Dogfight Over Lease : 84-Year-Old Aviator Faces Eviction in Dispute With Airport

Cliff Fraizer started an airplane repair service at John Wayne Airport in 1957, shortly after retiring as an airplane mechanic in the Marine Corps, where he served for 22 years.

As the owner of Fraizer’s A & E Service, he taught 102 people to fly, logged more than 7,000 flight hours and repaired hundreds of planes.

But for 25 years, Fraizer has also battled the airport over terms of his lease. In 1989 he was almost kicked out after he refused for a year to pay a rent increase.

Now the Santa Ana resident may lose his business because of a misunderstanding about a $2,000 security deposit.

“I’m an 84-year-old person that’s just trying to get along,” he said.

Airport officials said that Fraizer has not posted his security deposit, as all tenants are required to do. The Board of Supervisors, which oversees airport operations, may decide at its Feb. 1 meeting whether to evict Fraizer if he does not comply by the Feb. 28 deadline.

Fraizer began his flying career in 1928, when he worked as a barnstormer--an exhibition flyer who also sold rides to people. More than 65 years later, Fraizer is still flying. He no longer repairs airplanes, but he still wears his mechanic’s uniform and refuses to give up his business at the airport.

Eight planes now rent parking spaces on the nearly one-acre lot he leases from the county. Aero Instruments rents one of the two buildings Fraizer constructed himself.

Fraizer wears a worn leather Navy airman jacket, a replica of the kind he wore in the Marine Corps during World War II. A leather Harley Davidson Motorcycles cap sits on his head. Before he flew planes, Fraizer made his living driving a Harley to deliver newspapers and medical prescriptions.

Glass displays on the inside and outside of his building contain photos, awards and other memorabilia. One blurry black-and-white photograph from 1957 shows a PT-22 propeller training plane and next to it, Fraizer’s 1953 Chevy. The same car now sits in his driveway.

A list on the wall shows the 102 students Fraizer trained for private and commercial pilot’s licenses.

Fraizer, born in Seattle, served in the Marines from 1935 to 1957, working as an airplane mechanic in the South Pacific and Korea. Adm. W.F. Halsey gave Fraizer a citation, which is framed on the wall, for his repair of military airplanes during the battle of Guadalcanal in 1942 and 1943.

Fraizer also has a hefty chunk of shrapnel in one of his glass cases, a memento of that battle. He said he wanted to be a pilot, but was rejected because he never completed high school.

His wife, Lillian, died in 1981.

Next to his war photos and commendations are framed the conflicts over the lease: a series of calculations he believes shows that he was overcharged almost $50,000 for his rent from 1968 to 1987. County property agents said his lease calls for his rent to increase in accordance with the Consumer Price Index.

He also has framed old airport development plans for a hangar over his site. But airport spokeswoman Pat Ware said the airport has no plans to develop the area.

Fraizer has never been one to back down from a disagreement.

He has been sued twice; once because a plane he piloted was damaged in a runway accident, and again when a plane that he had inspected failed to start. The plane’s owner tried to jump-start it by spinning the propeller and injured his hand, Fraizer said.

In both lawsuits, Fraizer served as his own attorney. “I know the federal regulations better than any attorney,” he said.

Both times he won, he said.

To settle the 1989 rent dispute with the county, an instrument repairman who rents a building from Fraizer agreed to pay higher rent.

“They have breached this lease numerous times,” Fraizer said of the county agencies. He pointed to the chain-link fence, topped with barbed wire, which encircles the airport and comes within a foot of his buildings. He said the fence was built over his protests.

Fraizer said he wanted a 25-year lease in 1968, when the county gave him a 10-year lease. The county granted him a 25-year lease in 1977.

Now the argument is over a security deposit.

Fraizer said he has set the money aside in a bank account, but airport officials said they have not received the proper paperwork. They said a 10-year bank certificate for $2,000 expired in October, and Fraizer has not renewed it.

Ware said it’s a pretty simple problem: Fraizer must put up the same kind of security deposit as the other tenants.

Ware said Fraizer pays 30 cents per square foot for his property. The other companies that lease space from the airport pay between 82 cents and 90 cents per square foot, she said. Fraizer’s rent on the site is $1,190 each month.

Fraizer’s A & E Service has been in operation under the same owner longer than any other business at the airport, Ware said.

The Airport Commission met last week and recommended that the Board of Supervisors terminate Fraizer’s lease.

Commission chairman Michael L. Lapin said Airport Director Janice M. Mittermeier talked with Fraizer before the meeting and tried to explain the situation.

“All he had to do was renew the certificate from the bank,” said Lapin. “If he would do that, this whole thing would go away.”