Winter flying

[Tom Flanigan]

Richard…..quick question…..did you ever attend the Valdez Stol competition? I just re-watched some videos. Incredible! I saw just Super Cubs and experimentals.

I did know one of the great bush pilots, Sonny Thomas (Lowell Thomas Jr.) My father grew up with him in Pawling. He moved from Pawling to Alaska many years ago. But he always came back every couple of years or so. Up until his death, he still owned part of his father’s estate (more than 3,000 acres at one point) in Pawling.

He kept part of the property for some reason even after he moved. He’d come back to Pawling to see old friends. He never forgot Pawling and his friends here. He always landed on our airstrip which his father’s property bordered on the Norh.

He was an Alaska state senator and later Lieutenant Governor. He was in the air flying during the destructive Anchorage earthquake years ago. He took many pictures and movies of the devastation from the air. After the 1980’s he owned and operated the Talkeetna Air Taxi, a bush flying service.

The last time I saw him he flew in with a Cessna 185 A. He had to be helped out of the airplane and he couldn’t walk well.

Sonny build a small airstrip on his father’s property back in the 30’s. But when he flew into the trees, Lowell Thomas wouldn’t let him use the airstrip anymore. After 1948 he used our airstrip built by Thomas E. Dewey when he thought that his Pawling Estate was going to be the summer White House.