Gary Vacin
A Sun Lakes resident who has logged more than 30,000 hours flying for Flying Tigers Airlines and Federal Express will be the featured speaker at the Sun Lakes Aero Club gathering on Monday, Jan. 20, at the Cottonwood Country Club Lecture Hall. The session begins with camaraderie at 6:30 p.m. followed by the presentation at 7 p.m. The public is invited to attend.
The speaker will be Jim Theobald, the longest tenured member of the Aero Club. Prior to his professional flying career, he joined the U.S. Navy and spent two years as a navigator on the aircraft carrier USS Midway.
His commercial flying experience started with the Flying Tigers. About 20 years later, Federal Express merged with Flying Tigers, giving him 34 years of commercial flying. His favorite aircraft was the Boeing 747, flying captain for 18 years across both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
He retired from Federal Express in 1998, then moved to Sun Lakes. With his thousands of hours in jetliners behind him, he turned to general aviation, joining the Sun Lakes Aero Club in 2000. He owned several airplanes, including a Cessna 414, Cessna 210, two Piper Cherokees, a Piper Arrow, and a Piper Comanche, which he flew to several Aero Club fly-ins to various spots around the Southwest. Fifty years of accident-free flying earned him an FAA Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award, which was presented at an Aero Club gathering in 2014.
The Sun Lakes Aero Club is an official Sun Lakes organization whose members include active and retired commercial, general aviation, and military pilots and numerous others who have an interest in aviation. Membership is not limited to Sun Lakes residents.
For additional information on the club, contact Cannon Hill at 509-539-7857 or Gary Vacin at 480-298-7017.