s we chased our shadow over Midwestern
cornfields in Sarah Wilson’s Stearman,
I couldn’t help but look up in the rearview
mirror and watch Sarah. I could tell there was
no other place in the world she wanted to be at
that moment, except inside the confines of this narrow
cockpit with hot engine exhaust vapors mixed with the
cool morning air. But Sarah, EAA 738965, will be the first
to admit that being a pilot—especially this kind—was
the furthest thing from her mind when she took her first
flight more than a dozen years ago.
Sarah never gave much thought to any type of flying as
she grew up in Indiana and began working in the marketing/
public relations field. She had never flown in a small airplane,
she had never built models, and no one in her family was an
aviator. In fact, until her 30th birthday, she didn’t know the
difference between an aileron and an elevator.
But when she turned 30 she gave herself one of the best
birthday gifts ever. “I wanted to do something unusual
and different on that day, so instead of blowing out 30
candles I took a discovery flight in a Cessna 150,” said
Sarah. “Within the first five minutes I was smiling from
ear to ear and thought this was the greatest thing I had
ever done in my life. Part of it was being able to take the
controls and make the airplane respond to my inputs; up,
down, turn left or right. It was a beautiful feeling for me,
and at that moment my entire life changed.”
It took Sarah a couple of days to come down from that
first flight, and when she did she made a series of commitments to herself. After poring through volumes of books
on flight training and convincing herself that she could
start a new career at 30 and still make a living, Sarah sold
her vintage 1956 T-Bird and went looking for a flight
instructor. She turned 30 in August and earned her private
pilot certificate by October.
Sarah eventually moved to Florida and became a
certificated flight instructor, building time and adding a
commercial certificate and instrument and multiengine
ratings. Most of her time was spent giving multiengine
dual to new owners and students. Sarah knew this type
of instructing would be good experience to help her land
a job with a commuter airline. Unfortunately, when she
finally made it to the airline pilot ranks, she began to
feel like she wasn’t flying anymore.
“I flew with a lot of different pilots, and almost all of
them were like that cliché of the three stages of flight:
first you fly for free, then you get paid to do it, then
you don’t want to fly anymore,” said Sarah. “I saw some
unhappy people—especially those who said that flying
was ‘just a job.’ I didn’t want to become like that.” She
jumped at the opportunity to fly a Beechcraft C90 King
Air back in Florida, hoping the corporate flying route
might be more suitable. “Unfortunately that type of flying began to wear on me as well because of the beeper
