On His 65th Birthday, Pilot Has His Ups and Downs

--Tom Thomas Jr. celebrated his 65th birthday by going for a quick spin in the air--in each of 65 planes from his collection of 74. With 10-minute flights involving a takeoff, a quick buzz around the airfield and a landing, Thomas completed the feat in nine hours as 2,000 spectators cheered him on at the airport in Frederick, Okla., a town of 6,000. “So now I’m the only person in the whole world who has ever flown 65 different planes in a day!” the World War II aviator and wealthy concrete company executive said. Thomas called his birthday celebration “The Last Hurrah and Air Show.” Now that he’s 65, “I told my wife I thought I would be drinking whiskey and chasing women. But I found whiskey doesn’t do too much for me and I’m a little too old to chase women,” Thomas said, so he decided to stick to flying. He said it costs him about $75,000 a year to house and look after his aircraft collection, which he estimated is worth about $2 million.

--A group of handicapped volunteers will be deputized as a “parking posse” to crack down on motorists illegally parked in spaces reserved for the handicapped at shopping malls in Tampa, Fla. The county has a stiff parking ordinance providing $100 fines for persons parking illegally in the reserved spaces, but Sheriff’s Maj. Cal Henderson says complaints still roll in and deputies are often too busy to check for parking violators. But when Gerald Barcalow, 57, whose left leg was amputated three years ago, wrote Sheriff Walter Heinrich asking for the authority to issue parking citations to violators, he struck a responsive chord. Heinrich decided to train and deputize a group of handicapped volunteers at the Tampa Police Academy as parking enforcement specialists.

--Bev Francis is probably the most memorable of the weightlifting women in “Pumping Iron II: The Women,” and she’s not bothered that some may consider her bulging biceps, washboard stomach and muscular thighs too masculine. “I have my own ideas about femininity,” said Francis, who is getting married next month. “I’m basically interested in good human qualities, not qualities that are supposedly feminine or masculine. I am a woman.” Francis, however, doesn’t like wearing dresses. “I’m uncomfortable in them,” she said. “I’ve got these broad shoulders and a broad back and small breasts. A dress just looks silly, doesn’t fit right. You have to be careful how you sit. Dresses basically are stupid.”