Memoir of absent father takes flight

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This article was published 06/04/2019 (2691 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IS it possible to search for your dead father in thin air? Flyer and “recovering journalist” Jonathan Rotondo thinks so.

The Ottawa-based Rotondo was 28 when his father Antonio died, and he found he couldn’t grieve.

His flight plan, in this deeply felt memoir, includes a search for his father’s beloved miniature aircraft, the Foxtrot Alpha Mike of the title.

This allows Rotondo to travel across time and space to seek insights into a man who was an absent father — partly because of work, partly because of his personal failures in business and perhaps because there is something seductive about flying solo.

We learn the family history on both sides of his family; with the immigrant experience seeming particularly important these days for both new arrivals and native-born Canadians, there are several “a-ha!” moments worth noting. Other threads in this black-and-white-photo-illustrated memoir include Rotondo’s air cadet days and his boyish enthusiasm for all things concerning aviation. He seems never to have lost his wide-eyed delight, describing First World War aces and imaginary dogfights. He even wears the old-style goggles, had a white scarf for his neck and, at one point, actually says “tally-ho.”

Log books, conversations with other pilots and retracing the flight paths his father knew and loved seemed to help and sharpen Jonathan’s feelings and understanding of his dad. Discovering similar traits also helped. Easily bored, he moves from flying from A-to-B destinations, then to studying, training and finally teaching aerobatics.

He also pursues the opportunity to fly different aircraft, vintage and modern, waxing lyrical about the planes and the total engagement of all the senses: “Nothing compares to flying in an open cockpit. The freedom of being out in the open, exposed to the elements, is obvious. The little things — how the rush of air pools in the cockpit and chafes at the back of your neck, or how your eyes water after prolonged exposure to the wind — are not.”

The author refers to Richard Bach’s book Jonathan Livingston Seagull at one point, which may make some readers wince, but he also references the vintage (and knowledgeable) Ernest K. Gann to bolster his observations. And Rotondo’s camaraderie with other pilots adds to the memoir’s authenticity.

Ah, but does he find his father’s plane, you ask? And what kind of plane was it? Yes and no. He does trace it to its final destination, but it’s not where readers think it might be. And as to the kind of plane? Imagine a biplane just shy of five metres long and with a 5½-metre wingspan. It’s just you in the cockpit with a 100-horsepower engine flying 500 metres up.

The history of the maker and model of airplane deserves a chapter on its own. It’s one thing to put together a model airplane on your kitchen table, or even fly one by remote. But the Smith mini biplane story is one of determination, imagination and do-it-yourself. The result, of course, welds you to what follows, and the love and lust for flying in the book is all the stronger for it.

Several different books in one then, all to be found in Airborne: Finding Foxtrot Alpha Mike.

And there are enough well-described dramatic moments that reminded this reader of a saying from a former RCAF pilot: “There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots. But there are no old, bold, pilots.”

Ex-air cadet Ron Robinson had a single flight with the Snowbirds, and was alternately ecstatic and terrified.