Hello Readers, 

I like being outside in nature. A challenge for me is finding an outdoor place where my bus can drop me off and for several hours I can hang out and feel safe. Remember, I am in a wheelchair and sometimes trails and sidewalks are not the flattest places for me to wheel alone. So, when I discovered the Vance Brand Airport in Longmont, I felt like I had found an oasis. It had an address that I could register with my bus service. I could sit outside and see the mountains. There were tables where I could sit safely with umbrellas to shade me from the sun. I’m only a few feet away from the landing strip and often I can watch sky jumpers do their skills. I love watching the small planes take off and land. From May through early October, I go there to draw, write, visit with folks and eat. What is a favorite place of yours, Reader?

I’m not the first person in Longmont to discover the beauty of this little airport. In March of 2009, Chad Rennicke had just finished a flight lesson. He and his wife, Diann, sat at the airport and watched the sunset. Their bellies were hungry. The airport did not offer any food services at that time.  That moment started a conversation for them:  Why not provide food here at the airport for others who might like to sit here and enjoy the view?

Within three months, Diann and Chad purchased a small street cart and started their business – Flight Deck Grill.  Customers loved it and this year (2019) is now their eleventh season. “If people come once, I’m pretty well promised they will come again,” Diann said. The mobile café is now a food truck, they do year-round catering and they were recognized as Longmont Chamber’s 2015 “Small Business of the Year”. They offer breakfast and lunch items – with names based on aviation words. The two most popular foods are Top Gun Burrito and the Single Engine (their Angus burger), Diann said. 

One of the things Diann most loves about her job is the people. “Everyone has their stories and it’s been fun getting to know them,” she said. I have to agree. I started going to the airport because it was a relaxing place for me to draw or write. However, it didn’t take long before I was introduced into some amazing and interesting people. They are all ages and all walks of life – doctors, pastors, businessmen, and farmers – but something they all had in common was their love of flying. As we watched the skydivers float through the air with their colorful parachutes or watched the small planes come and go, I was regaled with stories of past flights across the country or over the Rocky Mountains. The gathering and diversity of people fascinated me, and I fell in love with this little spot in Longmont.  Reader, have you ever thought about opening a business? What service would you provide or what would you sell?

One gentleman I met at the airport is Jim Kelley, known as Santa to Diann and her crew. “With his long white beard, he’s the perfect match,” Diann said. Jim had played Santa at a mall, he told me later. Was that a Christmas twinkle I saw in his eyes?

Jim was born in Denver and has also lived in Lyons. He has attended Longmont schools since his grade-school years, he said. Now 75-years-old and a resident of Left Hand Canyon, which is about ten miles from the Vance Brand Airport in Longmont, Jim told me his story of flying. When he was a young boy, Jim’s dad was a flying instructor and owned his own airplanes. In 1961, his dad taught Jim how to fly. Jim earned his commercial helicopter license in 1964 in preparation for the Vietnam War. “I wanted to be in the air, not on the ground,” he said. However, with his marriage and birth of his son, he was not drafted. 

Jim is a retired operator/shift foreman for sugar and syrup manufacturing plants in the area, and he has also trained and worked as a pipe welder. He likes adventure and also enjoys boating and water skiing. But his love of flying reigns supreme – he has been going to the Longmont airport for almost six decades, he said. 

For more than 20 years his family had owed a Mooney (single-engine piston-powered airplane), a sailplane (a heavier-than-air aircraft that is supported in flight by the dynamic reaction of the air against its lifting surfaces, and whose free flight does not depend on an engine) and a blue Bellanca Champion Citabria airplane. “It was a single-engine two-seat plane with the gears in the front and the tail on a wheel on the back,” he explained to me, the novice. Other planes have the small wheel in the front and the tail in the air. Jim explained that this one was used to “pull the sail planes”.

“I haven’t flown in years – over a decade. Now I just go to the airport to hang out with folks I know,” he said. Jim comes once or twice a week to Diann’s food truck for breakfast or lunch.  One of the couples’ that Jim has gotten to know is Sharron and Glenn Watt. For the past five years, Sharron, age 78, and Glenn, 85, drive out to the airport almost every day year-round.  The couple, originally from Nebraska, in 1958, were introduced to Colorado when they went to Estes Park for their honeymoon.

Glenn learned to fly as a kid, he said. He loved flying and by age 15 had his pilot’s license – before he even earned his driver’s license.  After he and Sharron married, they would rent planes to go places.  Glenn has flown many planes but two that he remembers well are the  Citabria Champion, a two-seat, fixed conventional gear airplane  and a Cherokee Cessna, a single-engine, piston-powered airplane. 

 

Over the years, they’ve flown cross-country – Missouri, the Carolinas, and Nebraska – to visit friends and family. Glenn’s career as a pastor took them to small churches in the states of Missouri and Nebraska and Sharron’s career was in retail and banking. They always remembered their honeymoon visit to Estes Park.  “We fell in love with Colorado,” Sharron said. In 1973, the couple moved to Longmont. Now married 60 years, they still share their love of Colorado and airplanes.  Do you have an activity in your life, Reader, that you love?

In February 2016, Glenn had a stroke and now has mild dementia, Sharron said. “The visits to the airport are good for him.” Sharron said she started to come to the Flight Deck Grill because Glenn loves airplanes. “At first, I did it for him, but then I fell in love with it too,” she said. “We love Diann”.  Praising the Flight Deck Grill crew, Sharron said, “Now, we come every day.” 

One day, Sharron and I discovered we had music in common with each other, so for my next visit, I took my ukulele. I am not a great musician, but I sing and play with heart. Sitting in the lovely Colorado sun, under the umbrella’s shade, pilots and guests joined in to our impromptu jam sessions. Similar to me, the airport has become an oasis of sorts for others – a place for people to relax, to laugh together and talk – for some it will be the next trip they take and for others it’s the flight of their memories – days gone by. 

So many readers wrote to say that they had tears in their eyes as they read last month’s blog about Ruby Kulpa. Comments arrived such as “her story brought tears to my eyes;” “her life was a testimony;” “what a strong woman”; and “her life touched my heart”. Robert Breault, the Director of Opera at the University Of Utah School Of Music, said “Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things”. I think life is like that. All the pieces of Ruby’s life –some mundane daily duties, work requirements, interactions with people she met in meetings, clubs, or luncheons – the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. They were the moments she most remembered in her last weeks.  What are those bits and pieces of your life that in total became the definition of who you are and how you live?

 

Until next month, may peace be at your side, 

Debbie Noel

We have several ways to interact with Debbie!

• Email her at DroppingInWithDebbie@gmail.com

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• Send your letters to:

Debbie Noel
C/o Longmont Senior Center
910 Longs Peak Avenue
Longmont, Colorado 80501

 

Flight Deck Grill

http://www.flightdeckgrill.com

Open 7:30 – 2:00 Wednesday – Sunday, May through October – weather permitting

Located just west of Elite Aviation @ Vance Brand Airport

229 Airport Road, Longmont, CO 80503

303-682-8888

 

During the winter months, Sharron and Glenn Watt enjoy going to lunch and making many new friends at the Parkview Café, the Longmont Senior Center’s lunchroom. It is located at 910 Longs Peak Ave, Longmont, CO 80501. To see the current menu, go to www. http://longmontmeals.org/menu.html 

 

Longmont Senior Center offers a variety of classes and social events for you to meet new people and use or discover your talents. To see what’s available for the summer you can pick up a GO Catalog in the Senior Center lobby or view the Summer edition online at www.longmontcolorado.gov/senior-services.