PHOTOGRAPHY BY BUDD DAVISSON
lubbers in the past. And he had. His faith in himself, as an instructor, and in the Lake 270 Renegade, as an airplane, spilled over onto his nervous student and did a lot to soothe his fears.
I had come down to St. Augustine with the family to vacation, since the town, the beach and the food make for a fabulous way to keep the kids and the Newark Street Savage happy. It keeps them so happy, they seldom notice, or care, that I’ve disappeared to the airport for a few hours. What the beach is to families, the airport and Aero Sport Inc. are to pilots. The combination of factors makes for a well-rounded effort to straighten a family’s head out.
As it happens, I called O’Leary (as in Editor O’Leary) from the hotel just to check in and he started lecturing about getting me in contact with Lake who was just down the road and how it would be a great photo opportunity, etc, etc. Somehow he had missed the word “vacation” in my introductory speech (Editor’s Note: There are no vacations for aviation photojournalists). So, it was with a certain amount of sadness in my voice that I announced I had to miss a day at the beach (and thereby avoid the tension headache I always develop after an hour of being oiled and sanded) because I had work to do at the airport. Nobody looked up at the announcement. And nobody believed it.