Aviation Enthusiasts Are High on Santa Paula Field

Eighty-nine-year-old Chuck Sisto spends his summer days watching the world glide by from his hangar at Santa Paula Airport, a cavernous place packed with flyboy memorabilia next to Steve McQueen’s old hangar.

In this insular airport community at the city’s edge, a place where planes outnumber people, there is an easy rhythm at work that has more to do with takeoffs and landings than deadlines and rush-hour traffic.

“I don’t have to worry about stop signs or traffic or any of that, and I think most people who own airplanes feel the same way,” said Sisto, a former airline pilot who launched a flight service at the Ventura County airport 30 years ago and still heads toward the heavens in his light-blue Cessna whenever the urge grabs hold.

“I don’t go anywhere in a car unless I absolutely have to,” he said. “Flying is just the only way to travel.”

And so it remains for the people who work and play at the airport, carved out of the loamy soil on the banks of the Santa Clara River in 1930, two years after the St. Francis Dam collapsed and an avalanche of water swept much of the valley below to the sea.

Today, most people only hear of the place when something goes wrong, such as in 1991 when actor Kirk Douglas and Noel Blanc, son of the late cartoon voice artist Mel Blanc, were badly injured in a midair crash that killed two other aviators.

The next year, two small planes collided in midair on their approach to the airport, killing one pilot and sending his plane crashing into two houses, setting them ablaze. Controversy flared over the absence of a control tower at the small airport.

But those who spend their days here dwell on other matters. It is a tightknit community of aviation enthusiasts who are doing their best to promote the airstrip’s historical significance in Ventura County’s citrus heartland.

For 10 years, on the first Sunday of the month, pilots have been trotting out their best toys--everything from experimental aircraft to vintage airplanes--to give the public a close-up look at the operation.

And last year, the airport opened its own aviation museum, where visitors can view exhibits depicting the early years of aviation in the Santa Clara Valley and hear stories about the celebrity fliers who have touched down in Santa Paula, such as Gene Hackman and Jay Leno.

“It definitely is like a community in and of itself,” said Judy Phelps, who along with her husband owns and operates CP Aviation, a flight school that dates back to before World War II. “Usually you only hear the bad stuff about the airport. But it really is a great place.”

People come from all over the world to learn to fly at Santa Paula Airport, which during World War II was used by the military to train fighter pilots.

That’s how Ventura resident Dick Cline got his start. The 79-year-old retired military man grew up in Santa Paula, and as a boy would hang out at the airfield hoping some pilot would take pity on him and take him up for a spin.

When World War II started, the military launched a civilian pilot training program, and Cline earned his wings. He flew combat missions during World War II, the Korean War and in Vietnam, retiring after 27 years.

He doesn’t fly anymore, having traded in the seat of a fighter plane for the cockpit of an RV. But he tries to drive down at least once a month to have lunch at the airport restaurant and watch the “birds,” as he calls them, float down from the sky.

“My adult life started right here,” he said. “It makes me feel so good to come back.”

Ventura resident Marion Wilson also feels good about coming back to Santa Paula, although the children’s book editor is just starting her flying career.

She is due to be wed in a couple of weeks, and the man she is marrying is building his own plane, so she figured she had better learn how to fly. They went flying for one of their first dates. Now, even their wedding invitations talk about two hearts having taken wing.

Wilson, who started taking lessons about a year ago but had to lay off in January because of injury, has flown solo and gone as far as the small airport in Santa Ynez.

“It’s like learning to play the violin,” she said. “It takes practice, practice, practice.”

That’s where Rich Stowell comes in, but with a twist. He has been a flight instructor at Santa Paula Airport since 1987, specializing in competition aerobatics and emergency maneuver training.

On Monday, he was preparing to give 15-year-old Peter Padden of Westlake Village a go at the Pitts S-2A, a super-speed plane designed to fly upside-down.

Even though he can’t drive yet, Peter has logged 36 hours in the air. He can’t solo until his 16th birthday. At that time, he plans to give several planes a whirl.

Stowell, who gave up his job as a mechanical engineer to become a full-time flight instructor, said he has flown into a lot of airports, but would be hard-pressed to find one as tightknit as Santa Paula’s.

“If you go to the big-city airports, they all have gates. They are not as welcoming, and you have to look at the airplanes though the fence,” he said. “Here you can walk around and talk to people, as long as you stay out of the way of the airplanes.”