How I Became An Alaskan Pilot

you know it's funny I get asked quite often you know how did I get into flying or why did I get into flying and really it began back in 1994 I was doing youth work with Junior High high school and college age young people and all over Alaska and spending a lot of time traveling as uh I was doing that I really just kind of fell in love with the people of Alaska and I became gripped with an epidemic that was happening in our state at that time suicide so many young people especially in our state were choosing a permanent solution for a temporary problem and I really wanted to do something about that so we started traveling with teams we started an organization a nonprofit called carry the Cure but we were still pretty limited by commercial travel and the schedules we could find in that in that regard so one day I was hunting uh actually with a friend of mine who probably has spoken to more Junior High and high school kids and anybody else in the world his name is Dave Reaver Dave is an interesting guy he's a Vietnam veteran that had a phos phosphorus grenade blow up next to his face basically he had it back to throw it and a sniper bullet hit the grenade and it went off a couple feet from his face 40 lbs of his body fell off almost immediately you know just the story is just horrific but Dave uses that story to talk to kids in a way that I've never heard anybody else talk in the end you know the punchline is uh kids I have scars on the outside but some of you you have scars on the inside if I can make it you can make it just giving kids hope so we did tours together for several years in a row we toured around Alaska and so he knew what I did and I knew what he did and when he heard my heart for especially remote Alaska places where people hardly ever go like I remember going to one of the villages in Alaska one time and getting off the Jet and having one of our pastors just break down in tears and I said man what's the matter and he said you're the first person outside this Village that's come to visit me in over 2 years it just like some of these kids out there feel completely abandoned completely alone don't know how to navigate through difficulties and life facing all kinds of challenges and so Dave was all about helping those kids and he knew that I was too and so he looked at me one day and he says man you need to learn how to fly and I said well I actually prayed about that a lot but I was on a youth pastor salary and not making a lot of money and I had three little kids and I didn't know how I was ever going to do that and he looked at me across the campfire and he said well if you can get yourself to Texas I'll give you a place to live a car to drive and I'll have my pilot train you and I'll pay for the airplane and I looked at him and realized he was serious and I said well you know I'm likely to take you up on that and he just smiled real big and said I hope you do so that was September 15th and November 1st my family and I arrived in Texas and true to his word he gave us a place to stay and a car to drive and I flew twice a day with Charlie his chief pilot at the time and uh 30 days later I was signed off as a private pilot and came back to Alaska and you know a 45h hour pilot with no airplane and no Alaska time and tried to rent a airplane to go to villages to do my thing and they laughed me out of the out of the airport and uh didn't know what to do but a friend of mine named Chad Goen he uh he took me under his wing he had an airplane and uh to together we started flying all over Western Alaska and before long he threw the keys to his airplane to me and said anytime you need this airplane take it for what you're doing with it I started flying all over the place we had a team of people later an airplane was donated again through Dave Reaver who uh helped us get a Cherokee 6 and we flew that all over Alaska with teams with bands sound equipment that airplane wound up uh burning up in a hanger fire one year and a bunch of other things happened and pretty soon our air force uh that we had was dwindled down and sadly I spent about 10 years not flying at all um until finally I was able to save up and buy another airplane which was a piper Pacer p2220 and that sort of led me to where I am now it's kind of a dream come true never dreamed I'd be able to own an airplane like this never dreamed I'd be able to do what I'm doing now I'm so thankful thankful for those people along the way that help me having good people in your life is really a big deal

Channel: iFlyAlaska-Official

Views: 6,507

Keywords: How I Became An Alaskan Pilot, Alaska Flying, Bush Flying Alaska, Stretched Pacer, Bushmaster, Learning To Fly In Alaska, Back Country Flying, Super Pacer, Piper, MT Prop

Id: 2L4ZNl9myRc

Length: 4min 34sec (274 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 01 2023