George Elton Abernethy Oral History Interview [January 24, 1996]

              Elton Abernethy, interviewed by Mary Lewis Deans
Date of interview: January 24, 1996
EA: Elton Abernethy, [born] January 1, 1945, Duke Hospital, Durham, North
Carolina. Do you want me to tell you about playing airplane or school or what?
MID: Yes, I want to hear about playing airplane.
EA: When I was a little --- I have not known a time when I was not interested in
aviation and airplanes. I used to play cowboy and Indians with Dr. Chambliss' kids
and all the kids in the neighborhood. It kind of got rough because I wanted to be the
cowboy. The Indians wanted the pistols. They got bows and arrows. One of the kids
shot me with the arrow. Broke my collar bone, and I --- you know, playing cowboys
and Indians got kind of rough. Well, I was always interested in airplanes, you know,
so I figured I could survive and airplane crash better than I could, playing cowboy and
Indians. I had this old football helmet I had got one Christmas for my football
uniform, and I had this speaker-type microphone that went with a Rocky Jones Space
Cadet thing. So I could take that and put it on my football helmet and put it across
my mouth and I could make the sounds like, "Calling Morocco, calling Morocco," you
know, that sort of thing. I had a music stand. I played a saxophone and a trumpet,
too. Maybe not played them I played at them But I had this music stand. I fixed it
up. I had my airplane, my cockpit. I had a yoke or stick what you drive an airplane
with --- for flying. I used to sit there. I had this thing. I'd put cardboard over me and
I had a little cockpit and I played airplane. I could go anywhere I wanted to go, be
anybody I wanted to be. And I just had a ball. I would fight the Pacific War all over
again. I'd go out there and strafe the beaches at Iwo Jima and go down to New
Caledonia and have a great time help them with the Battle of Midway. I just had a
good time. Occasionally, I'd go to Europe and try to help the Allied Powers to beat
the Axis, you know. I'd bomb places like Berlin, Dusseldorf, all those things. I've
always been a World War ll history buff. Even then, I was kind of interested in
history, and I knew from watching old movies, you know, the old Jimmy Stewart
movies and all that, where they would bomb these places. I knew the names of the
places. And John Wayne. I knew John Wayne had won the Pacific for us. I knew all
the names of Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal. I'd just go there and do it. I'd have a ball.
Airplane was the thing for me. It stayed with me. That's what I eventually grew up
and did. I have over 10,000 hours of flying time now. I have a degree in aerospace
technology. I guess playing airplane was the thing for me.
MI.D: Now I want you to trace your way through school.
EA: School. Bad subject. I started out at Glennwood Hall which was where --- it
was a church next to City Lake in Rocky Mount. The reason I went to Glennwood
Hall was--- it was no kindergarten then--- and my birthday came on January first,
and I was not with the rest of the kids that were my peer group at that time. My
mother wanted me to be with those guys instead of waiting a year and being with the
other guys. Being my birthday didn't fall right, the people at Glennwood Hall said,
"Bring him on. We'll take him and go into the first grade. So I entered the first
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grade. I was actually five and a half years old. Big mistake. I was not mature
enough to go to the first grade. But anyway, I went to Glennwood Hall. I got
through there. Then I went to Nashville Elementary. In fact, I had Mildred Hinton,
was my second grade teacher, a very fme, outstanding woman. I went to Nashville
High School. They didn't have middle schools then. You went from elementary to
high school, bang. You went from the eighth, and the ninth grade was high school.
MLD: Was it all in the same building?
EA: No. It wasn't that far back. They had, in fact, the new elementary school, as far
as I was concerned, it was new because I was in the third grade when they built it.
We had three buildings. The first four grades were in that building, then you went
five, six, seven. Jessie Corbett had an eighth grade class that was held down in the
basement. Jessie Corbett, she was later murdered over in Nashville, about ten years
ago. Anyway, she had a basement class because the library for the elementary school
was in her class down there. In the eighth grade you took care of the library as well
as was in the eighth grade. I remember that too. That was pretty good. Nan Leonard
was my secretary. She sat behind me and she took all the notes for me. I just could
not listen and take notes at the same time, so she took care of me and was my
secretary. I got through the eighth grade--- just barely. Then we went to high school.
High school was another thing. Football. I wanted to play football so bad. I
went out and bought my football shoes. I hid my uniform because my mamma didn't
want me to play and my daddy said, "Well, what your mamma says goes." So, I
couldn't play football. I did play football. I hid my shoes and I hid my uniform.
Thursday nights I used to go down and wash it at the laundromat so they wouldn't see
it. I had been playing football for six weeks when my daddy decided to go to a game
one Friday night and saw me sitting on the bench in a uniform So that's how they
found out I played football. But anyway do anything. They said, "Okay." So the
next year, I did pretty good at football,in the tenth grade. I was a big, kind of hefty
little kid.
I weighed 210 pounds in the ninth grade. So I could at least fill up a space in
a hole. My junior year, I started playing. I really wasn't getting a whole lot done
educationally. One day I came in. I came home for lunch because I could walk. It
was close. I was eating lunch. I remember one this really well. I was eating
hamburger steak and french fries. My daddy came in and laid this letter on the table.
I looked at it, and it had the return address of Oak Ridge Military Institute, Oak Ridge,
North Carolina. I looked at that, opened it; and it said, "Welcome to the 1960-'61
corp of cadets at Oak Ridge Military Institute. I said, "Welcome? I don't even know
who these people are. I never even applied to this. What is this?" So Daddy says, "I
been talking to these people. I been talking to Bucky Overton, so anyway, Bucky
Overton at Overton Restaurant had talked to Daddy, and he was a big supporter of
Oak Ridge at the time?
MLD: Do you mean Buck?
EA: Big Buck.
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N01E FROM MLD: There was Old Man Buck (probably born about 1870,) Buck
(probably born about 1915, died 1995) and Bucky (born in 1948 or 1949.) Elton was
talking about Buck
EA: I talked to Daddy. I said, "Look, I don't want to go here," you know. He said,
"Well son, you got three things on your mind. That's cars, women, and football. And
not necessarily in that order, but that's what's on your mind, and I want you to get an
education." So we mulled it around. Finally, toward the end of the school year, he
finally came up to me and said, "Son, if you don't want to go, if you really don't want
to go, you don't have to go." He said, "But I really feel like that this is the best thing
for you to do." So, putting that way, I said, "Well, I'll give it a try. What the heck?
It might be interesting." So I went off to military school, to Oak Ridge Institute.
Well, you know that year that I had gained in the first grade, I lost at Oak Ridge
because he enrolled me as a junior. I had already done my junior year at Nashville
High School, and he enrolled me as a junior at Oak Ridge. I went to military school
as a junior, which did not hurt me. In fact, it was very helpful. I finally caught up to
myself, and I did well at Oak Ridge. At six-thirty every evening, they blew this little
horn; and you went to your room And if they came by and you weren't studying or
didn't have a book open, they gave you demerits. For every demerit you got you had
to march for an hour--- with an M-1. And an M-1 was a heavy weapon, especially if
you carried it around for an hour. It didn't weigh but nine pounds, six ounces. But at
the end of the hour, it felt like it weighed fifty, sixty pounds.
So anyway, I went to Oak Ridge and I did right good because during the week
you had a structured area there. You didn't go outside of that structure. But on the
weekends, boy, you could raise hell. I mean, really go to it. So that's what everybody
would do. We'd study and we'd work hard during the week, and we'd go out on the
weekend and we'd have a ball. Come back in after the weekend and we'd have to get
down and start studying again. Well I did pretty good. Made the military honor roll.
Made the dean's list, did all sorts of good stuff; and I really had a good time. Even
after I finished my senior year, which was two years, I went a year in their college
preparatory division which didn't hurt me any.
But the next year, I went off to Chapel Hill, to the University of North
Carolina; and that was not good. I went down there and there was nobody there to tell
me to go to my room at six-thirty and to open my book and to start studying. If you
went to Chapel Hill, you could raise hell seven days a week Nobody said anything to
you You just went out and did it. So, as a result of that, I pledged a fraternity, was
out there doing all this good stuff, you know, and just really getting into the social end
of college life and having a ball. Unfortunately, my grades suffered. I had the lowest
average in the house, there at the fraternity. So they asked me to leave. Well, I left.
I went off and went to East Carolina for a summer session, to try to straighten
things out. Well, didn't do too good there that summer. They asked me to leave, too.
So then, somebody said, "Mount Olive has got a junior college, and they're pretty
good." I went down to Mount Olive Junior College, and I run into this guy who was
a Methodist minister and had a doctorate degree, named Raymond Carson. Dr. Carson
was absolutely unbelievable. He was worse than anybody I had run into in military
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school. This guy, you didn't get nothing on this guy. He was tough. I mean, he said,
"Everything you do, I've done. And I know what you're trying to do." Well, I did
pretty good at Mount Olive. However, I didn't do real great. The big thing was, they
asked me what they wanted me to learn. They never asked me what I knew. I found
that to be a big problem from the first grade on However, finally, they asked me to
leave, too.
So I come back, and I worked at Daddy's service station for about four
months. I had been looking in this book I took Flying Magazine. I saw this thing
that said, "Come learn to fly in the sun in :Miami at Burnside-Ott Aviation Training
Center." Don Burnside and the Ott brothers were Burnside-Ott. So I decided that was
what I was going to do. I was going to :Miami to seek my fame and fortune and learn
to fly. So on March 21st, 1966, I loaded up my '62 Chevrolet and we took off for
:Miami, Florida. Well, I got down there, and I got enrolled in the flight training. I got
a job. My daddy wasn't too happy. My mamma wasn't too happy that I had just up
and gone. He really wasn't happy about the flying.
MLD: Did you have to pay your own way?
EA: I did at first.
MLD: Was it expensive?
EA: Very expensive. However, I got a job as a line-boy down there. Line-boys wash
windshields.
MLD: On the flight line?
EA: On the flight line. See, Burnside-Ott was the largest aviation training school in
the nation at the time. We had 180 airplanes. So, being the only line-boy kept me
rather busy. And they paid right good money. Also, being a line-boy, I could always
work out and get a little flying here and a little flying there that I didn't have to pay
for. Well, they had a connecting type of deal with the junior college there, :Miami­Dade.
Later it became :Miami-Dade Community College. They had flight courses in
their aviation [program] They had career pilot. They had aviation-aerospace tech,
and all this sort of stuff. I said, "Wow, a college that teaches what I really want to
learn." So I said, "This is for me." So I enrolled and I called Daddy and I told him I
had enrolled. From then on Daddy was very supportive. He had wanted me to get a
college education He said, "Okay. This is good." So he helped me there, and he
helped me with my flying. In fact, he paid all my flying after that. But I still worked
as a line-boy, later worked as a mechanic. Did all my apprenticeship to be what you
call an A & P or Airframe and Powerplant mechanic. That was good because it was
all aviation I had to take one or two English, writing, courses, which were no
problem for me. But it was all geared in aviation, so I knew it was all going that way.
I had no problems. In fact, I graduated with a 3.8 average and was tapped into Sigma
Alpha Tau which is a national honor aerospace fraternity. I went on eventually and
got my bachelor's degree in airline and airport management. Aviation was just it from
playing airplane all the way to graduation
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MLD: Did you ever serve in the military?
EA: No, I served a short time, but I medically was unable do that. So I went to work
for a company called Air America.
MLD: Where'd you fly for Air America?
EA: I flew mostly in South America and Central America. I made a few jaunts to
Southeast Asia, but I wasn't there very much. Most of my stuff was in South
America, Ecuador and Argentina and Peru, Nicaragua.
l\1LD: Where did you fly out of?
EA: .Miami. .Miami for a while. Then I flew out of a little island called Great Harbor
in the Berry Island Group down in the Caribbean. I flew an old DC-3 that came off
the assembly line December 24, 1939. So it was six years older than I was. I had a
great time flying it. Then I later went up to C-130. I flew that for a little while.
MLD: Who owned Air America?
EA: It was a government operation. Anyway, all I did was fly. I didn't do any other
type of ...
MLD: I hear they paid well.
EA: Very well. And I enjoyed that.
l\1LD: How many years did you do that?
EA: Twenty-two months. Then after that I came back and flew with a real estate
company for a little while, out of .Miami. Then for a short while I flew non-scheduled
with Ecuadoriana Airlines. I couldn't get on with them because I was not an
Equadorian national. But I could fly non-scheds. I did that for almost eighteen
months.
MLD: How did you get all those flying hours? How many hours did you say you
have?
EA: Well, I have 9,980.
MLD: That's a lot of flying time. And you got all that in a few years?
EA: No, it took about twenty.
MLD: So who else did you fly for?
EA: Well, I flew for them for a while, then I flew with different real estate
cornparues. Most of it was corporate flying. Flew DC-3s a while. Then I flew a
5
'
King Air for a while. Just odd jobs, picking up here and there. But I did anything to
get flying time. I mean I would fly airplanes that probably nobody in the world would
touch. I flew some runs out of Miami to South America that today I wouldn't even
walk under the wing of that airplane today. But I wanted flying time so much, so bad,
that I knew I had to get it. I wouldn't trade anything for what I had, and I did it.
Every time I got close to an airline job, they upped the ante. Pretty soon, I used to
say that the only way to get a job with an airline was to be a 21-year-old PhD out of
:MIT with a degree in aeronautical engineering and have three orbits of the moon. I
never probably could have passed the physical. I really could just keep my first-class
physical. That was kind of iffy at times. Probably at an airline physical they would
have found out because I was diagnosed with scleroderma which is a really
disqualifying disease, when I was thirteen years old. I just never told anybody. I
wouldn't trade any of it for the world. And I had a good time flying. That's just
everything in my life.
MLD: Tell me about photography. You're interested in photography.
EA.: Well, I used to own a camera shop. But they asked me to leave.
MID: You know, earlier, you told me that what was wrong with Carolina and
Greenville was that they didn't have any airplanes.
EA: That's true. They didn't. There was no airplanes, no aviation, no anything.
Ruby Freeze used to, in high school, chemistry and biology, you know. Donald Ross
lived in Nashville. He used to come over every now in then in an old F-3H Demon, a
navy aircraft. I don't care what she was doing, I'd go to those windows and watch. I
mean, it would be in the middle of the class. Bang, I was at the window, watching.
Aviation was all I wanted to do. And everybody kept saying, "Awh, you're too big.
You're too ugly. You're too dilapidated. You won't ever pass the physical. You
won't ever do this. You're not good in math. You can't do this." But I did it. And
that's all.
MLD: Tell me about the camera shop.
EA: Well, the camera shop is kind of a crazy idea. Nashville is not a big enough
town to support a camera shop. But I went into it anyway. I'm often too determined
to do things sometimes. But I went into it, and I had a nice camera shop. I liked
photography, and I enjoyed photography. I had just --- I was trying to get off
disability, actually. I was disabled due to the scleroderma, as it's called now,
progressive systemic sclerosis. I was looking for anything. I just didn't want to be on
disability. I wanted to work. I wanted to do something. I started this camera shop.
Ben Casey helped me. In fact, Ben taught me everything I know about photography.
Every time I make a bad picture, I blame it on Ben. He's an outstanding individual. I
think the world of Ben. At that time, I was having problems, being disabled. He'd
take up a lot of time with me. Taught me a lot about photography, about developing,
and everything. So I tried to open a camera shop. We finally went bust with it. I
finally went bust. Lindsey Meyers from Down East Camera came over and bought my
stuff and moved it to Rocky Mount. He's doing great. I think probably if I'd moved
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to Rocky Mount, I'd of done pretty good. But I was ... There again, I kind of got into
a deal with the Wilson Municipal Airport at that time. I started to working over there
as a fixed-base operator which handles flight school, fueling airplanes, and stuff like
that. So I got more interested in that, and took my eye off the camera shop. There
again, airplanes. I just couldn't resist that.
MLD: Do you have another story you want to tell?
EA: When my sugar gets back up, and I'm more me, I can tell you a lot of stories.
l\.1LD: Okay.
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