Where We Came From. Who We Are. Part II

Saranac Lake NY to Potomac Field, Friendly MD.

Funny, what can remind you of the past. Walk into some room and hear a tune and you're back in high school. Fly into an airport and you're back to the day you made an important hire...

GVA was going pretty well by now. Joyce and I had been running the charter service more or less on our own--only two part time pilots and one full timer who also wrenched things when necessary--and things were necessary a lot at times. We had a Beech Baron and a different Cessna Skylane from before. The "Skylame" had been replaced by a more trustworthy Skylane. I had even begun to wonder how a used (very used) King Air might fit our flying service.

We still lived in the 35ft travel trailer on our 15 acres of land near Renick, 12 miles from the airport. But we had started construction on a real home. Brick ranch, 3 bedrooms and a basement. We even had a computer (Commodore 64 and MSDOS operating system) and dial-up internet so we could connect to needed FAA and other aviation sites. And there were dang few of those. We had kept our old Chevy Suburban (towed the travel trailer over 100K miles) as a crew car and now had a large monthly payment on a used Mercedes. We were making it even if I still had to stay at the office at LWB a lot of nights just to keep up with things there. Joyce wanted to quit working at the office and so we began our search for a "Girl Friday". A Jill of all Trades so to speak.

Do you know how hard it is to find people who are genuinely interested in any job? We ran through the entire list. One woman said she knew how to type, turns out she was taking the forms and files home at night for her (high school) daughter to type. We still have our old IBM Selectric typewriter somewhere in the dead storage space we rent I think.

Then there was "Tattoo Sally". I don't remember if that was her actual name, but that's what we all called her. No, she wasn't a former circus tattoo'ed lady, but that's what she looked like. Now-a-days every second person is covered with "tats", back then not so much. Definitely not the image a respectable charter service wanted to portray.

Then we ran through the ones who drank, wanted to sleep (why do they call in sleep, no one actually sleeps) with the entire town of Lewisburg, the ones who simply showed up for work, found out the job actually was work, and a lot of it, and just never came back and...well, you get the idea.

And just when we were beginning to think we would never find a good, trustworthy employee we received a phone call. "Hi, I'm in Friendly MD and just saw your ad in "Flying Magazine". Is the job still open?" 'Yes, it is. Can you give me some of your qualifications?' "Do you mind if we discuss that face to face? I can be there in under two hours if you would like, what's the weather at LWB look like?' So, in a nut shell, I gave her a wx briefing and told her where the GVA FBO was located.

"Super, see you shortly. Please have a line marshal waiting. I'll be in the red Mooney 201." And she hung up the phone. At first I was a little surprised at the way the lady handled the phone conversation. Not a lot of asking and hesitancy and no uncertainty at all. Odd.

An hour and a half later a red Mooney 201 lands, I do the marshaling duties and out climbs a woman who introduces herself as Rosalind MacReady. We go inside the office and begin the interview. Which seems to turn out more of a her interviewing me session. One thing I did come away with was that she used to fly KC-135 tankers for the U.S. Government. Not the USAF, the U.S. Government. I didn't ask further. She didn't volunteer further.

And work? Damn woman seemed to do everything and be everywhere. The papers were up to date, the forms always ready. The flight plans always filed. Joyce was able to stay home and take care of things there. I was able to concentrate on my part of the job and even do some of the charter flights. Suddenly it seemed we were moving forward instead of just trying to keep our heads above water.

Oh, and one more thing. Rosalind didn't like to be called Rosalind, she preferred "Bunny". I'm sure you remember Bunny.