Advertising Supplement to The Press Democrat. Thursday, October 9, 1997
From fierce to friendly skies
Ex-fighter pilot teaches flying
By Susan Carmody

"I got shot-up one day," says Walt Peckham, comfy in a padded booth at
Petaluma airports Two Niner Diner: Club sandwich, potato salad, and iced tea
finished, he's ready to share war stories

Peckham, 76, was a fighter pilot for the U.S. Air Force during World War II, and the predicament he's describing happened over Japanese seas towards the end of the war. Four Japanese fighter planes spotted Peckham's P-47 along with several other U.S. fighter planes flying in formation. "They were at a higher altitude" he says. They shot me up pretty well; hit the oil tank and oil went all over the back of the canopy. They hit the engine too, and I headed for the ocean." Peckham radioed a rescue craft and parachuted to safety Navy plane picked him up. Unlike his plane, he was unharmed, suffered only friction burns on his shoulders from his parachute harnesses. Tallying 250 combat flying hours before the war was over, Peckham had his share of successful air maneuvers as well. While stationed on a Japanese island, he was assigned to fly to Japan to aid in establishing air superiority. The mission was victorious. Two Japanese Zeros (fighter planes) were intercepted and shot down. Peckham received credit for one.

Teaching others to fly

Flying is quite a bit more peaceful for Peckham these days, the only conflict he experiences is an inner one. As a flight instructor for Aeroventure, a flying school, plane rental and repair business located at the Petaluma Municipal Airport, he struggles with "trying to be effective in my teaching," His flying students range from 11 to 78 years old. "I tell them to study, study, study, he says, "and to go to school, get a background in math, science, physics." Pilots for small airlines don't make a lot, he explains. It's important to know something more than how to fly a plane. Yet a career as a pilot is not what a lot of Peckham's students have in mind. His oldest student, J.D. Howard of Sebastopol, learned to fly at age 76. He's now 78. Howard served in the Air Force during World War II as well, says Peckham, but he didn't get the opportunity to fly. Many didn't have the time to complete the studies required to become an Air Force pilot, he adds. Howard learned to fly to fulfill a dream. "We stuck together," Peckham says about his teaching time with Howard, glad at their mutual accomplishment. "It's like teaching anything," adds Peckham. "When people make progress, it's very satisfying."

As teacher and student

Peckham has been teaching a good part of his life but not only flying. He taught at Petaluma middle and high schools from 1950 to 1978: journalism, English, political science, history, and math. Just about everything, he says. For 11 years, he taught journalism at Kenilworth Junior High School and established a school newspaper. He worked as a school counselor as well. Peckham did not get to finish his studies until after the war. One of ten children, he left home at age 16, fleeing rural Oregon in the mid-thirties, and returned to Los Angeles, where he was born, to live with an older sister. He delivered telegrams, riding a bicycle he purchased for $11_ and paid off in 50-cent installments. He later worked as a mail clerk for a photo engraving company. He thought of joining the Army yet friends discouraged him. "But one day I got angry at a boss, walked to the nearest recruitment office and joined," he says. He was 20. He started out working in an Army flight training school on a base in Merced, assisting with parachute inspection. He watched instructors take students up in the air and yearned to get into flight training. His first ride in an airplane was in the back seat of an Army plane during a flight instruction. "It seemed so miraculous" he recalls, "that a big machine like that could leave the ground." He later applied to become an Air Force pilot despite discouraging comments about his height (he's tall, six-foot-two-inches; the cutoff was six feet). "People would always tell me (about many things) 'Oh, you can't do that.' I'd try anyway and usually succeed," says Peckham. He made the grade, underwent the nine months of intense instruction and studying, and became an Air Force pilot. When he completed his service, Peckham went back to school, earning a bachelor of arts degree in political science and economics from California State University at Chico and, later, a master's degree in education from the same University Second flying career Peckham took to the skies again after retiring his school teaching career, flying commercially for a Petaluma meat producer. (He had been renewing his pilot's certificate every two years and flying for enjoyment.) He became a flight instructor at Aeroventure in 1981 when he was in his early sixties. At that time he was working full time, flying 40 to 60 hours a month, teaching 10 students. Now he flies about 10 to 20 hours per month and instructs five students. He rides a bicycle to work often, peddling the four miles from the home he shares with his wife on Petaluma's west side to the airport on the east side. Peckham still enjoys teaching others to fly It's more than teaching; he's also rooting for his students' successes. One woman student was so determined to get her pilot's certificate, he says. "She had already put in 300 hours. If she wasn't going to give up, I wasn't going to." Peckham isn't sure how much longer he'll teach flying. There are some other things he'd like to do: build a fence, see England, New Zealand, The Great Wall in China. Yet he still marvels at the joys of flying: "Every once in a while, I remember what a wonder it is."