The colonel that flew with Orville Wright

By Marge Barrett
Sun contributor
Amidst all the stories Colonel Thomas J. Barrett could tell about flying military planes and jet fighters from 1934 to 1962, he likes to recall the day he flew with Orville Wright. While stationed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base just after the end of the Second World War, Tom was called upon one day to pilot a small transport plane with some VIPs aboard. Surprised and pleased, he discovered that one of the passengers was Orville Wright. Orville was a man of very few words, but at the end of the flight, he thrilled Tom by shaking the pilot’s hand and saying, “thank-you sir, that was a very good ride!”

Born in Kenton, Ohio just 10 years after the Wright Brothers’ historic flight and close to Dayton where they lived, Tom Barrett is happy to still be around for the 100th anniversary of the first powered aircraft flight. Will and Orville’s flight launched the beginning of aviation and fueled young Tom’s passion for flying.
Tom began flying while attending Ohio State University. To survive the Great Depression he paid for lessons by doing odd jobs around the Columbus airport like washing planes and sweeping out hangars. He sold Harley-Davidson motorcycles to pay for his tuition and fulfilled ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) requirements in hopes of entering the Army Air Corps to become a pilot. He considered himself truly lucky to reach that goal soon after graduation in 1934.
Never attracted to the barnstorming kind of flying that he had watched in those early years of stick and rudder airplanes, Tom’s interests lay in improving instruments and flying techniques. He force-landed for the first time during his second month of training – without much damage to himself or the plane. He also survived some tense moments training at Mitchell Air Base on Long Island when aviators had no radio communication or safety instruments while flying in zero visibility. But despite these experiences, Tom’s love for flying never faltered. His thrill was always “being above the earth in amazing skies with the power to go wherever you choose”.
The colonel and his wife, myself as the co-pilot, settled at their Glen Lake home after he retired, but Tom never stopped flying. For a time he even owned an amphibian aircraft that could land on water or land. Then he discovered gliders and sailplanes. Tom eventually purchased an experimental motorized glider before returning to conventional airplanes like his favorite, the Grumman Tiger.
I love flying too. I had already earned my pilot’s license the year I met and married Lieutentant Barrett in 1941. We spent the next two years together in the Panama Canal Zone. I missed going along with him on duty in places like Alaska and several countries in South America, but I accompanied my pilot husband to Air Force Bases in Tallahassee, Lubbock Tex., Las Vegas, and Tokyo.
We exposed our son and daughter to airplanes, and they often flew with their father as they grew up, but never completely caught on to their parents “flying fever”. Still, Tom Jr. and his sister Linda remember visiting Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on a cold and windy day much like the one when the Wright Brothers made their first flight there. They enjoyed living in Virginia when Tom was stationed at The Pentagon, and they visited more historic places than airports during that time. They also experienced life in Japan and can recall seeing Mount Fuji from their own backyard on a clear day.
Colonel Barrett is grateful to celebrate his birthday in June, just after Flag Day and Father’s Day, especially since he will have 90 candles on his cake this year. He says he will be thinking of those Dayton boys who conquered the skies with their homemade flying machines a mere one hundred years ago this coming December. He hopes the celebrations will be spectacular.