Interview with Gary Stanton, North County Airport, October 19, 2010

From Flight Risk: The Robert Jackson Kelley Story

“I had always dreamed of flying. When I was growing up, airports were shopping centers. You could finesse a business deal over a round of drinks, meet your lady with flowers, put your nose to the glass and watch those giants take off. I collected miniature bombers and jets. I even slept on sheets patterned with planes. But I’m blind as a bat without my glasses, so the air force was out for me. I became a history professor instead. The military buffs, the boys who watched the History Channel, would linger after class and we’d talk about the real story of the Red Baron, look at Raptors and F-16s on the computer. And I played around with simulators, too, the same ones I read the Kelley kid learned from.

“My dad was a carpenter. Built his own house. All the furniture, too. Then he got arthritis. His hands started to look like old trees, all gnarled and swollen. Had to retire. And I feel it in my joints, too. Scary, when the stiffness, the pain starts to set in. Then my wife surprised me with flight lessons for my sixtieth birthday. Behind the controls, my fingers felt loose again. And I admit it, I whooped like a boy when I first took the controls. Nothing like it. For the kid to want to experience that, well, I understand. I don’t condone what he did, but I understand it. I pulled money out of my retirement savings to buy that plane, thinking my wife and I would fly on the weekend. Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, even.

“And then Robert Jackson Kelley crashed my plane.”