By Jim Hager, EAA Lifetime 1053646
My story with Will started back in October 2017. I needed to pick up an airplane from maintenance at another airport. I had called the local flying club to see if there was someone who would fly me to get my plane, and I would pay the rental and fuel fees. I got a call from Will Golden, and the first time we met was at the Oakland International Airport to get my airplane. I found out that Will was a flight instructor and a retired air traffic controller. We had a pleasant flight and he would not let me pay the rental fee on the C-172. He said, “That’s what pilots do for one another.”
In July 2018, I was going to Oshkosh for EAA AirVenture. I got a call from Will that he would like to ride with me. But for some reason, this time his voice sounded much different than before — more like a 90-year-old man. This was not his usual great voice, one that would be the envy of any public speaker. We agreed to meet on July 20 at my hangar at the Oakland airport at about 9 a.m.
When I asked him about his voice, Will told me that he had open heart surgery a couple of months ago, and that he was fine but that his voice had not yet fully recovered. So, Will’s son brought him to my Oakland hangar as planned. Will did not look anything like the trim and healthy 67-year-old man who flew me to Vacaville two years before. Now he looked like a person coming out of a prisoner of war camp, starved for months. He had brought his medication with him, and in case we had to go above 6,000 feet he also brought oxygen. I was worried that Will wasn’t well enough to travel at this point and I reconsidered our trip. But Will assured me that after we got to Oshkosh, he had a reservation to rent a scooter for the week and would use Uber to get to and from the airport and our dorm room. So, off into the wild blue yonder we went.
First stop: Elko, Nevada
About 30 miles north of Reno, while flying on autopilot, the airplane started to turn right. I disengaged and then reengaged the autopilot. This time it turned left. I disengaged and pulled the circuit breaker and, without understanding the mechanical problem, I would fly the rest of the trip by hand.
As we neared Elko, we had plenty of fuel, so we decided to keep going and fly for another hour to Wells, Nevada (KLWL). After parking at the fuel pumps and with the help of a kind volunteer, we got Will out of the plane. Then we fueled up and got back in the plane. Next, I heard a beeping sound and Will said it was his portable IV unit. “Don’t worry,” he assured me, “I have a backup.” Will removed the IV unit and hooked up his backup unit. Then when I heard the second IV unit start beeping, I really worried. We tried to find and correct the problem, with no luck. At this point, we were in the airplane but hadn’t yet taken off again.
On the phone now with his nurse, I was told that Will would die in six to seven hours without his IV medications. He needed to get to a hospital immediately, and I would need to call ahead and have an ambulance waiting when we arrived at the airport. Seeing as this was now an emergency medical situation and the nurse on the phone knew much more about these situations than I did, I asked them to contact the hospital in Elko and let them know we’d be landing in about an hour.
Once we were airborne again, I called air traffic control and told them I had a passenger with a life-threatening medical issue. I was put on “life guard status,” which gave me priority over other air traffic. When they turned me over to the Elko control tower, they cleared me for a straight-in approach, and once on the ground they taxied us to the fire truck, where the ambulance and EMTs were waiting.
I rode in the ambulance with Will to the emergency room. After Will got settled in, I got a taxi and then picked up a rental car, found a hotel room for the night, and had dinner. The next morning when I went to the hospital, Will was in ICU, sitting up, and greeted me with, “Are you ready to go?” I told him no Oshkosh and we were going back to Oakland. Will was always very chipper and full of enthusiasm. I talked to his doctor and he informed me that Will had a very mild heart attack after he arrived at the hospital, and I discovered later that Will had a family history of major heart problems. The hospital got his portable IV unit working again and the doctor said he saw no reason why Will couldn’t go on to Oshkosh.
At that time, Will had lost a lot of weight and looked even weaker and older. I can’t explain why I agreed to take him to Oshkosh. But looking back, I would definitely do it again. We got his oxygen tank refilled, turned in the rental car, and flew off to our next fuel stop. We had dodged some clouds and landed after dark and stayed overnight.
Landing in Oshkosh
At all of our stops, I needed help getting Will in and out of the airplane. It was about two and a half hours to Oshkosh; however, when Will and I arrived, we found three days’ worth of airplanes wanting to land, because the airport had been closed due to bad weather. Pilots were getting bunched up and we had to go around six times before we could land. It was like being on the freeway during rush hour.
When we got parked, my friend Maggie Cook showed up to give Will and me a ride to the dorms, where we’d be staying during the event. She took one look at Will and immediately called the first aid station. A nurse came and gave Will the third degree, saying he should have been in bed. Will would bleed at the slightest bump — he was on blood thinners. Maggie started wiping up the blood from the seats in the airplane. After a taxi ride to the dorm, Will got settled in. He again assured me that he would not be a problem and that he was fine. He had made arrangements for transport to get from the dorm to the airport.
Other than helping him rehook his portable IV, Will was on his own. Maggie told one of her administrators about my flying for Organ Transplant and that I had done 177 Angel Flight missions. My Comanche was moved into a very visible tie-down with a handmade poster. It is about flights that I did, including one flight right after 9/11, when I delivered two kidneys that had matches at UCLA Medical Center, Oakland to KVNY (Van Nuys). It was a very spooky flight because I was the only pilot in the air. My plane was later moved to the “show planes” area and I was asked to give a talk about Angel Flights. It was a wonderful day.
When I was at the EAA Aviation Museum, a female volunteer asked me if I was the pilot for Will Golden, because she had seen him the day before and wondered how Will was doing. He had told the woman that day was the best day of his life.
Will did make on request from me. He was to be part of an opening of one of the air shows — a “pole holder,” which means at the opening of the first air show of the day, one person on each side of the runway would hold up a pole with a ribbon attached. Sean Tucker would do his aerobatic air show and the last maneuver was to fly VERY low (wing tip less than 6 feet from the ground!) over the runway and cut the ribbon with a lowered wing. This event was a fundraiser. Will had paid $1,000 for the honor of being a pole holder. Will’s request of me was to photograph him and the airplane as it cut the ribbon. I was not permitted to go out to the runway but I was able to take my pictures from a video cameraman’s stand. This was fairly far away, but I met Will’s request and got the pictures he asked for.
Squawk 7600
The day Will and I left Oshkosh for Oakland was the start of the next adventure. The takeoff is done with two airplanes side-by-side on the runway. Once airborne, one airplane turns right and the other turns left on assigned headings. After you clear the area, you have been assigned a radio frequency for air traffic control. Well, I called several times and there was no response. I did finally hear from ATC and they knew I was broadcasting but they couldn’t hear me! So I put the 7600 code in my transponder, which means no radio contact. I decided to fly on as I knew ATC would be following us on radar and would tell the controllers ahead about us. I could not return to Oshkosh because of the mass of airplanes departing.
We flew on for about two hours when the weather was looking nasty in front of us and I told Will that we were going to climb up high to what looked like a safer altitude.
Then the bad news: Will’s oxygen tank was empty.
I needed to divert to the nearest airport. I picked one not too far away but, when we were 3 miles from landing, the weather again looked extremely bad. Trying to avoid a disaster, I hit the nearest button on the GPS and we landed at White River Municipal (7Q7), a small grass strip in White River, South Dakota. I shut down and studied where to go next. The best place was Winner, South Dakota (KICR). I had been there before, waiting out weather for a couple of days when I had flown my Mooney Mite to Oshkosh. The same couple still runs the airport, Mr. and Mrs. Dave Howard, the airport manager/flight instructor/mechanic and his wife. They look like a couple of Hollywood movie stars.
The Howards came out to greet me. After we got Will out of the Comanche, I asked if there was an avionics tech on the field. “No, what’s the problem?” Mr. Howard asked, and I told him about the communications issue. He said he was an AI (aircraft inspector) and if I would trust him with my keys, he would see if he could find the problem. Then they gave us a car to drive, and Will and I checked in to the Holiday Inn Express. Later I went back out to the airport and was relieved that Dave had found the problem. A bad headset! I had a backup, so all was good.
Rock Springs, Utah
The next morning, we got gas and thanked the Howards for their outstanding hospitality. Will really wanted to get home because his sister was flying in to be with him and he wanted to be there to greet her. Oakland, here we come! Or so we thought, but a list of problems popped up.
1. Bad visibility — as we flew near Elko again, visibility became so bad we never did see Elko. Smoke from the northern California fires was so bad you couldn’t see much. Thank God for my Garmin 530 comm/GPS terrain clearance capability.
2. My iPad Mini lost its GPS, so I couldn’t see the airplane’s location on the map. I had Will in the backseat, so I did not want to turn around to talk to him (and the autopilot had quit working earlier in the trip).
3. Next problem — Will had no oxygen. I thought he was using it more than he had told me, so we had to stay lower.
4. The pass west of Reno was restricted by a TFR because of firefighting aircraft flying in that area.
5. I didn’t have a chart for Reno, I wasn’t current for IFR approaches, and, remember, my iPad wasn’t showing my location.
On top of everything else, I was exhausted. Time to get on the ground. I called ATC and asked for vectors to a general aviation airport. They said, “Fly your present heading for about 8 miles, and left turn at the railroad tracks and follow the track. You will be lined up with the runway for KFLX, Fallon, Nevada, airport. To the east is Fallon Air Force Base, and do NOT enter their air space.”
After landing, an Angel Flight pilot putting his airplane in its hangar helped me get Will out of the Comanche. He had the same problems with smoke that we had had. We then checked in with the FBO and they offered us a crew car. We walked out to find an older Jeep station wagon. It was very rusty and belonged in a junk yard, and the interior looked like it had doubled as a doghouse. I put the key in and it started better than most new cars. We got a hotel room, then I went to the local casino steak house for dinner and brought dinner back to Will. I asked how his meds were holding out. He said, “In the morning, I will have about seven hours left.”
I was so exhausted that I was not going to fly for a day or two. Southwest Airlines had one direct flight from Reno to Oakland at 8:50 a.m. I made arrangements for a cab to pick Will up at 5 a.m. and bring him home. Being a gambling area, you have to pay in advance with cash. $120 dollars and no extra charge for the early pickup. Will called me when he got back to Oakland. His sister had arrived from back East and that made him very happy. The next day I took the same cab ride, leaving the Comanche at Fallon airport for about a week. Will had his son drive him to Fallon to get his things out of the airplane. After I got home via Southwest, I rested for seven days and needed it!
The following Saturday, I called Will to find out how he was doing and his sister answered. She said that they were at Byron Airport and Will had just got on an airplane. This was the last thing on his bucket list: He had never made a parachute jump. One thing Will left me with: “You’re going to die and you still live until that day comes.”
Will died the following Monday.
Later at Will’s funeral, I found out that he had a history of heart problems. Will had checked himself out of the hospital and his son drove him directly to my hangar. Why I flew Will? Good question. But I would do it again.
It’s too bad that more people don’t have Will’s do-anything attitude. Will soaked up every moment of his life up until the very last moment. I’m so glad I had the privilege of knowing and spending time with him. What an inspiration, and I will never forget him.
William Jerome Golden, Jr.
October 26, 1948-August 13, 2018
Resident of Alameda, California
Jim Hager is a lifelong aviator with a deep love of single-engine airplanes. Born in San Bernardino, Jim took his first airplane ride when he was 12 and has been hooked ever since. He took his first solo flight in 1955, got his private pilot certificate in 1956, glider in 1993, IFR in 1998, and he got his commercial pilot certificate in 2001. His second love is photography, which became his career for more than 30 years. Jim has close to 5,000 hours of flying time and, at 81, he’s still flying.