Sometimes a lifetime of aviation doesn't mean flying every day. And an aviation resume doesn't come close to telling the whole story...but here goes.

Peter Rafle took his first ride in an airplane before his first birthday, riding in a DC-3 from Syracuse to New York City in 1941. As a boy, he became an avid model builder, after watching his father and older brother build a silver-painted model Piper Cub. From the ages of 10 to 17, model airplanes provided his connection to the sky - in sixth grade, he founded a chapter of the "Cloud Busters" model airplane club. His junior year of high school, victory in an essay contest won him a round-trip ride in a DC-6 from old Roosevelt Field (Mitchell) to Montauk at the eastern tip of Long Island.

He joined Navy in fall 1963 in last semester of college, partly on a dare from college advisor and largely because the Navy was willing to guarantee him flight training. After being sworn into the US Navy at Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn, he reported to NAS Pensacola in as a member of Class 34-63 to begin Pre-Flight School as an Aviation Officer Candidate. He took time to marry my mother during a leave in December 1963. After receiving his commission in January 1964, he began primary flight training in the T-34, and soloed on March 11, 1964. You can see the joy of flight in his eyes in the photograph we've enclosed with this profile, taken after that first solo flight.

Basic Flight, Instrument and Formation training took place in the T-28 beginning in April, and he soloed the T-28 on April 24. He qualified for carrier operations on 9/8/64, making several traps on USS Lexington in the T-28. Next came multi-engine training at NAS Corpus Christi on October 2, 1964 in S2F Tracker, including carrier qualifications in February 1965 on USS Wasp. Ltjg Peter Rafle received his "Wings of Gold" as a Naval Aviator on 4 March 1965 (#V22325). After completing Navy Navigator School, Nuclear Weapons School, ASW School, and Escape and Evasion School, he reported to Moffett Field near San Francisco, CA, to begin training in the P3A "Orion", the Navy's new antisubmarine patrol aircraft, which was slated to replace the aging Martin P-5 flying boat.

He reported to VP-47 end of November 1965, and logged his first P-3A flight with the squadron VP-47 on December 6, 1965, just a few days after his 25th birthday. A month later, he was on his way to Okinawa and Southeast Asia for a deployment patrolling the waters around Vietnam and the South China Sea. In June 1966 he made three flights north of 18°30'N (Tonkin Gulf). VP-47 Returned to Moffett Field 6/29/66, and Rafle saw his new son, Peter Jr., born during the deployment, for the first time. Between deployments, daughter Sarah was born, in April of 1967. After a second deployment from June 67 through January 68, he left the Navy in August 1968, and almost immediately began training to fly the new 707 jet airliner with Pan American Airways. At that time, long-distance navigation still relied on celestial fixes with a sextant, and Rafle served as navigator on his first "Revenue" flight with Pan Am on 1/6/69 from San Francisco to Honolulu. The airline business was an uncertain one, though and he was furloughed from Pan Am, making his last flight with the airline on 10/7/69. A month later her was flying for Trans World Airlines, but that, too was short-lived. He was furloughed from TWA in May 1970.

What followed was seven years of practically everything but flying. With three small children (Peter was 4, Sarah 3, and Tenney just a few months old), paying the bills was more important than "soaring with the eagles." Selling real estate and insurance, but most of all teaching. In teaching, he found a vocation just as satisfying as flying, and he was gifted at it. He worked with learning and emotionally disabled kids at New York City's Churchill School, teaching biology and earth science in Norwalk, Connecticut's tough urban high schools and a private boarding school in Massachusetts. He found time to finish a master's in educational administration. After just a year teaching biology at Berkshire School, he got the call from TWA - they were re-hiring furloughed pilots.

So it was back to the airlines. This time the ride lasted more than three years, from Feb 28 1977 (daughter Tenney's seventh birthday) until, inevitably, the furlough notice came again. Karl Icahn had gutted TWA, and my father's days as an airline pilot were over in June 1980. This time he declined to leave his name on the "recall" list.

He and Peter Jr. spent two whole summers flying gliders at a little grass strip in Canaan, Connecticut. And finally, working for a startup heating equipment company, Kero-Sun, launched by another Pan Am alumnus, that burned bright before crashing in the flames of Chapter 11, at least partly because money that should have been reinvested to cushion business slowdowns was spent on a Piper Navajo, a Cessna Citation, and a helicopter.

After that, aviation took a back seat, and he logged only a few hours each year until 1992. Of course, there was some flying in there, too.

What happened next? I don't exactly know, but something lured Dad back to the airport in Princeton. And about that time, his children began to notice a change in their father. After nearly two decades during which we all felt there was something missing, he's whole again. He's flying again - and teaching, too. He's now a Certified Flight Instructor and CFII, and he's part owner of a hot little Citabria Explorer - and grandson Liam and granddaughter Amelia love sitting in the cockpit of "Papa's Plane". It's a mixed blessing, of course. He's spending virtually every weekend at the airport. But when he comes home, he's wearing that smile again - that smile in the "first solo" picture. And it's hard for us not to smile, too.

Summary to date (December 2000):

Flight Engineer Time: 1509 Hours
Navigator Time: 373 Hours
Total Pilot Time: 3500+ Hours
Types flown: T-34, T-28, S2F, Beech 18, SP2H, P-3A, P-3B, SP2-7, B-707 321B, B707-300C, B-727-100, B-727-200, C-150, C-172, C-182, C-140, PA-16, PA-28, PA-34, PA-44, Citabria 7ECA, Citabria 7GCBC, Beech A35, Beech A36