By Alan Barnard, EAA 613087, and Renee Brilhante, EAA 1074356
All those flights, all those kids — was it worth it? I often wonder, after scores of Young Eagles flown in my Stinson 108-2 and over all those years, if those first flight experiences ever stuck. Last year I heard a story that made it all worthwhile!
One of my Young Eagles flights included an interested nearly 13-year-old girl named Renée Brilhante. I took her up along with another young person, and Renée was in the front seat. As I always did, I talked to the kids about what we were doing and how we were doing it and then if the child seemed savvy, I would give them the yoke and guide them through a bit of flying the airplane all by themselves — well mostly — she couldn’t reach the rudder pedals, as most kids couldn’t, so I kept that part for myself. It was a rather unremarkable Young Eagles flight as all went well and ended in handing her a certificate and having our photo taken together alongside my airplane. What I had no way of knowing was that it was anything but unremarkable to her.
Fast forward 13 years and one of our local Young Eagles pilots and his wife passed along an interesting story about Renée’s flight with me. I will let her tell the story from here.
A week before my 13th birthday, I was sitting in the living room with my father watching a documentary on Navy test pilots and saw an F-18 recover from a spin. That moment my life changed from wandering around without a purpose to having a dream that would become an addiction — and I will never go to rehab.
The following day, my father showed me a newspaper article about Civil Air Patrol and I signed up that week, which led me to the Young Eagles. That following summer I was at the local airport in Sequim, Washington, walking up to a stunning 1947 Stinson, and Alan Barnard, the owner and pilot greeted me and the other teenager. Shortly after takeoff Alan, calmer than I expected, told me to take the controls and guided me through my first few moments of flight. Thirteen years later, I can remember how that control wheel felt just as vividly as I do the wheel of the Embraer 175 I am sitting in while I write this.
My first flight confirmed that I was destined to be a pilot and from there I hit the ground running to become the best fighter pilot, and later test pilot, the world had ever seen. The big question was how to afford it. To any future pilot this is the best advice I can give: Apply for every scholarship out there, start working, become an airport bum, and never stop learning. I used scholarships from the beginning and, at 15, I began flying gliders at the CAP’s flight academy in Ephrata, Washington, with a full ride until I soloed. The following year I flew in Cessnas to solo, once again with a scholarship, making my total expense $250.
I want to forewarn the future pilot, although now is the best time to be a pilot, you will still find challenges, disappointments, and routes that you did not expect. The journey is what makes the destination so sweet. Take my zigzag career as an example.
Being a CAP member you can guess I wanted to be an Air Force fighter pilot and to go to the U.S. Air Force Academy; the problem was I had to be 4 inches taller to make the cut for the Air Force. For the Navy however, I only needed 2 inches, so I applied for the U.S. Naval Academy — but was not accepted.
I earned a Navy ROTC scholarship for my fifth choice school out of five. After getting into Jacksonville University Navy ROTC as a mathematics major, my next two fights were my height waiver and to get the Navy to approve aviation as a technical degree. With the assistance of the officers at my Navy ROTC unit and the aviation department faculty, aviation management and flight operations became a technical major and the Navy would pay for it. I remember the phone call during my sophomore year. The professor said I had midterms the next week, but could switch to flying if I wanted. That was my last day as a mathematics major. I had about 26 credits a semester for my remaining two years and did three flight lessons a day.
My battle against Navy medical was not as fruitful. Freshman year, the head of naval anthropology reached out to me and asked that I meet her at NAS Jacksonville so she could measure me personally. I was thinking she saw my love of aviation and was going to help me. I was wrong — the moment I walked through the door to meet her, she began yelling at me and telling me how I had no right being in a cockpit and I would kill everyone on board. My parents taught me not to cuss, but that was the closest I had ever been to telling a commander where to go. To this day she has been my worst critic and I can’t wait to continue proving her wrong.
For three years, under the mentorship of Tamera Senz, a former Air Force pilot and current FedEx pilot who was granted a height waiver by the president, I fought for my waiver. Countless hours were spent on phone calls, letters, meetings, reading, workouts, and stretches. When my letters to the president were ready for the mail, I had a pleasant experience. I was at Naval Air Station Patuxent River for a few weeks for a summer cruise when one of the pilots mentioned that the Naval Test Pilot School was there and recommended I meet with their head of medical. I did, and after a few tests I was signed off for a naval flight officer (back seat) role, but it got me into flight school and I was going to be the best pilot they had ever seen so I could get waived into the front seat.
All was well in my senior year — I earned the top award as an aviation major, was the midshipmen commanding officer, president of the ROTC’s aviation club, and I had a flight slot and a lease signed for an apartment overlooking the Gulf of Mexico in Pensacola. Two days before graduation and commissioning, I received a phone call to meet with my commanding officer. That’s when I received the hardest slap in the face to date. I was medically disqualified from naval aviation based on a note from a doctor saying I may have scoliosis based on a chest X-ray. I delayed my commissioning and began another fight — writing letters, making phone calls, and paying for tests by spinal surgeons. But the Navy didn’t care. During the commissioning ceremony I earned an award for best future naval aviator — I still have the plaque in my attic, and it still hurts to look at it.
As you can imagine, I was down in the dumps. I’d worked to my fullest every single day and I was watching people who didn’t even like flying go to Pensacola for flight training while I was heading to a ship. I wanted to leave, give up, and run away from my commitment. My commissioning officer, Capt. Jeffrey “Sundance” Harrison, reminded me that giving up is not in my blood. He gave me courage and faith that I would find enjoyment in any walk of life and to be the best naval officer I could be. That phone call gave me a new mind, and with that new mind I have found enjoyment and pride in everything I have been a part of.
What I haven’t mentioned is all the fun flying I did in college. From fly-ins to being an instructor, I was a stick piggy asking for rides in everything I could, and I competed in the Air Race Classic. The Flagler fly-in gave me the bug for aerobatics. I got rides in a T-34 and flew with the lead in a Yak formation. Bob Davis took me under his wing and for a flight in his L-39, my first roll. Sitting in the hangar at the airport in St. Augustine, I first learned about IAC and made the choice to start. Right after that, Patty Wagstaff made a speech at JU, and I asked her for aerobatic CFI recommendations. Keep in mind I had just started as an aviation major and was not even a private pilot at that point. That’s how I met my first aerobatic instructor, Keoki Grey and a Super Decathlon, and all the fun of aerobatics.
My addiction required money, so I got a job tutoring and went on a strict financial diet of the cheapest bread and fake butter Walmart had to offer. This allowed me to have one lesson with Keoki a week and prepared me for my first competition in Sebring, Florida. I got my pilot certificate on a Monday, Halloween, and was going to the competition on Wednesday, with no plane because the Super D was broken. That’s when I met the highest time Pitts with Eagle Sport Aviation in DeLand, Florida, a nonprofit club of mainly college students with a donated Pitts, it was actually more affordable than the Super D. They agreed to let me fly it in the competition with a safety pilot. And that was the day of a lot of firsts. My first competition, my first Pitts flight, and my first flight as a certificated pilot, all in the aerobatic box.
I made the best out of being on board a ship and not becoming a naval aviator. I worked as a CFI part time in the Hampton Roads area, and although it was a second job, I was flying more than most naval aviators. After my resignation, I was one of the founding members and the first president of the local IAC chapter in Chesapeake, Virginia, and assisted in building an aerobatic program at my local flight school in a Citabria, Great Lakes, and CAP-10. Now I am a pilot for Republic Airlines, flying routes for American, Delta, and United. I love that more than I imagined and I’m honored to be a part of a wide range of lives while they fly to anything from vacations to deployments. I love flying so much I can’t go a day without it. So, I instruct in loss of control recovery training in Extra 300 series aircraft bringing professional pilots back to the basics of flying in an environment that gives them surprise and startles them to practice and learn so if they find themselves on approach at night and nearing a stall they are ready.
More great news, I just purchased my first aircraft, a Pitts Special, S-1D, and we have a competition in a few weeks. So you may read this and think I have it made, but the truth is I’m just starting my journey. I will be training every day to become a world champion aerobatic pilot and an air show pilot. For the young and not so young reading this, here is some advice: You are destined for greatness you just need to go after it.
Okay then —has it all been worth it? All those flights, all those kids, all the time and energy? You be the judge. For me — it doesn’t get any better than this.