No, I Don’t 'Blame' Aviation… And I Never Will

Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you're alive, it isn't. ~ Richard Bach

A Note From Jim Campbell, December 13, 2015: I wrote this five years ago, still in shock over Vic's loss the year before... a process that has never quite abated (nor should it).

And yet now, I have more to be grateful for then ever before... especially in light of the lessons I learned as a a result of the time that Vicki was in my life. While I have never worked harder in my life than I am right now (with even more to come, God help me), I find myself now fulfilled in ways I once thought impossible in the dark days since Vic earned her Angel wings... Even greater; I now share my life with a remarkable woman who loves me unreservedly and teaches me more about love and being loved with each passing day... and one of the reasons for all that came about because of all the life lessons that came my way before my wife, Masako, and I met. Looking over my five year old writings today, on what would have been Vic's 48th Birthday, I thought that some of the remarks I made back then are still applicable today... and so I've dusted off this story to share once again. You see; life will knock you down, beat you up, rob you of all you treasure, and occasionally kick you to the curb quite viciously... but if you're bound and intent on living a good and valued life, and if the word 'quit' is one of the dirtiest words you know, you can survive all that... and even thrive. I'm so blessed to note that I am proof of that...

December 13, 2010: I have changed so much since the summer of 2009, when my life tumbled as a function of losing someone so very dear to me. And since that loss involved an airplane, I’ve been asked time after time after time why I don’t hate aviation now… i.e., how I can possibly keep on flying, how can my life still revolve around all that flies… since someone I loved with every ounce of my being died when her airplane was dashed upon the ground along with her hopes, dreams, her amazing future… and my heart. And yet… the people who ask this are not flyers… and that explains so much. Still I feel the need to address this thought…

People who do not fly, see airplanes as necessary (but risky) tools to get them to their vacations, friends or job-related destinations. They hold their breaths, some more than others, and pray that the airplane they fly doesn’t kill them -- since they have no understanding of the miracle that takes place each and every time enough lift is gathered to allow a wing to take flight. They see we pilots as risk-takers… and actually wonder if and when we’ll die, whenever the subject comes around to reveal that the person they’re talking with is an honest-to-goodness pilot. Their impression is that we somehow cheat death, enjoy danger, and if we get to die in our beds at the end of a long life, that somehow we were ‘lucky.’

Ridiculous.

It IS a miracle every time we fly… not because of physics, not because of the defeat of gravity, not because of the technologies, not because of all it takes to learn how to do it safely…. It is (among so many other things) a uniquely spiritual miracle… that we mortal human beings get to do something that nature NEVER designed us for… to cast aside our fears, to seek adventure and joy, to span the world at will, to defeat the biological imperative that though we evolved as ground-based beings, we stand up, get a running start, and venture forth to make the sky ours… for minutes or hours at a time.

And that, my friends, is truly miraculous.

Such silly, sad little groundhogs most people are… and how misunderstood are we, as a result. While I’m sure that the ‘danger’ aspect may attract people to aviation in some form or fashion at the very beginning, it ceases to be much of a factor the minute a person transitions from being a captive of the ground and learns to be free amongst the heavens -- not to cheat death -- but to live life, large, joyous, boundless and free. I realize that there are dangers to aviation… but the same is true of life itself… as none of us is getting through this life without an end at some point… the trick is to live as much as you dare, and experience all that you can between the time the Doc slaps you on the rump and hands you to your Mom and the last breath you take. And flyers do a heckuva job of making their lives count. After all, the act of just living is so startling, it leaves little time for anything else.

Vicki LIVED. And I’m still doing so. I must, and I must learn to do so much better.

My thoughts of Vic are often tied to flying… but not in the way she lost her life, but in the years we shared aloft. There hasn’t been a day gone by, before or after her loss, that she wasn’t in my thoughts in one form or another… and as previously noted, many of those thoughts involve one of the forces that helped bind us together… a love for getting off terra firma.

Heck, that’s pretty much how we started… meeting for the first time at a Fly-In and then my flying down for nearly all our early dates in my Mooney, since we were nearly 200 miles apart at the time we met. Vic already loved to fly and had earned a Private Pilot ticket, but had a real confidence problem due to the fact that her early instruction was not exactly confidence-inspiring. Still, aviation fascinated her and one of our very earliest dates took place when St. Augustine’s Jim Moser offered me the use of an Extra 300 to give her her first aerobatic experience. Shortly after we got there, I was temporarily disappointed to hear that the Extra was down for maintenance and you could see in Vic’s yes that she was crestfallen at the news… Now, Jim Moser was not one to disappoint a pretty girl and had proven to me to be an amazing friend… and who proved it beyond limit when he fished the keys to his recently restored SF-260 Marchetti out of this pocket, smiled at Vicki with a mischievous grin, told her to make sure that I was a perfect gentlemen in his airplane and then he tossed the keys over to me and said, “Have Fun!”

Vicki

I didn’t have a whole lot of Marchetti time back then, and Jim’s bird was in stunning shape… so this was a gesture that really floored me, and it still does nearly two decades later. Vic was stoked to the point where there was a sense of excitement in her that was hard to ignore… and as I had done with everything so far with our aviation outings, I made sure that she was fully involved in the process, coaching her through as many steps as I could so that not only would she learn as much as possible, but so that she would continue to build confidence in her flying. THAT didn't take long.

In no time at all, we were zooming down KSGJ’s Runway 31 and got the gear sucked up to the accompaniment of silly comments from Jim and others over the Unicom (long before St. Augustine got a tower)… with a little altitude, I started a gentle introduction to acro… a nice symmetrical slow roll, a short roll to the inverted… and back… and a few hammer heads to introduce her to a little ‘G’ while through it all, she followed me through, hands on the stick and asked questions… LOTS of questions. I had taught aerobatics for a somewhat meager living years before so the questions were easy to answer and I had always planned to treat the flight more as a lesson than as a ride… so this turned out to be an inspired choice…

She drank it all in and kept pushing, bit by bit, for more… loops, hesitation rolls, a Cuban 8, some clover leafs (she loved the quarter roll on the downside) and before long, a matter of minutes really, she essayed a few basic aileron rolls and even a loop for herself (and darned if she didn’t do a pretty decent job of it)… And in all this tomfoolery, there was this moment… as we flew along the coast line, inverted, in which I chanced to look over to see the sight that has always been the iconic image of her that I take with me everywhere… of this intensely cute little girl, eyes shining, unruly blond hair splayed across the top of the canopy, turning to me and smiling with a grin of infinite beauty and excitement… and as we rolled back to level flight, she released her grip on the stick for a second to pull the headset mic away from her face and leaned in to kiss me on my right cheek. I can close my eyes for a moment and feel it all again as if it were happening for the very first time (and yes, I often do)… I never loved being a pilot more than I did right then (or since)… and felt that in that moment, an extraordinary thing was happening. And no matter what happened to us thereafter, I know that this was a moment that changed her life – and was one of the greatest gifts she took from 'us' – and it was one that went with her everywhere for the rest of her life. I pray that in the years that followed, that it gave her as much joy as it gave me… and if heaven is all that I hope it to be, that it still does.

There were so many other adventures… a stunning IFR flight on her first visit to meet my folks, where our assigned altitude put us just in the right place to whisk along the tops of the cumi’s… occasionally ghosting in and out of the tops where the bright cheery sun offered a glorious counterpoint to the wet grey clag below. Vic was fascinated by it all and pretty much took over the whole flight, doing as much as she could, working ATC and doing a pretty solid job of flying the gauges when we worked back into the soup—while refusing to use the auto-pilot… which she thought was ‘cheating.’

And there was one lovely night, complete with an admittedly-romantic full moon, that accompanied our return from a flight up into the Carolinas… and as I was readying for the descent into KSGJ, Vic asked if we could just follow the coastline for a while… she was enjoying the occasional vision of the Moon on the surface of an abnormally calm ocean just off the shoreline and simply didn’t want the flight to end.

And so we flew on.

We chatted about the day, our voices subdued to an almost reverential whisper, and the extra 15-20 minutes we devoted to running down the coast line before turning back for home were probably the most peaceful and sweet we’d shared to date… of course, it did provide for a few excuses to exchange a few kisses under the moonlight, but I don’t think I’d ever seen her just so happy to sit and enjoy a moment… because Vic’s usual ‘speed’ in living her life was a little over Mach 3… and then some. But she was happy and content and clearly could have flown all night if our fuel capacity allowed. Her life was pretty frantic in those days as she was deciding about what to do with career issues and the like, but she often spoke of that flight… and, indeed, it was one of the memories we chatted about the last time we spoke.

So… in spite of it all… how could I ever hate something that created so many beautiful moments for us both… and is still giving so graciously to me this very day? No, I’ll never hate or blame aviation for Vic’s loss… fate dealt her a bad hand, some mechanical issues added to the mix, and the physics of the moment simply became too much for her to keep her life… and from there on, my world lost something wondrous while heaven gained an angel.

That, too, is life…

As I finish this I must note that it is December 13th, and it is Vicki’s 43rd birthday… which I will celebrate today (as we did on other birthdays when we were together) as I climb aboard my airplane to ‘meet’ her aloft, where our souls can join in formation, and we can 'chat' a bit and feel great enduring gratitude for the many gifts our flying lives gave us and the immense, unforgettable joys we shared for all too brief a time. I will come to love that moment, as I have loved all the other flights I have made, and no matter what happens now or in the future, I will look on every second aloft as a gift. And I feel sure that if Vic had a chance to say her peace, she’d feel the same. That lovely little girl packed a lot of life into her 41 years and while it wasn’t enough time for my liking, I have little doubt that the quality of her life far outweighed so many others -- even those octogenarians that have managed to double her chronological span on Earth.

Vic was living large in her last days… and I believe with all my heart that for all but the last few seconds of her life, she was thoroughly entranced and enriched by her time aloft… and would have hated the fact that her life ended the way it did. But… mark my words, she loved it all and her life was made so much sweeter because she was a flyer.

In those last precious minutes that we talked at Oshkosh 2009, so much of what we shared was about airplanes… and flying experiences… and the fact we really had a ball with it all. We said the things that needed to be said for years... apologies for things said out of pain, regret for things done out of sadness, and in the end it took seconds to wash it all away... once and for all. The pain of our separation slipped away in those minutes, we began to talk as friends again, and we finally started to rebuild the friendship that started a love nearly two decades before. It was an amazing chat… and of all the things I thank God for (and yes, I have so very many), that peaceful chat in the grass at Wittman Field is truly at the very top of the list. We smiled, and laughed, and put aside the pain of broken love and talked about airplanes, our sweeter memories, of flying formation again together some day… and of being friends. And before it was all over, I was able to tell her the truth... that I had loved her since I met her and always would... which she returned with a shy smile and some soft words like my own.

Then she was gone… as if it all had been a dream…

And all the rest of my days will be filled with my memories of being beside her… until we meet again.

And so… to Vic, I wish you a very Happy Birthday, little girl. I’ve little doubt that you’ve created an amazing new freestyle sequence now that your angel wings have had a chance to age on you a bit -- and I can’t wait to see what you’ve learned. I’ll be along before you know it… but in the meantime, there is a life to be lived, flights to be flown and adventures to be enjoyed… and experiences to be memorized in great detail… to share with you someday when I’ve flown my last flight. I’ve lived a great life so far and have plans for far more, especially in trying to be of great value to the family of flyers we held so dear…. Because that’s what flyers do… we celebrate life… for ourselves and all those we love. Still, I can’t wait to sit with you again, in the cool green grass alongside some heavenly airstrip, hold your hand, share some smiles, and tell you of all the cool things I flew since I saw you last… and to tell you that as much as I love my flying… I loved it so much more because of how I was able to share it with you.

And to you all, I’ll repeat the advice I offered you last year as I was working tortuously west to attend Vic’s memorial service… We all have our loves... the people we care for, the people that make our lives better, the soul with which we find kinship and solace and peace. Sometimes, as much as we may love these souls, we argue, and say wrong things and act like idiots... for which we are only too eager to apologize and make amends... if you have the chance. Don't waste a second on being "mad." Don't give in to punishing those you love for imagined or even real transgressions. Get on with your life and get on with caring for those who make your life worth a damn. Love those you can... right now... and open yourself up to all those who may come into your life with friendship, love and kinship and waste not a precious second of this journey through life because the only love, in this world, that goes to waste is that which is not expressed.

And for your own sake (and that of those who care for you), live great lives, fly as high and free as you dare, and don’t waste a moment of this gift called life…

God Bless You All, and Happy Holidays…

Jim Campbell: Flyer, Vicki’s Flying Buddy/Husband/Friend/Greatest Fan -- Once Upon A Time