AOPA Pilot Magazine - November 2012 - 49

TOM BOARDMAN AND ALICIA BRINDISI

Perfect bull’s-eye
TOM BOARDMAN of Albany, New GEORGE W. KIRKENDALL SR. (left) was the first

the compass in the aircraft if the buyer wanted it, or bring it back to the factory. With war clouds building over Europe, the United States was enlarging its military might, including aviation. This fit perfectly into Mr. Piper’s desire for an aircraft to train pilots. The Piper Cub became the airplane for the Civilian Pilot Training Program, which trained pilots while still civilians who could be ready when the United States entered the war. The Piper Corporation proudly boasted that four out of five U.S. pilots in World War II had received their basic training in Piper J–3 Cubs. An officer at a base in Texas, where a Piper salesman had brought a J–3 Cub for demonstration, often borrowed that airplane to fly around for relaxation. The officer, Dwight Eisenhower, went on to become the thirtyfourth U.S. president and the first who was a pilot. Fast forward nine years after that solo flight in a J–3 Cub on Long Island, when I went to work for the Utility Airplane Council of the Aerospace Industries Association. Piper was one of eight companies that made up this predecessor to the General Aviation Manufacturers Association. Here, I had the good fortune of getting to know well W.T. Piper and his sons. As dedicated as he was to producing an aircraft in which more pilots could be trained, Mr. Piper was just as dedicated to airport development. During a conversation about the need for airports he said it took more than 50 years for people to realize that you don’t put major highways through cities, but around them. He wondered how long it will take the public to know we need airports. When highways are being constructed, he said, is the time to lay down strips beside the highway near communities and along the route. With all the equipment at hand, cost would be minimal, land acquisition would be completed, flight services could be added as the needs arose, and there would be more landing places for flight emergencies.

pilot to fly the original Cub. The former chief pilot is shown here with Piper President William T. Piper in 1961.

York, has had a Cub for six years, but the four-hour flight to Sentimental Journey was his first in the 1939 Cub he had refurbished over the past three years. He decided to enter the bomb drop contest and scored the first perfect bull’s-eye at Sentimental Journey—at least, as far as any fly-in volunteers or staff could remember—by dropping a paper bag of flour into a bright pink, three-footdiameter children’s wading pool. “She gets all the credit,” Boardman said of bombardier Alicia Brindisi, of East Haddam, Connecticut. “I was just driving the bus.” He said there was a bit of wind from the north, so on his third and final pass, he adjusted his ground track—which made the lineup harder to see. “On the third drop, we both saw it—it was like, ‘poof.’ Sometimes magic just happens.” “We were screaming,” Brindisi added. “It was a beautiful thing to see it fall into that pool. It was like slow motion. There were no two other people who were as surprised as us.” Boardman said they were thinking about just retiring, instead of trying to defend the title next year. While there were no other direct hits, a number of pilots came very close to the target. —Mike Collins

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AOPA Pilot Magazine - November 2012

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