AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 2023 - 72

A
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CHARLESTON,
SOUTH CAROLINA
harleston has a landscape
that encourages
intimacy and partisanship.
I have heard
it said that an inoculation
to the sights and
smells of the Carolina
low country is an almost irreversPat
Waters and his
little dog Samantha
(or Sammy or Sam)
are regulars at
Mount Pleasant's
busy little airport.
Julie and Scott
Grundahl retired
from the U.S. Air
Force and run the
flight school at
Mount Pleasant.
There's an active
flying club here and
the school is busy
with students.
ible antidote to the charms of other
landscapes, other alien geographies. You can be
moved profoundly by other vistas, by other
oceans, by soaring mountain ranges, but you
can never be seduced. You can even forsake the
Lowcountry, renounce it for other climates, but
you can never completely escape the sensuous,
semitropical pull of Charleston and her marshes. "
-Pat Conroy, South of Broad
I was prepared to be seduced by Charleston.
The South Carolina city features prominently
in the books I love, especially the tomes of the
late Pat Conroy whose often florid but magically
evocative words conveyed a place that seemed
unlike anywhere I had been before. From its
rich history to its southern charm, its scented
marshes to its windswept beaches, I dreamed of
a place that would convince me that life should
be lived low and slow, like a Piper Cub puttering
up the coastline on a hot and sultry day.
Conroy, the author of wonderful books such
as The Great Santini, Prince of Tides, and, my
favorite, Beach Music, sure could use words to
his advantage. Like the Southern gentleman
he was, he could spin a tale and infuse it with
the syrupy sweetness and humid insouciance
of a South Carolina summer day. Would I find
Charleston as charming as he portrayed?
Surprisingly, the answer would be found
in the pilots and airports I visited. The history,
natural beauty, food, and elegance of the city
became a given; the people were the lifeblood.
Not unlike a Pat Conroy novel.
" People say my characters are over the top, but, if
anything, I tone them down! " -Pat Conroy
As if walking off the pages, the people we
meet in Charleston are over the top, too.
For more than 10 years of his life, Texan
pilot Jon Engle flew 70,000 feet above the
Earth in the Lockheed U-2 spy plane for the 9th
Strategic Reconnaissance Wing of the United
States Air Force. That was just one of the many
storied aircraft the U.S. Air Force pilot flew in
his 26-year career, from F-16s to F/A-18s, and
he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross
for valor during Operation Desert Storm. Today
he flies his 1942 Piper L-4, which he has owned
since he was 15, over the Lowcountry of South
Carolina as an aerial photographer, low and
slow, documenting changes in the area, both
environmentally and in urban growth.
" I love flying over the city of Charleston, " he
says, as we sit and talk at his base at Charleston
Executive Airport (JZI), which is about 10
miles south of the city. " I come across the bay
over Fort Sumter toward downtown. The city
is a peninsula and I imagine the ships in the
eighteenth century coming into port, how
welcoming it would have been. And I see that
image in my mind from 1,000 feet. I see the
abandoned beaches, the marshes. The dolphins
swimming along the beaches. The egrets. The
bald eagles. The salt-water feeling. "
Engle chose Charleston Executive as his
base ( " Executive is a big name for a small,
friendly airport " ) but says all the area airports
are GA friendly. Charleston International
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AOPA PILOT / March 2023
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 2023

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