Our heroes affect us

The E train is an express that runs from Queens into Manhattan. Express simply means it makes fewer stops than a local train.

The E enters Manhattan at 53rd Street then runs south to the World Trade Center.

A large portion of the New York City population depends on this train and others like it to get around.

It was while riding the E that a young woman caught my eye. She was dressed a bit more casually but appropriately for the time. I’m guessing she was a college student. New York City is awash in college students.

She attracted my attention because she was doing what so many of us were prone to do in the mid- to late-1980s while riding the underground rails. She was reading. Before smartphones and wireless earbuds, reading was a popular activity.

No kidding. It’s true.

It’s not the fact that she was reading that makes me remember her all these years later. It’s what she was reading: “Illusions, the Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah,” by Richard Bach.

Bach was one of the truly great writers who had the ability to weave aeronautical experiences into stories people of all walks of life could enjoy. You didn’t have to be a pilot to love Bach’s work. But it didn’t hurt if you were.

The woman on the train and I exchanged a few pleasantries, agreed we loved the book she was reading, and that we both held the author in high regard. She was sweet, and smart, and quite attractive. Yet when the train made a stop she got off. A few stops later at West 4th Street I did the same.

I never saw her again.

Perhaps it’s ironic, or weird, but it is absolutely true that I fell in love with the idea of flying when I was living in the concrete and steel confines of New York City.

Manhattan doesn’t have a reputation as a general aviation friendly environment. But it was while living in Manhattan in the 1980s that I started reading Bach’s books. I found a newsstand on Broadway that stocked a variety of aviation magazines. I began reading them, too.

Eventually the dream became powerful enough that I started to take flying lessons. I rode a train, to another train, then took a bus, which dropped me off to face a long walk to the FBO at Islip Airport, now known as Long Island MacArthur Airport.

For those of us who catch the bug, inconvenience may very well become the norm. Like all flight students I blanched at the cost, but persevered because something said I should. I must.

Richard Bach imparted a sense of adventure and a quest for something ethereal that could only be found in the air. Perhaps like his famous seagull, Jonathan, I felt a tug toward something just beyond my understanding. So I continued on.

My flight training moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where I made progress but didn’t exactly flourish. It was a relocation to the very general aviation friendly state of Florida that allowed me to truly come into my own. To realize the dream of flying on a daily basis. To actually earn a living at the controls of an airplane.

Yes, Virginia, dreams can come true.

Nearly 30 years after abandoning my claustrophobically small Greenwich Village apartment for sunnier climes, I found myself at Jack Brown’s Seaplane Base. This is where I trained to earn my seaplane rating. Frankly, it seems to be where most pilots who get their sea wings train.

Little did I know when I moved to this little burg that two luminaries of the arts once called this place home. One was Gram Parsons, a musician whose shadow is longer and more influential than the lifespan of its owner. The other was Richard Bach, who lived in a house located directly next door to the seaplane base.

I never entered that house, long gone now, replaced by a more modern, less termite infested structure. But I marveled that the book I was so enthralled by in the hands of a girl on a train was written in the house next door.

One day while at the seaplane base, I asked Jon Brown, the second-generation owner of the facility, if he knew which other books Bach wrote while living next door.

“I don’t know,” Jon called back over his shoulder. “But that’s his Husky. He flew in yesterday. You can ask him yourself.”

How cool is that? Richard Bach and I were flying seaplanes that were beached next to each other right here in my new home town.

As much as I’d have loved to seek him out, I had a flight to do. I was on the schedule. Far be it from me to let a scheduled flight time slip for personal reasons that have nothing to do with the safety of flight.

When I returned, Richard Bach, big as life, was standing on a float organizing the cockpit of his Husky. I finished up my work, bundled over to my car in a rush, and retrieved a copy of my own first novel, “Burritos and Gasoline.” I was dead set on giving it to Richard.

He hugged the book to his chest and thanked me in a manner so sincere I believed he really cared about being offered the gift.

We chatted and found we’d both lived in and around Phoenix at the same time. Back then he was a fighter pilot and I was in diapers — but still. Proximity matters to some degree, I’m sure. Just as the happenstance of us both being at the water’s edge at the same time.

Luck does not come to those who simply wait for it. At least some effort is required. An open heart and open eyes don’t hurt either.

I have never once touched the hem of Richard Bach’s writing robe, if he owns such a thing. He’s a more experienced pilot, a far better writer, and equally weird or weirder in all the right ways.

But to have the pleasure of meeting one’s heroes…well that’s a special thing.

As is the aviation game which Richard so meaningfully encouraged me to pursue — even if he had no idea he’d done so.

May you meet your heroes as well. Better yet, become the hero others want to emulate. You might like it.