By Paul T. Glessner, EAA 1270226
I have been interested in aircraft ever since I was a youngster. My father took the family to Philadelphia International Airport (KPHL) after some of our Sunday dinners to sit in a designated parking area to watch aircraft taxi to the end of the runway just 100 feet from the fence line. There, the aviation bug bit me, and some nine years later at age 16, I took off in a Piper Cherokee 140 — white knuckles and all. I had never flown an airplane before, but I was hooked!
In 2000, I attended EAA AirVenture Oshkosh for the first time. I had heard of it, but it was a trek from Los Angeles, where I had been living since 1987 working for Lockheed in Burbank. After that year I didn’t go again until 17 years later.
My career has always been either designing and/or doing flight-test engineering on aircraft like the B-717, F-22, CH-148, F-35, Mooney M10T, and more. While at Chino Airport (KCNO) working for Mooney, I attended the 2016 Living Legends of Aviation at the Beverly Hilton, and that is where I met EAA benefactor and construction mogul Tracy Forrest, EAA Lifetime 623251. I think he took a liking to me, hopefully for a few reasons, because I bought four tickets in the silent auction to tour Jay Leno’s garage (and he bought them three years in a row).
Months later, Tracy called and asked me if I would like to attend AirVenture. I told him I would lose a lot of income being a contractor with no paid leave opportunity, so I had to turn him down. A year later, in 2017, he asked me again. How thoughtful. I had left Mooney, and my schedule was wide open. I agreed to go, and I was so grateful to be asked again. It is difficult to turn down any invite from a colleague. It was awkward, but luckily it turned out great a year later.
Now you have to understand that I was in the dark as to where I was going to stay. So, after several emails, hinting at the question of if I was sleeping in a tent or what, he finally said, “When you go to the Four Seasons Hotel in L.A., do you ask the valet if there is a refrigerator and microwave in the room?” He said to fill out the questionnaire his secretary would email me. The form asked about the airplane I was flying to Oshkosh in. Where would it be parked? What would I like to eat? Funny, right? “Flying coach in an airliner. Appleton airport. 1% milk, Raisin Bran, bananas and apples, Diet Coke, and some energy bars, please,” I responded.
Tracy personally picked me up at the Appleton airport (KATW) at 10:30 p.m., drove me to Camp Scholler, and on the way slapped a manila envelope on my lap. “In there is everything you will need. Just follow the agenda. Wednesday is different. We meet earlier in the afternoon on Wednesday.” In the envelope was every wristband I would need for every event I could imagine, like The Gathering and more. We rolled into Camp Scholler, and his Ford Explorer’s lights shone on a modern motor home. My name was on a small sign outside of this motor home, not unlike some movie star’s bungalow. It had air conditioning, hot and cold running water, Wi-Fi, a shower, and in the refrigerator was 1% milk, Raisin Bran, bananas and apples, Diet Coke, and some energy bars. Unbelievable. I washed up and stepped outside to meet Tracy and Cyrus Sigari of jetAVIVA to have a beer together after a day of traveling.
Seriously, how can any future AirVenture trip ever top this one? All thanks to Tracy.
Over the years, I realized that being a part of EAA has many benefits. I became an EAA member in the late summer of 2019.
Tracy Forrest, 70, president of the Bob Hoover Legacy Foundation and past president and founder of the Citation Jet Pilots Association is remembered as a philanthropist, an accomplished pilot, and a mentor to the next generation of aviators. The Winter Park Construction founder died in Florida of brain cancer on October 12, 2020.
A mutual friend, Mike Herman, EAA Lifetime 264039, still misses him, saying, “Tracy Forrest was the kindest, most thoughtful person I know.”
Bob Wilson, whose father employed Tracy as a subcontractor, also remembers him fondly. “Tracy never did anything that was not first class,” Bob said. “He gave of himself, and ‘selfish’ is a word that was not in his vocabulary. … Tracy was the definition of a true friend. I am fortunate that the Lord got us together as friends.”
My next AirVenture trip was in 2021 as I issued myself an edict to attend every year to indulge my passion as an aviation enthusiast. My 2017 AirVenture stay with Tracy was only five days long. Now I have learned that there is too much to see, and thus I stay the Saturday before to the Monday after and soak it all in, as one should. Why not? I’m there with 650,000 of my best friends — pilots.
The level and quality of people one meets, and the presentations, physical product booths, and movies shown at AirVenture, are unequaled in depth and breadth. Thank you, Tracy.
