Such great heights: Young Greene County aviator takes to the skies
Carmichaels High School student Jacob Fordyce poses for a March 1 photo with Chris Polhemus.
C.R. Nelson
Chris Polhemus and Jacob Fordyce have a discussion at Greene County Airport.
C.R. Nelson
Chris Polhemus and Jacob Fordyce shake hands March 1 at Greene County Airport.
C.R. Nelson
Jacob Fordyce, standing, instructs classmates on the global flight simulator STEMPilot Pro 3 at Carmichaels High School.
C.R. Nelson
From left, Jason Culp, Wayne Aaron, Jacob Fordyce and Chris Polhemus pose for a picture March 1 at Greene County Airport.
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CR Nelson
Jacob Fordyce piloted this airplane March 1, taking off at Greene County Airport.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with the proper name for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.
By C.R. Nelson
Some kids are born to fly.
Tammy Fordyce remembers her brother, Jeremy Aaron, a 20-something who had just gotten his private pilots license, saying with a grin, “Wanna pull some Gs?”
She holds her cellphone a few inches above her other hand to demonstrate what the Rollercoaster drop of negative Gs looks like – a phone floats.
And so do most stomachs.
She remembers looking in the back seat of the cockpit and seeing her four-year-old son, Jacob, grinning from ear to ear.
“That was my first plane ride – I remember it,” said Jacob Fordyce, now 15.
With 11 years of doing everything avian, thanks to a family that loves to fly, he prepared to fly solo March 1, his 16 birthday.
And not just in one plane, but two.
The Greene County Airport Pilot Lounge with its big window view of the landing field is the perfect place to hang out and talk.
This is where Fordyce comes to study with his instructor, retired pilot Chris Polhemus, who has his own landing strip in his backyard on Rutters Lane, Carmichaels. This is where Greene County Flying Club’s Cherokee aircraft is hangered, which Fordyce took into the sky after he landed Polhemus’ Piper Cub March 1.
This is where family and friends gathered to congratulate Greene County’s youngest soloist – a certified pilot license will have to wait until he turns 17.
Fordyce’s father, Cliff, is a flight nurse for Health Net Aeromedical, his mother Tammy’s stepfather, Wayne Aaron, flew helicopters in Vietnam and his father, Wayne Sr., flew Stearman and T-6 Texans during World War II.
Tammy Dorazio and Cliff Fordyce met at McGuffy High School. Cliff graduated from Waynesburg College in 1996 with a degree in nursing and Tammy earned her degree in occupational therapy at Duquesne University. After living in Morgantown, W.Va., the couple moved to Carmichaels and Tammy became the occupational therapist for Carmichaels and West Greene school districts.
When their daughter, Abigail, and then Jacob came along, babysitting was split between grandparents and Jacob’s weekly stint with his grandfather Wayne was the beginning of his flight training, home-school style.
“It’s always been my grandpa showing me things,” Jacob Fordyce says, first with Legos, model plane building sessions poring over every piece, then on to 1,000-piece puzzles of vintage World War II planes and trips to aviation museums in Dayton, Ohio, the Smithsonian and Dullas Museum in Washington, D.C.
In first grade, Fordyce could identify his dad’s Eurocopter 145 as it came in for a landing on the Carmichaels football field and he and his friends ran to the window for a look. By now, anytime the career question was asked in school, he had his answer
“I want to be a pilot,” he would say.
Being in the air was second nature for Fordyce growing up, a place to experience the feeling of freedom as broad as the horizon below, as his uncle Jeremy was often around to take the family for the occasional ride.
Back on the ground, schoolwork, fueled by this sense of purpose seemed to come easy. With smartphones and the internet placing the world at his fingertips, Fordyce was fast becoming self-taught, with a penchant for aviation history, especially those big airplanes of World War II.
When Fordyce was in sixth grade in 2016, serendipity gave him another step up on the ladder of his dreams. A friend of his uncle Jeremy – airline pilot Jason Capra – had run across a 1942 Douglas C-53 used to drop paratroopers in World War II, sitting abandoned on a grassy runway near Beach City, Ohio.
After the war, it became Buckeye I, the official plane for the governors of Ohio but had been grounded for 26 years. Capra bought the plane and he and other pilots of Vintage Wings Inc. got busy making it air worthy. It wasn’t long before Fordyce and his grandfather were making the two-hour weekend drive to work – sometimes for eight hours – on the newly christened Beach City Baby.
It was ferried to Franklin Airport in Venango County in 2018 for a part-by-part restoration and Fordyce continues to help put on the finishing touches as it sits inside its own hanger.
Fordyce was still 14 when he knew it was time to find an instructor and get in the log time and bookwork needed to become a certified pilot. He also knew he had to find the money – around $10,000 – to pay for the instruction time and high priced fuel hours to do it. It would be in the early hours of 2020, while pushing the cart for his mom as she shopped at Sam’s Club, that serendipity struck again.
“Yeah I was bored, so I was looking on my phone,” he recalled, “and I found the scholarship.”
Every year, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) awards $10,000 scholarships to students to help pay for flight certification and teachers who use AOPA’s high school STEM curriculum.
The age for students to apply is 15 to 18 and Jacob would turn 15 days before the deadline.
When the 80 student scholarships were awarded in May, he was the baby of the bunch.
With the scholarship now in hand, Fordyce hit the internet once more, looking for local pilots and found Max Loughman, president Save Our Aviation Resources (SOAR).
“He recommended a list of flight instructors and I went to the airport and met with one,” he said. “I think that must have been destiny because the next weekend I met Chris.”
In another chance encounter of the best kind, Polhemus just happened to fly to Franklin Airport looking for a part. And Fordyce just happened to be inside one of the wings of the C-53 “bucking a rivet” with his grandfather, working from the other side.
Fordyce admits he had already heard of Polhemus who practically lives next door to him and was hoping they would meet up.
A few weeks later, “Chris called me and asked me if I wanted to fly his Piper Cub and he let me do two touch and goes at Greene County Airport. That was my first log entry,” Fordyce recalled.
Carmichaels High School librarian Cassie Menhart has been keeping another log of Fordyce’s flight time – this one on the two flight simulators – the desktop Edustation Pro 3 and the global flight simulator STEMPilot Pro 3 she was able to purchase with alumni donations and Intermediate Unit Innovation grants.
When maintenance supervisor and private pilot David Franks suggested adding flight simulators to the library’s arsenal of things to learn by doing, Menhart jumped at the chance.
“I knew I needed a team to train and work with students – and me,” she said. “So I asked Jacob to join us. He trained me and you should see him showing others how to fly. We usually land at Greene County Airport, but the simulators can be programmed to land anywhere. I’m so glad we’ll have Jacob for another two years because this program is really taking off. This is where the jobs of tomorrow are and the students love it.”
On a cold windswept March 1 morning, Fordyce had flown solo – his first three touchdowns in the Piper Cub, then in the Cherokee, flying patterns above Greene County Airport to test his ability to take off, riding the unpredictable spring air currents then land safely.
Dozens of family and friends cheered and hugged him, shook his hand and got him to pose for photos, including one with the men that have been behind him all the way – his grandpa Wayne, Capra and Polhemus.
He had his shirttail torn off and the date written in Sharpie later – it was far too cold to celebrate outside then.
And, of course, serendipity struck again.
Fordyce found another scholarship online from Make A Pilot Foundation that gives monthly $5,000 awards to kids who want to fly.
“I had to make a video presentation and on Friday night I got an email telling me I’d been chosen,” he said. “I was so surprised I couldn’t sleep.”
Now comes a year of “just soloing and cross-country soloing from one airport to another” until he turns 17 when he can take the test to become a licensed private pilot, old enough to fly the Beach City Baby with Capra beside him.
Any other licensing on the horizon now that you’re 16?
“Oh, you mean my drivers license?” he said. “I took my permit test this morning.”
For more information, visit Greene County Flying Club and Support Our Aviation Resources’ Facebook pages.