Young Pilot Back on Terra Firma

Two weeks after he stepped into the cockpit by himself, Kevin Gustafson returned from his solitary trip across the country Monday, greeting folks by flying a low sweep over the Long Beach Airport and stepping off the plane into the arms of his worried mother.

Over 14 days, Kevin had flown his Cessna 172 through 34 cities and 25 states in his pilgrimage to Kitty Hawk, N.C., where the 17-year-old burst through some afternoon haze and saw the Atlantic Ocean for the first time.

The Seal Beach teen, who has flown since he was 10, had gone there to give thanks at the spot where the Wright brothers first tested their airplane.

Monday, a crowd of about 25 people--teenage friends, his parents and his flight instructor--stood waiting for him on the tarmac and cheered as he approached the airport about 10 a.m. When he stepped out of his airplane, he surveyed his supporters and said, “I’m home.” But, he said later, he also knew things would never be the same: The trip had been his last boyhood adventure before pursuing his dream of becoming a commercial pilot.

“After a few weeks and all this sinks in, I know I’ll realize what all this was,” he said, slipping a quick smile for a nearby photographer.

“From this day on, things are different.”

Kevin flew across the nation in the same green-and-white airplane he learned to fly in. He flew through the gut of America, hopping from town to town like a rock skipping on water, touching down in Arizona and Texas and Mississippi--landing even when he didn’t need to so he could chat with local folks. He returned to Long Beach over the upper half of the country, over the dusty back roads of Iowa and the velvet mountainsides of Colorado. It was no record of endurance or speed, but notable because few Kevin’s age have done it.

During the course of the trip, Kevin raised about $3,000 for a national program to train young pilots.

He stopped in places he’d never heard of: Appleton, Wis.; Lynchburg, Va.; Lordsburg, N.M. In Minneapolis, he stopped to talk with World War II pilots who were enthralled with his moxie and saw in him themselves: brash and smart and handsome, in charge of the sky.

The veterans planned to take a collection for the young pilots program.

Kevin brought home few souvenirs--he was limited by the size of his small aircraft--but he carried home Atlantic Ocean water in two old Pepsi bottles, which he showed his friends.

When school starts, Kevin will be a high school senior, but as his friends gathered around for a look at the bottles of sand and water, he somehow looked older than anybody else there.