This
Month's Profile...
Jack
Fleming
By Hilda
Maston
My wife Nancy and I have been married for
46 years. We have two children -- Jim, 45 years, and
Ann, 43 years -- both married with five grandchildren.
I am one of two sets of twins, all boys,
thirteen months apart. We are the 4th generation of the
Fleming family clan on Maui, Hawaii.
I grew up on Maui, attended Baldwin High
School and Maui vocational school and one year at
Honolulu vocational school. During those years I earned
a private pilot's license and an aircraft mechanic's
license.
I went into the Army during the Korean
War and was sent to Big Delta, Alaska, as a rotary and
fixed-wing aircraft mechanic. I was discharged after
three years with the rank of sergeant.
I went to work for Petroleum Helicopters
in Lafayette, LA. They sent me to work in Colombia,
South America, for two years. Our helicopters supported
a petroleum company which was doing oil exploration
work. We lived on a barge converted into a houseboat,
approximately 30x80. All of our helicopter maintenance
was done in the field. This included complete tear-down
and rebuild of the helicopters. We had three
helicopters, three pilots, and three mechanics. Two
pilots and two mechanics were on duty at all times. Our
work schedule was the same as in the petroleum industry
-- two weeks on, one week off.
I returned to Hawaii and earned a
commercial pilot's license and did some air charter work
with my younger brother. We could not make a go of it
with the both of us, so he stayed with the air charter
work and I went back to aircraft maintenance. One year
with Lockheed aircraft services and one year with Hawaii
Air Lines, then I was laid off.
The next six or so years I was working on
an Army military, fixed-wing and rotary aircraft at
Wheeler Air Force base on Oahu. This was contract work
and renewed every two years. Bidding on contracts is
not my cup of tea, so I left, but on good terms with
all.
Nancy and I sold our house, took the kids
out of school and moved by slow boat to Australia, via
Fiji, Tonga, and New Zealand. I started looking for
work and ended up in Brisbane, working for Ansett Air
Lines of Australia for the next 15 years.
We moved back to the US in 1980, and I
went to work with US Air in Pittsburgh. PA.
I retired in 1990 and moved to Sandy Hook
Road, Poulsbo. We call our place "Puka Lani," which means
"Hole to Heaven" in the Hawaiian language.
One of the many great experiences in my
life so far was traveling with Nancy and the kids over
land from Katmandu, Nepal, to London. I had accumulated
three months vacation by 1972 with Ansett so we -- the
eight of us in a van -- started from Katmandu down into
India and up into the western Himalayas, Srinagar, and Simla, across to Pakistan into Afghanistan, through the
Khyber pass to Kabul, and on to Heart; then into Iran,
down to Teheran, up to the Caspian Sea and across Turkey
to Istanbul. This took three months which used up my
vacation time, and Nancy and the kids continued on for
another month to London and flew back to Brisbane via
the US. Our budget was a dollar a day per person
excluding petrol, so we did a lot of camping out on the
trip.
Our most recent trips have been with
"Global Volunteers" and "Earth Watch," which is very
rewarding. (Nancy wrote about our last adventure
in the May newsletter.)
We attended Eagle Harbor Congregational
Church on Bainbridge for approximately 13 years. My
hearing is deteriorating and I found that the acoustics
are much better at the Suquamish church.
My major hobbies are wood working and
kayaking and many minor interests, hiking, traveling and
cooking.
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Thank you Jack — I’m
really glad our sound system is so good!
