Voice of the Mid-Columbia | Kennewick, Pasco and Richland, Wash. |
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closeSunday, Oct. 05, 2008
Eye on the sky: Richland pilot flies again 32 years after stroke
By Michelle Dupler, Herald staff writer
RICHLAND -- Jim Kaye can't recall how old he was when he bought his first model airplane.
His fascination with flight predates memories from his long ago childhood.
As he watched gas-powered model airplanes he built soar on the wind, he dreamed he'd someday be sitting in the cockpit.
The Richland man's dreams came true when he got his pilot's license in 1965, but a decade later, his dream was shattered after a stroke made flying too dangerous.
At 71, flying is a dream recovered for Kaye, who fought a battle with the Federal Aviation Administration for more than a year to get medical clearance to return to the skies after more than 30 years on the ground.
Kaye was born with crossed eyes that went uncorrected until he grew up, and he has 20/200 vision in his left eye. He always thought his vision impairment meant he'd never fly, so he built models instead.
"I thought, 'If you can't do it, you can't do it,' " he said.
But his fatalistic outlook changed after he took a job in 1963 as a nuclear chemist at General Electric, the company then operating the federal research laboratories at Hanford.
One of his colleagues approached him about getting a group together to rent a glider plane, which didn't require a pilot's license, he said.
"I thought, 'That sounds neat,' " Kaye said.
But his manager convinced him to go a step further and try to learn to fly an airplane with a motor.
He went up for his first flight in February 1965 with a pilot named Roy "Buck" Wheat, who Kaye said co-owned the Richland Flying Service.
Wheat told Kaye there was a waiver he could get that would allow him to fly, so Kaye signed up for lessons. On Sept. 30, 1965, he took a test flight from Richland to Pasco with someone from FAA, who evaluated whether Kaye was medically sound enough to fly.
He passed.
"One of the first things I did was take my future wife for a ride in a Cessna 150," he said.
He flew powered planes, gliders and sail planes. In 1969, he bought his own high performance competition sail plane, a Diamant 16.5 meter.
A sail plane is like a glider -- a plane with no engine -- but has longer, more streamlined wings to reduce wind resistance, he said.
Even without an engine, he could fly hundreds of miles in a sail plane, riding warm air currents called thermals up in circles as high as he could go -- but never as high as the clouds -- and then gliding from thermal to thermal as long as he could.
"On a good day in the Tri-Cities, you can stay up all day long," he said.
But in June 1976, at the age of 38, Kaye was hit with a sudden stroke caused by a cerebral hemorrhage. He stopped flying.
"I didn't feel it was wise to fly," he said. "I thought it was the end."
So he put away his desire to soar through the skies, until the late 1980s when he discovered Flight Simulator for his computer.
"If I couldn't fly for real, at least I could fly on the computer," he said.
Flight Simulator was the substitute for his true passion until 2006, when his wife, Kathryn, bought him a flight as a birthday gift.
When he went up with Dave McCurry of Bergstrom Aircraft, Kaye was awestruck all over again.
"I enjoyed it so much, I asked if there was any way to get my license reinstated," he said.
He discovered that his license had never expired, but he would have to get a medical certificate from the FAA before he could fly again.
He also needed to go through flight school again because technology had changed in 30 years.
In September 2006, he took his medical exam and was told he needed to bring his blood pressure down. So he did.
He had to get a battery of tests and send doctors' letters to FAA in Oklahoma City.
"They kept giving me more hurdles to overcome," he said. "But the more obstacles, the more stubborn I got."
Finally, he was told he could have his medical certificate if he passed a flight test with an FAA medical examiner. He did that in October 2007.
"I thought I was home free," he said.
Until he learned FAA had lost his paperwork.
But Kaye got his happy ending in January 2008 after his paperwork was found and his medical certificate was issued.
He has to renew the certificate yearly. He passed another medical exam Sept. 25.
He returns to the skies a couple of times a month, where he often thinks about the sheer wonder of being in the air.
"It's kind of amazing humans have found a way to do this," he said. "It's kind of an incredible experience."
* Michelle Dupler: 509-582-1543; mdupler@tricityherald.com
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