Paul had a wonderful way of getting everyone excited about a project or adventure, and he never let things like cost, distance, grim reality or scope of a project get in the way of a dream.
I met him two decades ago through the Collings Foundation as stop coordinators for the bombers. I thought the job of setting up one or two stops in Arizona was a daunting task, yet at one time Paul did the entire state of Florida for the group and spent countless hours on this mission. He made it seem so easy.
I remember a phone call one year when he'd been up two days straight without sleep applying donor names to the fuselages of the airplanes prior to the tour. He'd applied so many names to the bombers in such short of a time frame that his big worry was that in his haste he committed a mistake to someone by transposing letters. By the end of the application he was bone tired. His dry observation... "So many ethnic names, " he moaned. "Didja ever notice that 'Smith' is one of the most common names, yet do you think there's a one of them that'd go the distance to donate to this program?"
That was Paul. Even when things got to be the very worst - suffering through hurricanes, business down-turn, health issues, whatever, he always could joke about it. There was humor to be found in discomfort - especially his.
A Paul classic - "Maddog" trying to do a careful and thorough inspection of a derelict BT-13 sitting on an old airfield in southern Florida, keeping one eye on the parts and another upon an amorous miniature donkey that had taken a particular shine to him. His version of the "dog and pony" show told at the bar - complete with sound affects of a lovesick donkey - brought down the house. The moral of the story was never to turn one's back to to man nor beast when buying an airplane project, as related first-hand.
But back to the names...
"When the B-17 gets to Phoenix, make sure to take a look on lower left side near the tail," he said. Sure enough, two months later, the 'Fort was here, and Paul's name was there on the roster.
I called him up during our stop to tease him, and he said, "Well, sooner or later I was gonna get my name on that airplane - figured I'd work from that tail back and one day it's gonna be under the co-pilot's window."
Old "Maddog" had the uncanny ability to get everyone on board with a project - whether it was chasing after BT-13 or C-123 parts or even a on-again, off-again PV-2.
His quest for airplane adventures was puntuated by his dry and very wry sense of humor, and he was the kind of guy who never let hard work on any project get in the way of a long lunch or a cold beer at the end of the day. Our road trips together were a comedy of errors - I'd be worrying about distance, time, fuel burn and getting parts moved from A to B, and Paul would discount all of this with a simple, "When do you wanna grab a bite to eat?
I'm gonna miss you, buddy. We had so many more adventures and treasure hunts out there to chase, and the little aviation world around me is indeed dark and sad with your most un-timely passing.
- Rob
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