Flying with the airport’s namesake
Someone forgot to tell O.V. Gray to slow down. Or maybe he just didn’t listen. As his peers dialed back their activities and stopped leaving their homes, Gray soldiered on – even taking his children to the Social Security office to begin their benefits as each of them passed age 65.
Gray, the 101-year-old namesake of the Carrollton-West Georgia Regional Airport, makes the commute from his East Point home to Gray Field every Saturday. His home, in the shadows of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, was once located in a neighborhood convenient to his workplace, Delta Air Lines’ Technical Operations Center. The neighborhood isn’t as pleasant as it once was; recently Gray was mowing his lawn and a thug approached him with less than honorable motives. He reached for his rear pocket not to hand over his wallet, but to pull out a revolver.
The visitor departed in all possible haste.
Gray didn’t learn to fly until he neared age 40, well after he began working on airplanes. He delivered new airplanes for Piper and Cessna in his spare time, and ended up in more than one tight situation – such as being weathered in at some deserted rural airport that was fenced in all around… and he was unable to cancel his flight plan. Somehow in the rain and the mud he scaled a fence, knocked on someone’s door and got in touch with flight service, just in time.
O.V. was old when I met him. A yellowed clipping of the Wright Brothers and their flyer hung from the airport bulletin board; someone had circled a nondescript bystander and written in Gray’s name. He was about to turn 88, and he came out to fly every Wednesday and Saturday. Worried with his failing vision, he usually took a pilot flying with him. When none were handy, he took me. (Note, he later had surgery and his vision surpasses mine now.)
He taught me to land that Cessna 152 before we ever left sight of the airport. I didn’t think about it at the time, but he was very cognizant of his mortality, checking his pulse before the run-up, and making sure I could get us on the ground before he left the traffic pattern.
O.V. had his own rules of thumb. Level off before turning downwind because of the brothers who stalled and spun to the ground making a climbing turn to crosswind in a Cessna 170. Double the gust factor to tack onto approach speed because we had a long runway. Tack on 10 knots to that because it was a really long runway. If it was really gusty, don’t get below 90 until you’re over the numbers.
I don’t advocate using his numbers. I was scared the first time I landed a 150 more or less at cruise speed, but I’m living proof it can be done. There are safer ways to land an airplane, though.
When he turned 90, we tacked his name onto the airport. When he turned 100, we had a big party for him. Reporters from the Atlanta TV stations came out to see him, and he flew some of them around in a Skyhawk.
If you land at CTJ on a Saturday morning, keep an eye out for the old guy. He’ll be the smallish one who never complains about getting older.