AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2015 - 112

PILOTS

101-YEAR-OLD PILOT

Gene Engledow
Still flying at the century mark
B Y L E R OY C O O K
EUGENE ENGLEDOW parks his van in front of his
hangar and hops out to show us his airplane. He
could be taken for a retiree in his 70s, but, amazingly, Engledow was born October 7, 1913. He
doesn't wear glasses, his memory's sharp, and he
only wears hearing aids because of years spent
working around jet and rocket engines.
His 1946 Aeronca Chief is immaculate. "I
made five landings in her on my 100th birthday,"
he says. No, he didn't have a safety pilot on board,
and his flight review is current. For now, he only
flies as a sport pilot, although his medical examiner says he could pass the third class physical.
Now living in Bolivar, Missouri, Engledow
grew up as a Midwestern farm kid watching

LOGBOOK

WHO | Eugene Engledow
HOURS | 4,000 to 5,000
RATINGS | Private pilot, ASEL, A&P, designated

airworthiness representative

FAVORITE AIRCRAFT | Globe Swift or Piper Pacer
EXTRA | "During the war, we were told we had a

airplanes. A natural mechanic, he moved to California in 1936, finding work with
a Ford dealer in Oxnard. Santa Paula Airport was nearby, and he began taking
lessons in a 38-horsepower Aeronca C-3. Because the operator wouldn't let students solo the unreliable single-ignition C-3, his solo was in a Piper J-2 Cub.
In 1940, Cal-Aero began operating a civilian pilot training school at Oxnard
and needed aircraft mechanics, so Engledow hired on, becoming an A&P. In 1941
the attack on Pearl Harbor put the country at war. When a Vultee BT-13 flew
into Oxnard, the pilots told Engledow about an Army Air Forces support facility hiring civil-service mechanics at Gardner Field, near Bakersfield. Engledow
quickly joined the 305th Sub-Depot unit and applied his skills to military aircraft.
Engledow operated Kern County Airport at Taft, California, where he was a
dealer for Swift airplanes. He returned to Missouri, working at a General Motors
plant in Kansas City that built Republic F-84F jet fighters. He then worked on
Boeing B-47s at Whiteman Air Force Base, and eventually wound up in 1957 at
Boeing's Rocketdyne subsidiary in Neosho, Missouri, where many of the rocket
engines for the space program were developed.
Engledow commuted to work in Swifts, Luscombes, and Aeroncas. He became
the Neosho airport operator, as Engledow Aviation. After retirement in 1975, he
and his wife Grace settled down in Bolivar.
He holds both the Charles Taylor Master Mechanic award for 50 years of
violation-free maintenance and the Wright Brothers Master Pilot certificate
for a half-century of accident-free flying. The Bolivar Airport is named "Gene
Engledow Field" and a parking spot in front of the airport restaurant is reserved
for "100-Year-Old Pilots."
AOPA

rush modification job requiring around-the-clock
work on eight B-25s, taking out all unnecessary
equipment and installing extra tanks. As it turned
out, they were part of the Doolittle Raid, and
after the war I met Jimmy Doolittle out at Pancho
Barnes' place, where he thanked me and signed
my pilot's license."

DAN ROCKAFELLOW

112 | AOPA PILOT January 2015

AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2015