One Good Deed Deserves Another

EAA430 would like to give a shout out to our own Ernie Hansen. Ernie has served as vice president of the organization for the past two years and has been a great officer. Recently he has gone above and beyond the call of duty by volunteering to provide transportation, storage, and sale of the donated Smith mini plane which brought $1000 to the Scholarship Program. He also stepped up to help Denny Donovan with the sale of Dan‘s Bearhawk, the hangar and all the contents after his death.

Ernie was planning a weekend trip to Cavenaugh Bay, ID on Priest Lake on the day of the hangar sale. He was committed to his good deed and stayed until the sale was done in mid afternoon. After hurrying home, he and Jeanne flew the 2 1/2 hours over the Cascades and Eastern Washington to Cavanaugh Bay. As they were landing on the grass strip, his left main tire went flat and pulled him to the left side of the runway. So here he was in a somewhat remote back country airstrip with a flat tire.

What to do? Although he had stopped far enough off the runway for it to be usable, how was he going to fix the tire? Within three minutes eight people had arrived to assist. Two of them jumped in a gator and returned with an air pump. The flat tire was pumped up, Ernie fired up the Swift and taxied to a hanger he was offered where he was assisted in jacking up the wheel, patching the tube, and returning the tire to service in less than an hour!

The aviation community Is full of a lot of good and helpful people. With Ernie’s good deeds for others, he certainly deserved one for himself.

Ray Ballantyne