Now, I tell my nephew Jeremiah and my niece Emmarie that if they believe in God, in themselves, in their dreams, and work hard, nothing can stop them from realizing their dreams. Looking back, Mr. Kuck was one of the first adults in my life (aside from my parents, who had ALWAYS told me that I could achieve anything at which I worked hard) to help me discover the hidden ability lying dormant within me. Along with Mom and Dad, he is a big reason I am where I am today, living my dream.
Mil novecientos ochenta y quatro
The summer of 1984 brought with it a new addition to our family, the Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles, and legendary battles of Pac-Man between Betty and I. Watching Mary Lou Retton, Carl Lewis, and the US men’s gymnastics team’s gold-metal exploits enthralled Betty and me. We caught Olympic fever and got all caught up in the excitement of watching athletes who were the best at what they did, living out their dreams. In August, just before the start of the new school year, our little brother Jonathan was born. Our parents now had two boys and two girls.
I was excited to be entering junior high, as it meant no more walking in military columns through the school hallways with my classmates. For the first time in my school career, I would have a different teacher for each subject and be able to walk on my own from class to class between periods. I was given a choice of foreign languages to learn, and I chose Spanish, going against the objections of my parents, who wanted me to take French since they spoke it fluently, having been products of the Haitian school system. They considered it part of my heritage, but I wanted to learn Spanish, as Spain seemed a more exotic place to me. As I also had it in mind that I would travel there one day to watch bullfights, (an exciting idea for an eleven-year-old boy) I exercised my independence and decided on Spanish.
During the first few weeks of class, we learned things such as basic Spanish greetings, the days of the week, months of the year, and how to say the year we were in, “mil novecientos, ochenta y quatro”. We learned about Spanish culture, Don Quixote, bullfighting, flamenco, and the Conquistadores who had sailed from Spain to all corners of the globe, killing all who resisted their spread of Spanish language and culture. The whole idea of those sailors heading off into the unknown to explore new worlds (new to them anyway, not to the natives who already lived there) was so exciting (minus all the killing). I thought that if I had been born in that time, before airplanes existed, I would have wanted to be a sailor, venturing to uncharted lands.
As the year went on, I also very much enjoyed my science and history classes. Mr. Dixon, my sixth-grade science teacher, was the first person to explain the physics of how an airplane’s wing creates lift. I had read about it before, but having someone explain it for the first time in language I could understand, helped to bring it to life. In my history class, I learned about the Roman Empire, Greek Civilization, and Greco-Roman mythology. We also studied World War II and the Holocaust, and about slavery, Jim Crowe laws, segregation, and the Civil Rights struggle in the US. The more I learned about the world, the more I wanted to know
My junior high school (Intermediate School 27) was a twenty-minute walk from our building, and for that first year, I made the walk every morning alone, as Betty was still in P.S. 18. Thanks to my New York State standardized test scores from Mr. Kuck’s class, I was placed in the honors program for all my classes, along with all the other so-called “nerds”. I joined the school band as a trumpet player, not realizing that doing so made me the ultimate form of nerd: a “band nerd”. I loved the school’s library because it had an extensive research section, and I discovered a treasure trove of career-related reference books containing detailed information about hundreds of professions. I discovered that many airline pilots learned to fly for free in the military. After completing their training, they were required to serve in the military as pilots for eight years or more, to give the government a return on its investment. After completing their commitment, they could leave the service if they so desired, to join an airline. However, many chose to stay because they enjoyed military flying and could retire with full benefits after twenty years. While I admired military pilots, I never had any desire to be one of them, so I quickly discarded that idea. My goal was to fly for an airline, so I could explore the world and its people.
From my countless hours in the library, I also learned that many airline pilots had taken the civilian route to the cockpit. They would either learn to fly at local flight schools, or in college, where they could major in aviation, getting a Bachelor’s degree alongside their FAA flying licenses. As I read more about it, I decided that was the route I wanted to take to the airlines. I had always wanted to go to college, and majoring in aviation was the obvious choice. If I went to college and got a Bachelor’s degree, I would be the first member of my immediate family to do so. My dad had taken some college courses by correspondence, but driving a taxi more than twelve hours every day to provide for his growing family left little time for much else. Mom had earned her Associate’s Degree from The College of Staten Island but soon after my little brother was born, had taken a job as an assistant manager in a local supermarket to help Dad with supporting their growing family. For a while, she continued to attend college part-time, working towards her Bachelor’s degree. After the birth of their fifth child, my little sister Myriam, in late 1985, and in what would become a recurring theme in the years to come, she sacrificed her personal goals for the sake of her family. She stopped going to college just a few credits shy of her Bachelor’s degree in order to work more hours to provide for her family (and later to help pay for my college costs, so I could achieve my dream).
I continued to read everything I could about the life of an airline pilot, and the more I read, the more I wanted that kind of lifestyle. I learned that pilots for the major airlines have to sit in the right seat as copilots (also known as First Officers or FOs for short) for a few years before upgrading to the left seat as captain. They flew with and learnt from experienced captains (like the cool captains I had watched in all those airline movies) as they built up their flying hours and experience. I learned that pilots got to stay overnight in the cities they flew to, and that their airlines not only paid for their hotel stays, but also gave them an allowance, called a “per diem”, for food expenses. What a great deal! I thought.
I read that on domestic routes, they normally flew for three or four days in a row, overnighting in a different city each night and that on international routes, they sometimes got forty-eight hours or more in exotic locales like Asia or South America, again all paid for by the airline. I found out that most pilots started in smaller turboprop airliners as copilots, eventually working their way up the all-important seniority list to captain in those smaller aircraft before moving up the scale to larger airlines, bigger aircraft, and more exotic, further away destinations. The training was done in full-motion flight simulators (sims for short), in which all kinds of emergency procedures from engine failures to landing-gear malfunctions could be practiced and polished, all without ever leaving the ground. Only after demonstrating mastery of the aircraft in the sim would a pilot be allowed to fly with paying passengers. The initial flights would be under the supervision of airline flight instructors (known as Check Airmen) who would finish the training before releasing the new pilot to the flight line.
All airline pilots also had to undergo annual recurrent training and had to take so-called “checkrides” (simulator flying tests) to earn each required flying license. Thereafter, they had to take a sim checkride every six months if they were a captain and every year if they were a copilot. The career guides said that the FAA required all this ongoing training so that the pilots were able to keep their flying skills sharp and their aviation knowledge fresh. Many of those career reference guides had been written during the late 1970s, the heyday of airline flying, before the effects of deregulation hit the airlines with full force. Thus, the picture they painted in my mind was particularly rosy. I was also astonished to read that airline captains earned salaries in the six-figure range, right up there