophomore year, but during the following winter, while training in the gym, I pulled tendons in both feet while practicing starts, and that knocked me out of my junior year. I was very disappointed about this. Track was at the same time as baseball, which was my favorite sport, and I could only do one. So in my senior year, I decided to play baseball, and I remember the track coach being very disappointed in my decision.

In one of my football games, I was playing halfback, and on one particular play, I took a handoff and was cutting down the field with two big opponents coming my way at a pretty good clip. One of our huge linemen named Don yelled something to me (later on, I found out that he wanted me to cut his way—he was to my left and behind me), but at that instant, I thought he was calling for the ball, so I tossed it to him (lateral), and he went in for the touchdown as I was smeared by the opponents. My teammates apparently thought I had fumbled the ball into Don's hands as that was the ribbing I got. I thought I did well, though even if I didn't get any credit for it.

After high school, I went on to college at Michigan State College (now University). Originally, I thought I wanted to take up architecture at the University of Michigan. But when I went to the state track finals in high school, it was at Michigan State, and I fell in love with the beautiful campus among the trees and the Red Cedar River, so I decided that is where I wanted to go. I asked about their architecture course and was told they didn't offer one. So I thought maybe I'd like to study aeronautical engineering but was similarly told that wasn't offered. Finally, I asked, "Well, what kind of engineering do you have?" And thus I decided on Mechanical Engineering. At land-grant colleges (which State is) at that time, all males had to take two years minimum of ROTC. Army or Air Force was offered, so I elected Air Force, of course. After the two years of basic ROTC, I was asked if I wanted to take the advanced program, and I said, "I might as well," and after my third year, I was asked if I wanted to take the physical for flight training which I did, and this is how I came to get my commission in the Air Force and go to pilot training. At State, I was privileged to become a member of Alpha Tau Omega fraternity and played intramural sports. The fraternity was known for its good intramural sports teams, but in my first year with the fraternity, I wasn't deemed to be good enough to make their touch football team, so I went out and recruited my own team for the independent league. My team went on to win that league; then, to my delight and the chagrin of my fraternity, we beat them for the all-college championship trophy.

During my college years, MSU had pretty good football teams, and we sent our team to the Rose Bowl twice while I was there. For the game of January 1, 1954, my fraternity set up a deal to fly out to the West Coast for the game and to sleep at the UCLA fraternity house (probably on the floor). I was able to wheedle some extra money out of my folks (which I'm sure they couldn't afford but did), and this afforded me my next chance to fly. Again, I got a terrific ear block on descent, but as I recall, it cleared up in time for the parties, parade, and game. State won the game against UCLA with one of my fraternity brothers (halfback Billy Wells) being the hero and MVP of the game. During my last semester of school (summer term of 1955 in which I had to take one extra course that I hadn't been able to get in previously), I went out on a blind date with a young freshman gal named Kay Sweet, who lived at home near the college, and I guess it was what they call "love at first sight." She was scheduled for a date with a fraternity brother of mine, and I had a date with one of her friends. Our respective dates cancelled out, and we were asked if we wanted to fill in. Neither of us knew the other, but we both reluctantly agreed. What a fortunate occurrence! We hit it off really well and dated quite regularly. But I was finishing up my studies, getting a commission in the Air Force through ROTC and a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering, and then it would be out to California for an engineering job with North American Aviation Co. in Downey, California, prior to entering Air Force pilot training eight months later. I graduated in August 1955, and for graduation, my folks got me a 1950 Ford convertible (Dad was sales manager for the local Ford dealer). So when Kay and I kissed good-bye as I was preparing to leave, there was no telling the future. I figured I would get involved in the singles scene in the Los Angeles area and see what happens and would be seeing her when I came home for holidays. I remember well the drive to California in the heat of the summer of 1955. It was in September, and a fraternity brother, Don Meyer, and another fellow and I drove the convertible out West, through Kansas, New Mexico, Arizona, visited Boulder Dam and Las Vegas in Nevada, then on to California. It was hot all through the trip, but when we got to Los Angeles, it was the hottest day of the year there, 105° as I recall. But we had the top-down, of course, and somewhere in Los Angeles, we stopped off at a school and were the only fools anyone could see playing tennis that day.

I started my job as engineer trainee with North American Aviation, which designed and built the famous P-51, F-86, and F-100 fighters, as well as the B-25 Mitchell bomber of WW II fame. But I was hired by their missile division in Downey, where the Snark, air-breathing cruise missile, was being designed. I found a fellow to share an apartment with in Belmont Shores next to Long Beach. As for the singles scene, I just wasn't into in it and realized my heart was really back in East Lansing. So in late October, I called Kay and told her I wished she could come out West for a visit and that my roommate's girlfriend had a spare room where she could stay. Somehow Kay wrangled her folks to let her go to California. I sent her a plane ticket and out she came. She had planned to stay about a week or two, and we talked about getting married when I got my wings in about eighteen months. But the more I thought about waiting that long the worse it sounded. I didn't like the thought of her being back there with all the college guys, plus her folks were not too well off, and I knew that they would spend a lot of money they didn't have to give her a nice wedding. So I made the formal proposal and said, "What would you think of taking off for Las Vegas and getting married there on Saturday?" We talked it over for quite a while, and I told her of my concerns, and she finally agreed and said, "Yes, I would love to marry you in Las Vegas." So that is what we did. On Saturday, November 12, 1955, we were married in a small wedding chapel in Las Vegas, and after a night on the town, we called our parents to give them the big news. We called about 11:00 p.m. (2:00 a.m. in Michigan), and needless to say, they were quite nonplussed, and I think both our fathers said, "You did what?!" But the next day, we got nice telegrams of congratulations from both of them.

In December, we flew back to Michigan for Christmas, and each parent (different towns) had a reception for us, where I imagine the whispered question was, "So when is the baby due?" One was not whispered though as Kay was asked that directly by one of my aunts. We surprised them though, when this didn't happen until three years later at Bitburg Air Base in Germany. We flew back to California just in time for the January 1, 1956, Rose Parade and another Michigan State Rose Bowl game. I have to say here that Michigan State again won the game on the heroics of one of my fraternity brothers, Dave Kaiser, who kicked a tremendous field goal in the last few seconds for the win. But on both of these flights, I again experienced the painful ear blocks and was becoming quite concerned over this problem with my forthcoming Air Force pilot training class.

So I decided to visit an ear-nose-and-throat doctor and was advised by him that I had bad tonsils and should have them removed. I said, "But, Doc, I had them taken out when I was three to four years old." He said, "Well, you may have had them out then, but it looks like they've grown back." I figured if I wanted to be a pilot, I had better take care of this problem and had the operation a month or so later in the office of the doctor. Talk about being sick! Tonsillectomies are no joy at twenty-two. I thought I was going to die and so much for my marriage and pilot training class. My temperature was something like 105°. Kay was keeping cold compresses on me, and finally, she called the doctor. We had purchased a mobile home and were living in Bellflower at the time, and he came by and gave me some powerful antibiotics so that I finally recovered. Now I figured that I was all set for my stab at learning to fly airplanes. So in April 1956, we packed up our things in preparation for my new and exciting career.

Chapter Two

I had orders to report to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, for my preflight indoctrination in April 1956. This would be a course of four weeks, so we wound up our affairs in Los Angeles As I mentioned, we had bought a very nice mobile home that we figured we would have the Air Force move around the country for us in our Air Force career. But then I discovered the military would not move mobile homes until you had a permanent assignment. Thus, we were stuck. I would not have a permanent assignment until at least I had earned my wings, some twelve to eighteen months away. What to do with the trailer? We did not think we could afford to have it moved ourselves, and I had only a few weeks to try to sell it. But my dad had a friend in the Los Angeles area who said he would take care of selling it for us. He did, but as I recall, my folks ended up paying off a couple of thousands we still owed on it after the sale. Thanks, folks.

We had sold the convertible and bought a four-door sedan, which we loaded up what we could take and drove from Los Angeles to San Antonio and had some nice stays along the way. When we got there, I looked up an old friend from Saginaw, Buzz Bowman, who was an airman (enlisted) stationed at Lackland and married, living in married quarters. We stayed with them for a few days; then, when I was to start training, I sent Kay to her folks in Michigan since all trainees had to stay in the barracks together. She went by bus (bus?). Well, our finances were sort of tight, and the price was right, and Kay said that was okay with her. Little did we know of the clientele who would be riding on the bus with her. She made it okay, but when she returned just before I finished up, she came by train, which was a substantially better trip.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from A Pilot's Story by Don Volz Copyright © 2012 by Don Volz. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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