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19 From Cub to King Air A month after the reunion, Nancy’s yellow J-3 Cub came home. Being Nancy, she planned ahead. Prior to the airplane’s arrival, she accompanied her friends Ed Stevenson and Jim Harris, past president of the Birmingham Aero Club, to Sun ‘n Fun in Lakeland, Florida, in April 1999. They flew down in Jim’s Cessna 182. Nancy went for the fun of aviation’s annual spring fling, but she also had some serious-minded intentions for going. “Nancy was like a kid in a candy store,” Jim Harris wrote later in the Aero Club newsletter. She had decided that a GPS (global positioning satellite navigational system) and up-to-date radio equipment were a must for her Cub. She had her eye out for any modern improvements that would aid her when she went flying in the little airplane she hoped to have in her hangar by summertime. “At one of the booths, this young salesgirl was talking down to Nancy,” Ed recalled. “I finally called her aside and told her who Nancy was and the young lady changed her tune. “Then there were the three guys from New Jersey. We were having lunch and these guys sat down across from us. ‘Ma’am, do you have an airplane?’ one of them asked her. ‘Well, I’m getting one,’ she said, ‘a J-3 Cub.’ He looked at her and said, ‘Well, ma’am, have you ever flown one?’ “By this time Jim and I were having a good time watching Nancy handle these guys. And we didn’t interfere—kind of let the line out on the reel before pullin’ in the fish. But finally, I had to set him straight. ‘Before you get too far in, let me explain who this lady is and what all she has done.’ “Well, when I told him, he hollered and stood up and threw his hat on the ground and said, ‘Damn it, I sure stuck my foot in my mouth, didn’t I.’ And we all got a big laugh out of that.” Nancy’s friend Ed Stringfellow gave her her biannual flight check in his 150 • Chapter 19 J-3 Cub and renewed her license on June 5, 1999. And then she flew Ed’s Cub a few times for practice. So when Jim Dayton arrived at St. Clair County Airport, July 29, with her long-awaited Cub, Nancy was ready. Dayton took her up in the Cub that day and showed her what he had done with it. She was thrilled to be at the controls of her own J-3 and she flew a lot in August and September. Because she was out at the airport more now that she had her plane hangared there, Nancy began to visit with the other woman who spent a lot of time at the airport, Chris Beal-Kaplan. They hit it off. In a taped interview, November 14, 2000, Chris and Nancy explained just how good friends they became.1 “I had just lost my copilot to the airlines,” said Chris, who was chief pilot for American Equity Insurance Company. She flew a twin-engine King Air corporate turbo jet owned and operated by a subsidiary of the parent company . The owner decided to base the airplane at St. Clair County Airport outside of Birmingham, instead of in corporate headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa. Chris—a divorcée with grown children and no problem trying new horizons—moved to Alabama with the airplane. “When we came here from Des Moines, the owner decided he wanted his own maintenance people on the field, so he started Sarco, the maintenance arm of the business. We grew to be pretty busy. We take care of other people’s planes as well as the King Air,” said Chris. All of Chris’s copilots were young men—a succession of them who, as soon as they got experience and flight time, would move on to a better job. “I don’t blame them,” she said. “Then one day Nancy walked in and she was talking about flying her Cub. I thought to myself, Nancy’s not going anyplace and she knows how to fly. “‘How would you like to fly copilot on the King Air?’ I asked her. “‘I don’t know anything about the King Air,’ Nancy said. “‘You don’t have to,’ I said. ‘You’ll learn.’” This was a turbo jet! Jet was a...

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