“Ray and Dorothy used to say, they
didn’t sell an airplane, they gained a
son,” Ron says.
Indeed, the airplane found a good
home, Ron says. With Jeff at the
controls, Eve has flown more than
200 passengers, including scores of
Young Eagles. Yet, everywhere he
goes, it’s still “Ray and Dorothy’s
airplane,” and Jeff is just taking care
of it. That’s why, when Ron finished
Rainman, Jeff gave him a call. Perhaps Ray’s friend might be able to
help him with Ray’s old airplane.
With more than 27 years of flying
under its wings, Cain wanted it to
have a good going-through. As it
was, by then Ron had a hole where
a five-year building habit had once
been. “I’d go over [to the hangar]
and fool around a little bit, and I’d
wander around the house and go
down to the basement, out in the
garage, and my wife said, ‘You’ve got
to do something. This is driving me
nuts,’” Ron says.
The thing is, he needed to tin-
ker with something. His after-work
hobby was done, sitting in a hangar,
and he had time to fill. He’d worked
on cars—he was an auto, then diesel
mechanic for years before going to
work for the college—but he lost
any desire to even change his own
oil a long time ago. “I don’t want
anything to do with cars or anything
like that,” Ron says. “I just want to
fool with airplanes.”
One thing led to another, so
when Jeff asked about Eve, Ron was
tempted. It was Ray’s airplane, after
all, and while Jeff had replaced the
original O-290D with an O-320 a
few years ago to compensate for the
Rocky Mountain density altitude,
Eve was still just as Ray left it, with
only a rudimentary electrical system
and a compass that erred 10 degrees
off course.
Ron went to Margy about the
pay-it-forward tribute. “I made the
comment that I’d really like to redo
it, and she looked kind of funny
at me for a little bit and didn’t say
anything,” Ron says. “So I went to
work the next day, and she called
me at work. She said, ‘You know,
I’ve been thinking, and I want you
to do that airplane.’”
And so, he was off. The disas-
sembled airplane arrived in a U-Haul
truck last July. Still, Ron recognizes
the twists of fate that has him tear-
John Hatz BY LYMAN HATZ
John was born in 1925 and lived on a farm
along the banks of the Wisconsin River. It was
here that he was first exposed to airplanes. Like
many air-minded boys of that era, John built and
flew model aircraft. Flying lessons were the next
big step. At age 17 John took his first lessons
from Chet Mael in a Piper J- 3.
A stint in the Army halted his flying for a
while, and he spent his days in the service as a
telephone cable splicer. He followed this career
path for a short time after returning to civilian
life but soon realized he had to return to aviation. With the help of the GI Bill, John attended
Curry’s School of Aeronautics to get his airframe
and powerplant certificate, and then he earned
his commercial and instructor pilot certificates.
John ran a small fixed base operation (FBO) in
Earlville, Illinois, but when that didn’t work, he
went to Arkansas to “spray cotton.” It didn’t take
him long to realize that wasn’t what he wanted
to do for the rest of his life. In 1952, he moved
to Wausau, Wisconsin, and went to work for the
local FBO as a mechanic and flight instructor. He
stayed there for the next 11 years.
During this time John got married and started
a family. When the airplane-building bug bit him,
he knew he wanted an affordable, easy-to-fly, two-place biplane. He considered scratchbuilding a
Great Lakes but was unable to come up with a set
of plans, so he let the idea simmer while he rebuilt
a J- 3. Then an unfortunate industrial accident severely damaged his foot. He took advantage of his
misfortune and used this downtime to rough out
some drawings and start building wing ribs for his
biplane project. When he returned to work, there
was money in the budget for spars and tubing to
be ordered. Soon the fuselage was framed up and
the center section completed and installed. He
purchased a small farm a few miles east of Wausau with the idea of building a grass airstrip to fly
his new creation from. Good progress was made
on the homebuilt until a 1929 Velie Monocoupe
113 project caught his eye. So, the homebuilt
was moved aside while he quickly re-covered the
Monocoupe. At least that was the plan.
In 1963 John accepted the position of airport
manager at the Merrill Municipal Airport (RRL)
Joe Norris
in Wisconsin. Both projects were mothballed and
a Piper PA- 11 was purchased to serve as the
flight trainer. It was some time before the new
business was successful enough to allow time
and money to be spent on the projects, but by
1966, the Monocoupe was flying. The next winter
saw work on the homebuilt begin again with a
renewed vigor. He finished the wings, installed
the engine, and completed final assembly over
the next year and a half.
The first flight was in spring of 1968. This was
followed by the usual rush to fly the time off so the
summer fly-in circuit could be made. Many people
at the fly-ins expressed an interest in building
their own copy of the little biplane. The problem
was John had not built his with the idea of selling
plans. He had built it just because he wanted it,
and he had only rough working drawings. He had
no interest in drawing or selling plans.
In the summer of 1967 at the Antique Aircraft
Association fly-in in Ottumwa, Iowa, John parked
his homebuilt next to a Gypsy Moth owned by
Dudley Kelly of Kentucky. The two men admired
each other’s aircraft and got to talking. Dudley
noted that although he loved his Moth, the
amount of maintenance required by an antique
made it somewhat impractical. He sure would
like to have a simple, get in and go biplane. “You
know, like yours. How can I get a set of plans?”
John explained once again that he wasn’t in the
plans business, but Dudley wasn’t that easily
put off. He offered to come up to Merrill, take
measurements, and draw up and sell plans. John
told him if he was serious, they could probably
work something out, and promptly dismissed the
conversation as fly-in talk.
Exactly one week later, an unfamiliar PA- 18
landed in Merrill and Dudley got out. The rest, as
they say, is history. Those plans are currently available through the Hatz Biplane Association.
As for John, he continued at the Merrill airport
for a number of years. He retired in 1974 and
bought another farm in Merrill with a private runway he called Haymeadow Airport (5WI5). John was
back doing what he loved most: teaching people to
fly in a Piper Cub and working in grassroots aviation. He died in an automobile accident in 1989.
