The Hammerhead Blues

by Glenn Daly

Five years ago, a casual observer might have thought that John Marshall had the world by the shorts. Winner of an Emmy and two Gold Mike's for his superior reporting skills at KNBC in LA, married to his high school sweetheart, the talented and beautiful actress, Joan Van Ark, ensconced in a hillside home with a view of the valley, what could he have lacked?

Well, how 'bout a job. Downsized because he no longer fit the bubble-headed bleach blonde mold that KNBC's parent, General Electric, wanted, John's career was terminated. Bitter? You betch'ya. Disillusioned. Completely.

As he tells it, "I was angry, and bitter, for a long time because what happened to me was really wrong. It wasn't until about a year ago that I was able to say, 'Hey, everything's okay, and it's all worked out. You know," he says, reflecting on the experience, "If I'd stayed there, I'd be an unhappy man today."

The defining moments in our lives are rarely identified by blasts from a heavenly klaxon - and rarely are they pleasant. Oftentimes, our reactions are perceived as escapes from reality - in John Marshall's case, his escape became his reality.

Growing up during LA's postwar aviation boom, John's love of aircraft was fostered watching Douglas, McDonnell and Lockheed fill the skies with fighters, bombers and transports. He was bitten by the dreaded broadcasting bug at the University of Colorado, then found a broadcasting gig on active duty in the service. As a professional, he covered many aviation milestones: Space Shuttle landings, the B-2 roll out, the horrific PSA 182 disaster - but he had never actually learned how to fly. After repeated requests by a pilot acquaintance and former KNBC cameraman, John Milek, to "Come out to Whiteman Airport," John finally showed up. And there he found what a lot of us find at our own airfields: safe harbor.

"I never really understood what this is," he says, "Until I started to hang out at the airport. I began to realize that this isn't just a thing you do for excitement and adventure, or transportation - it's a way of life. It affects everything you do. It changes your view of the earth, obviously. It changes your view of other people. There's a certain code of conduct that's required in the air, and on the ground. When you come through the gate entering Whiteman Airport, you go back in time fifty years, because integrity and truth, again, are important. You cannot buy a good landing; you can't fast talk your way into a good landing - you have to do it. You can be the best looking guy in the world, the biggest and strongest guy in the world - that won't get you a good landing. The measure of yourself in an airplane is real, and it's genuine, and, when it works, it makes you feel wonderful. And never, in all those years in broadcasting, did I feel as satisfied and happy as I am as I sit here right now in front of you. To ordinary people, it shouldn't be a big deal - but, to me, it's life."

He took his KNBC severance, bought a modified Cessna 172-P, and learned to fly. For a while, he hosted Encounters on Fox, and, three years later with the money he earned there, he traded in the Cessna and bought a Great Lakes 2T-1A-2 open cockpit biplane. Somewhere in this process, he transformed himself from John Marshall, serious news professional, to Smilin' Jack, latter day barnstormer whose simple desire is to, "Become the bird."

The man I meet at his Whiteman Airport hangar is a well-built six-footer wearing track shoes, walking shorts, and a long sleeved shirt, who stays in aerobatic trim by running every day. Those who recognize him from his on-air days might note the addition of the moustache, and the wisps of 'Captainly' gray at the temples of his curly blond locks.

We chat, amiably, the usual getting-to-know-you stuff, in the cozy, livingroom-like nook of his hangar, graced by a seductive photo of his wife with appropriately endearing epigram. His manner is reassuring, and he exudes a combination of confidence and exuberance. His pre-flight briefing is long and exact - he wants you to know what to expect on the aerobatics trip, so you can mentally prepare for what it takes to be possessed of the right stuff.

"Everything is a variation of a loop or a roll," he says, then, using a model P-51, demonstrates each of the eight maneuvers we'll fly. After the pre-flight, comes the parachute briefing. (No, he hasn't jumped. Speaking of which, why have none of the aerobatics pilots I've flown with ever jumped?) Then we strap on the chutes, strap on 'Free Bird' and we launch.

Smilin' Jack and I punch through a 3 mile haze into the clear blue above the Newhall Pass and do clearing turns over the Santa Clarita Valley, in distant view of the Magic Mountain theme park. The games begin: aileron roll, slow roll, barrel roll, loop, then, bracketed by a couple of climbing rhapsodic rolls, back-to- back Hammerhead Stalls. At the break, at the very top of the first Hammerhead where we hang suspended in Zero 'G', he kicks left rudder, yanks right aileron, adds a touch of forward stick and, as we swing 180 degrees from nose heaven-ward to nose earthward, he says, "This is probably the second most interesting place to be."

The first?

The first is that gut grabbing, gag-inducing, inverted place, 45 degrees to the earth, just before we roll upright, midway through the Cuban 8 that follows the Hammerheads. After an Immelman and a three turn spin, it's over.

Between maneuvers we chat over the intercom - on a couple of the more exhilarating ones, I hear him cackling with delight. At one point he offers to teach me the basic roll and loop, but I respectfully decline. Smilin' Jack has become the bird, and while the unforced enthusiasm he displays attracts me like a cockeyed moth to a swirling flame, I am not tempted. My gut has behaved benignly - we performed three times the maneuvers of my two earlier aerobatics episodes - and I'd rather not tempt fate, or call on the lunch review bag. I get the stick on the trip back, feel the responsiveness of the bird without having to perform the maneuvers. Safely aground, taxied back and put to bed, we again chat.

"There is something about being out in the wind that is good," says Smilin' Jack, discussing open cockpit flight. "You can hear the wind, you can hear those wires." He pauses, cocks his head as he listens to the wind in his mind's ear, and smiles, "... you know, the old Air Mail pilots didn't always have the airspeed indicator, but they had their wing wires and that's how they knew. There is a sense of flight that you don't get when you're closed into a cockpit."

And to that idea I heartily ascribe. Was it all that extra available oxygen rushing past me, the ability to look outside, while being outside, or was it 'Smilin' Jack's superior piloting skills that made this so much fun?

Our conversation flows over a number of topics, touches briefly on flight and how profoundly it influences both our lives, then lands on the memory of the 60 Minutes interview with Kelly Flynn, before it all shook out and she departed the service.

"We were watching the interview with Kelly Flynn," he says, "And she was talking about what this means, that she might lose her career as an Air Force pilot, and I tried to explain to Joan how important it was to her. The idea that you spent your whole life to accomplish what she has accomplished and to have to now give it up because of a mistake, an apparent mistake, whatever ... I don't want to get into the issues of that, but what bubbled up watching 60 minutes was I really got a sense of the tragedy of that whole affair.

"Flying is something that has captured imaginations and stirred stomachs and excited people for almost a hundred years, and before, in other forms of flight. To be a part of it has become the best part of my life. And, all those years I covered those stories as a reporter, I didn't know what it was - I didn't. I thought it was just: you get in the airplane, you go - it's kind of interesting and fun - it's hard to do, but it's ... ah ... boy ... you know," he pauses again, struggling to express that emotion that every pilot has felt, and few of us have captured.

" ... There's eating and there's sleeping and there's sex and ... there's flying - not necessarily in that order. If you had to give up one of those things, what are you gonna give up. We joke around here at Whiteman, in the hangar - it's usually the guys talking - but flying's usually right at the top." He chuckles, his eyes twinkling with mischief and delight, then he drifts away for a moment, perhaps lost in the memories of his career - the excitement, the prestige, the disappointment. When he returns to the present, he winks at me and says, "I feel pretty good about the way things have worked out."

A sad postscript to this story - nothing tragic in the tabloid/lurid sense of the word. John Marshall's insurance premiums were raised so high in December 1998, that he was forced to close his business. He still flies the Free Bird - the only difference is that neither you nor I can fly with him. Our loss.