LAKEPORT >> After seven decades with his hands on the tiller of an aircraft, Lee Beery still discovers exhilaration of the dynamics of flight, even though as a child his fondest wish was to be a cowboy.
Beery’s older brother was already in aviation, and he soon followed. Quickly, he was enrolled in the United Airlines apprentice program. “It was tough program,” he recalled. “When I finished it, I was laid off. I then went to work in production planning, inspection, technical services, quality assurance of United. I then end up the last 10 years in engineering, heading up the department that writes the technical paperwork. My wife (Patricia) worked at the base same time I did. We retired in ’89 and moved to Lake County.”
Beery was one of a handful of pilots expected at Lampson Filed Saturday for the fourth Historically Significant Planes presentation. He was piloting a 1948, Piper J-3 Cub, (dubbed Waltzing Matilda on fuselage) a single engine, high wing, two-seater. “Interestingly, I’ve owned this plane twice,” he said. “I owned it back in the 1980s. My son learned to fly in it, and I was flying an aerobatic plane until recently. But my family wanted me to stop aerobatics. I sure liked the Waltzing Matilda, so I went online and I found this airplane there, so I bought it again.”
Accompanying Beery on Saturday was friend, Donald Wicks of Clearlake. Wicks was a former flight instruction student. Yet, he never quite mastered the art of landing an aircraft so he did not become a pilot. “Lee was in our Model RC (radio control) Club.” They shared that the thrill of the same hobby bonded the two together.
“I used to fly the model airplanes, but they’re a lot harder to fly, they just got a mind of their own,” Beery said.
“It’s a visual thing,” stressed Wicks. “You have to connect the model airplane with the one you have in the air when you are flying one. We have a wonderful flying field near a vineyard entrance it’s called, Clear Lake Modelers. It is just to the west side of Kit’s Corner. And some of the models are replicas of the full-sized World War II renowned fighters. It was the P-51 Mustang, just a high- performance airplane from that era,” Wicks recalled. “It originally used the (non-turbo) supercharged Allison engines. But later that was swapped out for a Rolls Royce engine, much superior.”
Once in Lake County, Beery bought a very small single seat bi-plane. “It only had a 65- horsepower engine. Aerobatics was just a hobby. While he continued with his work for United Airlines, Beery went to look at an airplane in Oakdale on behalf of a friend. “I ended up buying a very small single seat bi-plane,” he remembered. “And back in the day, if you are flying a single seat, you had to learn on your own.”
It was in Oakdale that Beery spotted what was called a Baby Great Lakes plane. It had a design by Barney Oldfield and was built by Richard Lane. It was a scaled downed derivative of the Great Lakes Sports Trainer. “The guy couldn’t fit in to fly it, but I fit just fine,” Beery recalled. “And then I bought the Super Baby Great Lakes and taught himself to pilot it. Super Baby Great Lakes (accommodating larger engines) and there were also the Buddy Baby Lakes (a two-seat variation designed by Richard Lane).”
“My wife Patricia became a pilot when she was a grandmother, had her own plane, it was a Navy Trainer and we’d do air shows together,” he said. “We did a few volunteer shows in Gold Country, Angels Camp and other places. We weren’t commercial pilots, we did it for the fun of it. They never paid us for anything, and after 35 years of aerobatics, I retired 10 years ago.”
Yet big air shows remain in Watsonville, Merced, the Capitol Air Show in Sacramento and another in Reno. “I didn’t fly when I was in the Navy, we were in harbors working maintenance on mine sweepers. We’d cut the mines (from mooring) and then detonated them.” Beery said he was stationed in Charlston, South Carolina and then Panama City, Florida. He continued work at United Airlines while doing aerobatics. he was at the top of his class in the Navy, and that made him eligible for the flighted air crew.
“So, after two years in the apprentice program, they called me over to do a physical,” he recalled. “They said I was too short (by 1/2 inch).” I was one unhappy guy for awhile. I had my heart set on being a pilot for United. But it worked out OK.”
As for what he would tell a high school student thinking of an aviation career … “I went to a class in Kelseyville a couple of months ago, (at Herb Lingl’s class as part of Splash In events). There was a girl there, and I asked her, ‘what would you want to do in your life.?’ Because I remember when I was her age, I wanted to be a cowboy.”
