THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, May 15, 1995 TAG: 9505130032
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY EMILY PEASE, SPECIAL TO THE DAILY BREAK
LENGTH: Long : 214 lines
SITTING IN HIS classroom at Rawls Byrd Elementary School, Harrison Holland, 10 years old, listens to the planes - light planes, with loud, moaning engines.
Planes like the ones he flies.
They take off and land just a quarter mile from the school, lifting into the sky near the playground. Other kids don't seem to notice them. But Harrison does.
Today, a cloudy and windless Tuesday, he listens. In just a few hours, he will take to the sky. And this time, unlike every other time he's flown, Harrison will settle behind the yoke of a Cessna 172, a four-seater his mom calls ``a monster.''
After school, Harrison heads to the airport and checks over the plane before he flies. Patrick Lasson, Harrison's flight instructor, follows. Harrison pokes the cup and needle into the fuel tank to check the quality of the fuel. It's clean, free of water.
Then he walks around the plane to look it over. At just about 4 1/2 feet tall, he can walk right under the wings. He leans back a little and looks up, running his fingers over the rivets, checking.
Then he steps forward to climb inside the plane. He has a flat, colorful seat cushion to give him a little height when he sits behind the controls. He takes the cushion and lifts a slender leg into the plane. There are grass stains on his jeans.
Harrison is taking passengers today, which means a bigger plane and more weight. We squeeze in the seats behind our little pilot, who looks every bit like a kid behind the wheel of an automobile.
He sits low in his seat, and his hands look awfully small as they grip the hard black yoke that steers the plane. When he pulls the headset over his ears, the whole thing keeps sliding to one side.
Lasson, who is Swedish, looks over at his small student and smiles. ``Try to keep these things on, now,'' he tells him. His accent is reassuring. He reaches over and straightens Harrison's earphones, but they still want to tip.
``You need a bigger head,'' Lasson says.
The pilot and his instructor go over the pre-flight checklist: fuel, carburetor, prime, throttle. Lasson tells Harrison to open a window. ``Call out `Clear!' real loud,'' he tells him. Harrison seems a little impatient as he turns to look out the window, but Lasson is persistent. ``Always call out so you know no one's standing outside.''
Harrison's legs aren't long enough to reach the rudder pedals, so Lasson guides the plane to the runway. ``Doors and windows closed?'' Lasson asks. Harrison nods. We are definitely closed inside this tiny plane. Harrison has pulled his seat as close to the panel as it will go, and Lasson sits at his elbow.
When Harrison pushes in the throttle and the engine roars to 1,700 rpms, the planes shudders. Any minute, it seems, we could take off straight up, like a rocket.
Lasson tells Harrison to lower the power again, and we settle for one last quiet moment before heading out. ``Look out the windows, Harrison,'' Lasson tells him.
We are looking for other planes in the sky.
``See anything?''
``No,'' Harrison answers. His voice is quiet, but he sounds confident. A small flock of blackbirds scatters to our left.
``Just birds there,'' Lasson says, and then he speaks into his headset, ``Williamsburg Traffic Cessna 3564Echo departing 31. Departing to the west.''
There's something about people who fly - a curious mixture of bravado and trust in human ingenuity, perhaps - that allows them to believe that even a child can fly a plane. If you mention Harrison Holland to folks who work around the Williamsburg-Jamestown Airport, they barely raise an eyebrow. ``He's way young,'' says Andy Goldstein, an airplane mechanic, ``He's about six years young. But he can do it.''
Then Goldstein offers his philosophy on the perils of flying: ``The most dangerous thing you can do when you fly is drive to the airport.''
In the view of Warren Morningstar, a spokesman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, there is ``little utility'' for a child to learn to fly, since Federal Aviation Agency regulations won't allow anyone to fly solo before age 16 or become licensed before age 17.
Nevertheless, a few children fly. Just last June, Vicki Van Meter, a sixth-grader from Meadville, Pa., made news when she flew across the Atlantic at age 12. She had flown cross-country nine months earlier. The youngest child to fly coast-to-coast was Tony Aliengena, who made the trip in 1988 at age 9.
To fly, a child needs three things: a deep interest in flying, willing parents and money.
Each time Harrison flies, he pays a dollar for each minute he's in the air, all from money he's saved himself. The total cost of flight lessons, including ground school, could run as high as $2,700.
Harrison's mother and stepfather, Kim and Gary Clark, give him $10 a month to do a host of chores. ``I take out the recycling, take out the garbage, clean my room, walk the dog, maybe wash some windows,'' he explains.
Every two weeks, Harrison gets $5 more from his father. Then there's money for birthdays and holidays, all of which goes into the bank. Once, Harrison raked and bagged the pine needles from his grandmother's yard and sold them to her as mulch.
``He has more money than I do,'' says Kim Clark. ``He makes a lot of it from interest, because I pay him 15 percent on whatever I borrow. And I'm always broke.''
Harrison and his mom are in a race to see who can get a pilot's license first. So far, Mom's ahead. She passed her written test last spring, and she's logged 26 hours in the air.
It's from his mother that Harrison gets his love of flying. When Harrison was 2 years old, Clark and her first husband, Harry Holland, divorced. ``After that, all I wanted to do was learn to fly,'' she says. She took Harrison and moved to Williamsburg, where the little airport and its flight school - then located in a single trailer - inspired her to begin lessons.
``I instantly thought this is the most comfortable I've ever been anywhere,'' she says. ``There's something special about this place, the family atmosphere, and this crazy mixture of people.''
Within a few years, Harrison was taking flight lessons himself. And often, when he just needed a little time alone, Clark says, Harrison would ride his bicycle over to the airport and look around.
``It's home to him,'' she says. ``I think it's a place where he can get away and sort things out.''
We lift smoothly into the air with Harrison in control. As we make our ascent, the wings tip a little to the left. ``Make sure the horizon is where it should be,'' Lasson reminds Harrison. He looks out the window to his left. Below us is the marshy terrain along the James River.
We level off at 1,000 feet and fly out over the water. Lasson asks Harrison to get a feel for the yoke in his hands. ``Is it heavy?'' he asks him. ``We have to trim it out.''
We circle over the water in view of the ships at Jamestown Island, and then we climb to 2,000 feet.
``Let's try a steep turn,'' Lasson says.
Harrison turns the yoke to the left, and the plane leans at a 45-degree angle. Suddenly it feels as if we're strapped in the seat of a stomach-churning ride at the fair. ``We're pulling 1.6 Gs,'' Lasson says.
Next, Lasson tells Harrison to slow our air speed and hold the altitude. Then he puts the plane in a stall. The plane drops slightly, and the stall warning beeps on. Harrison recovers the plane. It is a smooth maneuver - so smooth that Harrison isn't sure he has come out of the stall.
``Have we done it yet?'' he asks.
``If you do it real smooth, you can hardly feel it,'' Lasson says.
Watching Harrison fly is like watching a child operate a computer. He sits behind the control panel and squirms with excitement. And he's disarmingly adept.
``Some people are just born fliers,'' Lasson says. To be good at it, he believes, one has to have a feel for the plane, a kind of inner sense of how it sounds and feels in every maneuver.
``You have to concentrate,'' says Carel Humme, chief flight instructor at Williamsburg Aviation. Humme flew 30 years in the Air Force, and he has been a flight instructor since 1976. ``Flying is something you can't do while you're thinking about something else at the same time.''
By those standards, Harrison seems like the perfect pilot. He is remarkably focused. And like many pilots, he has the spirit of a nonconformist.
In his bedroom, he keeps everything arranged. On one desk, he keeps his flight manual and a couple school books. On another desk, there's a model sports car, a radiometer and a gyroscope.
And on his bookshelf are two photographs. In one, his mother poses in a black dress beside a bright red Pitts Special, a vintage single-engine plane. In the other photograph, a reproduction print, Marilyn Monroe stands over a sidewalk grate, trying to keep her dress from blowing over her head.
``He's funny,'' Clark says. ``He can do a great imitation of Marilyn Monroe. And he's also got this whole timeline in his head. He's channeling all his interests into doing what he wants to do.''
He has a yellow belt in karate, she says, and he's learning French. Later, he wants to learn still another language.
What he's aiming for, Harrison says, is to go to the U.S. Naval Academy, fly for the Navy and then join the CIA.
``A long time ago, I used to play with my friends, and we would build a fort and go spying on people,'' Harrison says. ``I'd like to be in the CIA, maybe fly a stealth bomber.''
Before we head back to the airport, Lasson wants Harrison to try one more maneuver. ``Let's pretend we're flying to Richmond and suddenly the engine quits,'' he says.
We glide at 65 knots.
``Find your best place to land,'' Lasson says.
Harrison points to an emerald green field with a farmhouse in the center.
``A field!'' Lasson says, ``That's perfect.''
He shuts the engine to idle, and we glide low.
``You don't want to get below 500 feet, Harrison,'' Lasson says. ``People get scared when you fly low.''
We are gliding above the tops of trees. You can see their little green and yellow buds. If Harrison wanted to spy, this would be the way to do it.
Then, with apparent ease, Harrison recovers from our make-believe emergency, and we head back to the airport.
Unbeknownst to Harrison, his mother has been at the airport listening to his voice on the radio. She's proud of him, but she worries. ``It's uncomfortable at times,'' she admits, ``but I absorb some of the responsibility. Ultimately, I am responsible because I've allowed him to fly.''
Harrison locates the runway, and we begin our descent. It's a clean, effortless descent that Lasson merely directs. ``Hold on now,'' he tells Harrison, ``I'm not your pilot. I'm your co-pilot.''
When we're level with the tree line, we aim in. And then the wheels meet the ground.
``Touchdown!'' Harrison says.
It's the word his mother loves to hear. MEMO: Emily Pease is a free-lancer who lives in Williamsburg and teaches
English at Thomas Nelson Community College.
ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
TAMARA VONINSKI
Staff
Harrison Holland, 10, flies a Cessna 172 over the Williamsburg area
under the instruction of Patrick Lasson. Harrison can't fly solo
until he is 16.
After a training flight, Harrison ties up the four-seater plane that
his mother, Kim, calls "a monster."
Harrison uses a pillow to give hom height when he sits behind the
controls.
TAMARA VONINSKI
Staff
When Harrison Holland, 10, flies, he sits behind the controls and is
instructed by Patrick Lasson.
by CNB