Rick’s interest in flying sprang up while watching F-4 Phantoms doing Touch & Go’s at the Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Base in Hawaii during the Vietnam War. As a young teenager, his dream of someday flying himself had to be put on the back burner. In High School, an Air Traffic Controller presented a ground school as an elective course, and he was hooked. A few years after that, while a student at The Ohio State University, Rick went to Lane Aviation at Port Columbus (CMH) and enrolled in a Private Pilot course in 1972. He now holds a Commercial Certificate with an instrument rating.
Sometime later, Rick met some fellow pilots who were flying for some of the Air Care Alliance organizations and felt the calling himself as a way to “give back” through aviation. He’s been flying patients and rescue animals ever since, and has also flown supplies for disaster relief organizations, as well as another aviation conservation organization. He has flown over 1,100 EAA Young Eagles.
Rick, a former Civil Air Patrol Mission Pilot, owns a Cessna 172, and has taken it to all 48 states in the Continental U.S., has flown the entire perimeter, has followed the entire lengths of the Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi Rivers, and has even flown in Hawaii – now just Alaska to go.
He is an active and involved member of several charitable aviation organizations honoring veterans, educating youth, and now flying for SouthWings as well. With a daughter and grandsons in Huntsville, AL, it seemed a natural fit for a pilot from Ohio to participate in conservation missions in the states from Ohio to Alabama, and in between.
Retired since 2022 from an I.T. career, Rick has found even more time to fly. His flying escapades were documented in the January 2022 issue of the Cessna Pilots magazine, but he says that is just Chapter 1 – he keeps making plans! You can see many of his adventures on his YouTube channel “Big Adventures in Small Planes”.
