As U.L. “Rip” Gooch stood on the gravel floor of the old metal Quonset building, it was hard to believe the setting was where he built a million-dollar aviation business.
“We opened Aero Services here in 1959,” said Gooch, a retired Kansas state senator and member of the African American Aviation Hall of Fame. “I did charter flights, flying lessons and sold used aircraft. Three years later, we became a Mooney dealership.”
Gooch visited the Quonset building last week as part of celebrating his 93rd birthday. The building is big enough to hold a small plane, and now appears to be used for storage and repairs at Textron Airfield, on Textron’s Beechcraft campus near Greenwich Road and Central Avenue. The building adjoins the control tower, the Textron Aviation Employees’ Flying Club, and some additional plane hangars.
“There were doors on it that we never closed because they were tough to deal with, and someone else must have come to the same conclusion because they’re all gone now,” Gooch said. “We built an office on the south side, but it’s gone. Our hangar on the north side is there, and some others and the tower have been added.”
“The brothers Gene and Herb Rawdon owned the field for a long time,” he said. “They built the Rawdon T-1 trainer here, but they didn’t win the government contract to make it for the military. By 1959, the Rawdons were neglecting the airport in favor of customizing and the grass airfield was only mowed when a flight was scheduled. Gooch, at that time a local freelance pilot and quality control inspector at Boeing, became aware of this while researching locations to open his own business.
“I watched people get hired and promoted around me at Boeing,” he said. “When I asked about it, they told me I was the only black in quality control and I should be happy with that. Well, I wasn’t.”
In that era, during the boom times following World War II, general aviation was a popular pursuit for regular people around the country, not just the wealthy. In Wichita, where aircraft makers formed the backbone of the local economy, many people took flying lessons and pooled money with friends to buy small planes.
With the backing of a few investors, all of whom had taken flying lessons from him, Gooch leased the airport from the Rawdons and became the first African American to head a fixed base operation in the Air Capital. His company Aero Services became a certified dealer of new Mooney planes in the hometown of the kings of personal aircraft, Cessna and Beech. And the Beech factory was across the street.
“The original Mooneys are well regarded, but the [Texas-based] company has bankrupted and changed hands many times,” Gooch said. “By the mid-1960s, I was selling more than a million dollars’ worth of Mooneys every year. Then, general aviation declined sharply by 1969. Mooney bankrupted, and we were scraping by.”
But, as the Vietnam War raged and the Civil Rights movement prompted interest in minority businesses, the government awarded contracts to Gooch’s Aero Services to transport confidential documents by air taxi, test experimental aircraft instruments, and overhaul rotor hubs for Bell helicopters. The machining setup for the rotor hubs occupied the hangar on the north side of the Quonset building.
Gooch closed operations in 1976 following the loss of the government contracts after Vietnam fell, and the sale of the airfield after the death of Herb Rawdon.
Gooch retained his pilot’s license and status as an FAA pilot examiner, became a top salesman of new cars at Wichita’s Robinson-Lesline Buick dealership, and was elected to the city council in 1989 and Kansas senate in 1992. He published his autobiography, “Black Horizons: One Aviator’s Experience in the Post-Tuskegee Era,” in 2006, and
continues to sell copies of it.
His connection to the airfield did not end with the closing of Aero Services. By 1990, Gooch’s 25-year-old son Kerry worked in marketing for Beech Aircraft and, as a pilot like his father, frequently flew out of what was then the Beech Employees’ Flying Club.
On Sept. 12, 1990, Kerry Gooch was invited by a coworker to fly to Arkansas. It would be Kerry Gooch’s last flight, and he departed on that flight from the airfield his father once operated.
That night, the plane carrying Rip Gooch’s son, piloted by the coworker, crashed under storm conditions while attempting to land in Conway, Arkansas.
“In visiting the old Beech field for my birthday, I’m also doing it to remember Kerry, who died the day before my birthday 26 years ago,” Gooch said. “It’s the worst thing a parent can go through, losing a child in the prime of life. He could have done so much. He wasn’t even supposed to be on that plane. His friend made the offer that day so they could get flight hours on a business trip.”
Most years Gooch does not celebrate his birthday due to its emotional connection with his son’s death, but he made exceptions for parties on his 80th, 85th and 90th. Recently, he has not piloted planes regularly but has maintained his license. He passed his medical renewal at age 90, and has made a point of piloting around the time of his birthday.
The impulse befits a man who yearned to fly from the first time he saw a plane while working a Tennessee field as a child in the 1920s, was certified for his pilot’s license in the 1940s by C. Alfred “Chief” Anderson (who taught the Tuskegee Airmen), and has accrued 20,000 flight hours.
“Last year, I went up in a Mooney I originally sold in 1965 to John King of Butler County,” Gooch said. “One of my flying students from that era, Bob Becker of Harvey County, bought it later, and he offered to let me fly it for my birthday.”
This year’s special flight happened Saturday at Benton Airport, 10 miles east of Wichita. Gooch called Dwayne Rea, son of a longtime friend and a former flight student of Gooch’s son. He thought Rea still owned a plane, but he didn’t. He knew someone who did, and he volunteered a Piper Cherokee Six for the afternoon.
Gooch appreciated it.
“There’s a family-type of feeling among people who own planes,” he said. “Dwayne told [the plane’s owner] what we were looking to do, and he got excited about helping. I can’t thank him enough. We had a beautiful day and a beautiful time together. There’s nothing like flying.”
Glen Sharp is co-author with Rip Gooch of his book “Black Horizons: One aviator’s experience in the Post-Tuskegee Era.” Autographed copies of the book are available for puchase at The Community Voice offices for $20.