The Milan News-Leader
A Heritage Newspaper
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Hill learns to fly at 86 years old
By Brian Cox, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: August 7, 2008
You can't keep 86-year-old Victor Hill down.
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The Augusta Township resident took to the air last month on his first flight lesson after his son bought it for him as a birthday gift.
"I thought, 'You know what, maybe I can get him into this just for fun," said William Hill, a flight instructor and safety volunteer with the Federal Aviation Administration in California. "It took a little convincing."
When he says "a little," William Hill means years.
The first step was purchasing his father a flight simulation program for his computer a couple years ago.
That was a hit.
Victor Hill became engrossed with the software that allowed him to fly all manner of planes, from large jets to small lightweight two-seaters, from a guest room in his Augusta Township home. He spent hours in virtual flight, and he learned a thing or two about aviation.
He learned, for example, that "it's kind of hard to fly a 747."
At his computer, Hill could fly all over the country. He could even set the weather conditions.
"I once took off from Detroit when there was a thunderstorm," he said. "You could see the lightning."
Hill, who moved to Milan in 1997, retired after working 31 years at the Ypsilanti State Hospital, where he started out as a groundskeeper and ended his career as the superintendent of maintenance, overseeing the operation of the expansive hospital's power plant.
"I've always been proud of him for working his way up," said his son.
Years ago, Hill used to enjoy going along on flights with his brothers-in-law who were licensed pilots, flying a Luscombe out of Larsen Airfield on Rawsonville Road. He's taken numerous flights with his son at the controls.
But no matter how much William Hill urged his father to learn how to fly himself, Victor Hill put it off.
"I would have liked to," he said, "but I couldn't afford it. You can only do a certain amount of things."
Two years ago, Hill's wife, Margaret Chie Hill, passed away and he found himself without his lifelong traveling companion.
Not long after, Hill had to start undergoing kidney dialysis three times a week.
It was around then his son bought him the flight simulator program.
On Christmas Eve last year, Hill became seriously ill and required surgery on his bowel on Christmas Day.
He nearly died, his daughter said.
And then he had a heart attack while in the hospital.
Many might think such health ordeals would keep an 86-year-old man grounded and sitting on his couch, but they would be wrong.
Last March, William Hill decided it was time for his father to experience flying the real deal and as a birthday gift he bought him a flight lesson at Ann Arbor Airport.
"When you go up in the sky and you're flying around, you seem to forget about anything else that's worrying you," said William Hill, explaining how flying can be therapeutic. "You're completely focused on the task at hand. It requires a lot of concentration."
After years of persuasion, Victor Hill was finally going to take the controls of a real airplane.
On the morning of July 2, Hill and his daughter, Vicky Englebert, and his 14-year-old great-granddaughter Maggie Williams, climbed into a Cessna 182 with flight instructor Jim Alford.
A World War II veteran who served from 1942 to 1944 as a pharmacist mate aboard the USS Dent and as a Navy corpsman for five months during the battle of Guadalcanal, where he contracted malaria, Hill is not intimidated by much.
The dials and gauges inside the cockpit of the Cessna 182 didn't faze him a bit. His experience on the simulator had familiarized him with much of it, and after adjusting from using a joystick to using a sidestick controller and rudders, he got the knack of handling the plane quickly.
"As a matter of fact, I could take off pretty good," Hill said.
The landings, though, he admitted, were a little rough.
"I never did master the landing too well," he said. "I think they said the wind was eight knots, but closer to the ground there seemed to be more turbulence."
For the next two hours, traveling at times at an altitude of 3,000 feet and at around 120 miles an hour, Hill flew out over Chelsea and Sand Lake in the Irish Hills and Milan.
He had to take a minute to think about what he liked best about the flight.
"I enjoyed it all," he said. "I don't think I could pick out any one thing. I guess it would be that Vicky and Maggie agreed to go along and trusted me."
"He's always had an adventurous spirit," said his daughter. "He likes to figure things out."
A month after experiencing his first flight behind the controls, Hill said he wasn't interested in trying to get his pilot's license.
But that doesn't mean he won't take another lesson.
"I'm thinking strongly about doing it again some day," he said, "but I have to get in the mood."
He encourages other seniors to consider learning to fly.
"I don't know of any other experience that would be as exuberant as getting up in the air and looking down," he said.
Staff Writer Brian Cox can be reached at 429-7380 or bcox@heritage.com.
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