“More and more, when I single out the person who inspired me most, I go back to my grandfather.”
—James Earl Jones
It has been said that talent, wisdom, and supernatural abilities often jump a generation, so that grandfathers and grandmothers can pass on their greatest teachings to their grandchildren. Fortunately for me this was absolutely the case with my grandfather, just as it is with my father and his grandsons.
My grandfather was a World War II veteran, an engine room mechanic in the Merchant Marines, which during wartime became a branch of the US Navy. When their troop transport ship in the South Pacific came under attack, my grandfather’s battle station was the gunner in an anti-aircraft battery. Their ship was attacked multiple times, from Japanese submarines, torpedo bombers, fighters, and once by a kamikaze pilot that struck their ship near the end of the war. My grandfather was credited with shooting down a Japanese Zero once, and when they recovered the wreckage of the plane, he and his gunnery mates made rings from the bolts of the propeller on the destroyed airplane. I still have that ring, forged in a foundry somewhere in Japan, screwed onto the propeller in a Japanese factory, and then flown who knows how many missions until it met its end at the sharp aim of a Merchant Marine mechanic named Dean Russell Harrington.
Papa Dean, as we called him, got involved in private flying back in the 1950s, after the war had ended and the emerging American middle class could afford the light civilian aircraft that was quickly replacing the old bombers and fighters on the assembly lines of the aviation factories. This was a huge new technical and cultural advance in transportation—light, affordable aircraft that a civilian pilot could own and fly themselves. They came in numerous sleek designs with single engines, and even supercharged twin engines that could scoot a family of 4-6 pretty much anywhere you wanted to go around the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Some were even outfitted with extra gas tanks to fly overseas.
As a kid, I grew up around these World War II pilot-cowboys, most of whom were my age now, in their 50s, when I was a kid in the 1970s. They had been young war pilots flying planes in their early 20s and some of them, like my grandfather, hadn’t even graduated from high school before they got their wings. They hung around at the municipal airport in Olympia, Washington where Papa Dean had started the first flight school in the capital of Washington State. My mom and dad both worked there as well, as did my grandmother, so I would take the school bus at the end of the day and spend my afternoons and evenings kicking around the airport, doing odd jobs, and generally absorbing all of the stories I could eavesdrop on.
For one dollar an hour, I was expected to sweep out the hangers, empty the garbage cans and ashtrays, restock the pop and candy machines (everything cost 25 cents back then), and I’d even wash the airplanes for a little extra money when they taxied back after a flying lesson or charter. This was a small family business called Vagabond Aviation, and most of our friends were people who learned to fly from Papa Dean, several of whom eventually taught at his school.
My mom saved several newspapers articles about his flying career, some of it real “barn storming” stuff that you might see in an old movie like “The Great Waldo Pepper.” Once, after an engine failed, Papa Dean landed an airplane on the newly built Interstate 5, in between speeding cars. Later in life he would go on to earn multiple licenses for multi- engine aircraft, small jets, helicopters, jet helicopters, and even gliders and a hot air balloon. He would fly smoke jumpers into forest fires, where they would leap from his plane into the smoky abyss below. He was also the first helicopter pilot to land scientists inside the crater of Mount Saint Helens after she blew her top in 1980, landing them right next to the lava dome in the center. That’s the kind of flying he did, about as daring as you could be for a civilian. He was literally born to fly and nobody and no thing was going to stop him.
When I was a baby, my grandparents (who often took care of me) would roll me up in a blanket and stuff me in the tail section of their little plane whenever they went on a trip. This was the late 1960s, and I’m not sure car seats had even been invented yet, much less for babies flying in airplanes. As I grew older, I would sit on their laps at the controls and “fly the plane,” so that by the time I was 15, I was taking real flying lessons from Papa Dean, which of course were rigorous and far more encompassing than most student pilots would ever get. I never really felt fear, but when I did it was usually because he wanted to show me something critical, like how to regain control of a stalling, tumbling aircraft, the tail of which was sliding out from underneath us. It’s the maneuver that makes your stomach drop, and every pilot will tell you they hated it the most, but it’s the training that will save your life as well.
The truth is, I never got my pilot’s license, but it was not for a lack of flying time or superb instruction from an expert aviator. I had done all of that, but it was more because I just didn’t love flying in the same way Papa Dean did. I much preferred practicing my drums in the hayloft of the barn, and whatever money I earned at the airport, usually went into buying drumsticks and drumheads, and not the expensive airplane fuel I had to pay for when I took a flying lesson.
Thus, my formative years as a child, an impressionable teenager, and even as an adult were molded by the example of Papa Dean and his salty war buddies—the original “air cowboys.” I wanted to be like them and I wanted to have friends like that too, but I would learn later in life that friends of that caliber don’t come easily. However, none of that mattered in the scope of having such a great example, because what my grandfather taught me was not so much about how to fly an airplane, but how to fly through life, fearlessly.
I can trace its origins to the day my mother came to get me out of my 6th-grade class to start a cross-country flight in a 2-seat canvas airplane called the Aeronca Champ. The Champ was one of the first civilian airplanes produced right after World War II, and it was only in production from 1946-1951. I’m not sure what year this particular plane was built, but it was probably from the late 1940s, as it had a canvas skin stretched over a metal air frame, and a tiny 2-cylinder engine that had to be hand-propped from outside of the plane. It had no starter whatsoever, and it also didn’t have had a radio. It was just me, Papa Dean, and a very small, old airplane.
I had enough “lap flying” experience at that point to where I could gun the engine when Papa Dean yelled “Contact!” and yanked down on the propeller, kicking his leg clear of the spinning blades. Once we were airborne, it was a loud and chilly experience, sporadically lessened by a tiny heater that worked intermittently. When it came time to land after a few hours of flying, we’d look for a grassy field or a lonely airstrip that only the most seasoned pilots knew about. Papa Dean taught me how to scout for the field, and if a control tower existed, how to signal them with a handheld flashlight as we approached the airstrip. We’d have to circle until the tower signaled back with a light that we were cleared for landing, and a few times no signal came back but we landed anyway. It was as if Papa Dean wanted to teach me about flying when it was literally flying by the seat of your pants, which is flying by your soul.
On that trip we flew all the way from Washington to Minnesota, going no faster than a top speed of about 80 miles an hour and usually much less with the headwinds. We were constantly buffeted by thunderstorms and on more than one occasion, we had to land in a field until the weather cleared. It was quite frightening a few times, until one particularly rough day when we were forced to land in a ghost town of an airport. Papa Dean opened up the canvas to reveal a section of the fuselage to show me that the airframe was built out of steel bars: “You see, it’s built like a bridge—the wings, the fuselage, everything. It’s one giant wing and it won’t break apart, I promise.” He repeatedly assured me that the wings could not break off the plane, but it was important that he showed me the metal airframe so I could see it with my own eyes. That made all the difference and I was never afraid after that.
And that’s what great teachers do—they don’t just tell you something and then move on, they demonstrate the truth by example, with evidence, and with care. For someone without a high school diploma, Papa Dean was one of the most intelligent, well-read, and articulate teachers that I have ever known. That’s because true intelligence is inborn, and whether you have a higher education or not doesn’t affect that, although it can certainly refine your understanding of certain professions. For Papa Dean, his higher education came from the war and a higher altitude.
From that chilly, bumpy, exhilarating trip came memories of eating at local diners in small towns where we landed for the night. We stayed in motels that smelled of cigarette smoke but were clean and had swimming pools, which I loved because I was a natural swimmer. At one point we went walking around a small town that had a Five & Dime drugstore and I bought a pair of tennis shoes out of barrel with a sign that said $1.00 a pair. I happened to have exactly one dollar on me, and I was obsessed with getting a new pair of shoes even though the smallest pair in the barrel were gigantic on my 6th-grade feet. I wore them for the rest of the trip, my grandfather chuckling and shaking his head whenever I appeared in them, but I continued to wear them back to school until my classmates laughed me, and my clown shoes, into submission.
At a small airport in Minnesota we traded in the Champ for a much newer Piper Cub (also covered in canvas but much warmer) and the whole journey repeated itself back to Olympia, just at a slightly faster speed.
But that was not the end of my adventures with Papa Dean or the love of his life, my grandmother Dammy. When I was 15 and practicing for my driver’s license, they taught me how to drive in their silver Ford Grenada. Their rules were simple, straightforward, and still apply perfectly today: Always drive safely, at or below the speed limit, be courteous to other drivers, as you would want the same in return. Most importantly, make your passengers feel safe, take care of them, and get everyone home, safely.
Let me repeat that last line: Take care of everyone and get them home, safely. That was the metaphor that summed up everything I learned from that legendary generation, and it applies to everything from actual travelling, to the people closest to you, to the arc of life itself.
Driving is where I found my greatest love—man, I love to drive. And I have driven more miles than anyone I personally know, except for the professional bus drivers who drove my bands around the world. In my first band, we put 50,000 miles on our 1973 Dodge Sportsman van in just 2 years of touring between 1990-1991. I did 90% of that driving.
Then I joined the Screaming Trees, and although most of the driving was in a tour bus, I still occasionally had to drive a rental car or van. And with my last 2 personal vehicles, a Ford F-150 truck and a Pontiac minivan, I’ve put about 250,000 miles on each vehicle and both were still running great when I sold them. I’m sure that’s also because one of Papa Dean’s cardinal rules was to always do the regular maintenance on your airplane, car, or motorcycle and keep the engine clean. This is especially true with airplanes, because mechanical failure in the sky is not an option (as he learned a couple times himself).
I estimate, conservatively, that I have driven about one million miles on the road in cars, motorcycles, vans, and tour busses, and well over half a million of those miles I drove myself. I revere the landscapes I have seen around the world and I attribute all of that to a pilot-warrior from the Greatest Generation who just happened to be my grandfather. He came from a people who knew it was their job to keep everyone safe, and get them home, safely.
What I learned from flying, driving, and my grandparents’ supremely cool vision of the world had more to do with fearlessness, daring, and that old-fashioned grit that comes along every once in a while in a generation. I would experience many difficult challenges in life, especially when my friends died, my bands and relationships collapsed, and I would have to reinvent myself all over again. I would venture into strange environments like the Amazon Rainforest, the Alaskan Arctic, West Africa, the Australian outback, and a few other places where you just don’t know what might happen next. But that cross-country flight in a 2-cylinder canvas jalopy was, by all accounts, my first real initiation into becoming a man. After that, I was pretty much ready for anything.
People like my grandparents and that Greatest Generation—well, they just don’t make ‘em like that anymore.