Reaching new heights

Three takeoffs. Three landings. It was a simple flight pattern, but it cemented Jack Graham’s status as a solo pilot.

When the Mt Laurel teen taxied his Piper Warrior plane back to the hangar Oct. 7, he was greeted with two markers of his achievement: a dousing of water to “wash away the surly bonds of earth,” and his grandfather’s military pilot jacket.

Jack, a junior at Lyman Ward Military Academy in Camp Hill, Alabama, was the first at his school to achieve solo flight and his student license. 

He’s one of about five students in the flight program at Lyman Ward, he said, and his new call sign is Ranger 01. Future students will receive sequential call signs when they reach the same level.

Jack is the youngest of five kids and the only one who wasn’t interested in some sort of athletics growing up, his father, John Graham, said. Instead, his interests always lay in engineering and science.

“He almost had his pilot’s license before he had his driver’s license,” John Graham said.

Lyman Ward imposes a lot of structure on Jack’s day-to-day routine, he said, from marching to school in uniform with his battalion to living in barracks. He boards there during the week and visits home on weekends. As part of the education, Jack said Lyman Ward requires all students to be involved in an extracurricular activity.

For Jack, that’s the relatively new flight program. He has been working toward his student pilot’s license for more than a year, both in the classroom and at the nearby airport in Alexander City. He said the most difficult part is the daily devotion to studying aviation.

“You have to really buckle down and do your best to be the best,” Jack said.

The morning of his solo flight began bright and early. Jack had already completed his pre-flight checks and was ready to take a couple practice runs with his instructor before 7:30 a.m.

When it came time for him to take flight on his own, Jack said the biggest differences were that the plane felt quieter and took off easier without a second person’s weight. And his landings, Jack said, were “perfect.”

“There’s really nothing like it. To be sitting on that runway, finally push the throttle all the way forward. Your engine starts spinning up, you push back in your seat, you start rolling down that runway — 50, 60, 70 miles an hour. You pull off that runway, and you’re headed up into the skies. It’s the best feeling in the entire world,” he said.

Jack said his greeting after returning to the ground was a surprise. The bucket of water is an aviation tradition marking that the pilot has “now become part of the sky,” he said, but the gift of his grandfather’s jacket was unexpected and special.

The fact that the jacket fit was even better.

John Graham said his own father flew nearly every type of military plane in Korea and Vietnam during his 26-year Army career.

“It was actually an honor … wearing a piece of history and a piece of our family that I can share on,” Jack said.

Jack has taken more solo trips since his inaugural flight. He said what’s next for him is to move up to flying between airports around the region, with his instructor back in the passenger seat.

His goal is to become a commercial pilot and get his license to instruct other future pilots. He will also be participating in air shows with other students at Lyman Ward.

“My main interest and goal in life right now is aviation,” Jack said.