YOUR SPACE: 87-year-old pilot is back in the cockpit

After decades of flying, the 87-year-old World War II pilot finally got recognition.

It came two months ago, when he crashed a 1940s vintage plane in a field seconds after takeoff from Meadow Lake Airport in eastern El Paso County.

Grim images of the shattered wing-clipped, flipped-over, blue-and-yellow wooden plane made breaking news that sunny Saturday in August.

Burritt Hollister Pond, retired Air Force colonel and pilot since 1942, was airlifted to a Springs hospital in critical condition.

“I got banged up a little,” says Pond, who spent six days in the hospital.

The plane took more of a beating than the pilot. On Monday, for the first time since the crash, he was back in the cockpit, flying a twin-engine 1977 Cessna Skymaster aircraft, his usual ride.

“It was time to get back in the saddle,” he says. “I’m just glad to be back at it.”

The crash was in a 1943 Fairchild PT-19A trainer plane like Pond flew back in the day. He restored it six years ago, mainly for show. “It’s the thing people do when they run out of normal activities,” says the tall man everyone calls “Holly.”

“We’d take it out and exercise it periodically and people would come up and take pictures of it.”

He planned to donate it to the National Museum of World War II Aviation.

“I was just going to do a few touch-and-goes around the airport,” he says. “About 30-40 feet in the air, it suddenly lost power. I was too far down the runway to bring it down and land. I thought I could find a place, but from them on I don’t remember, there’s just random moments of lucidness.”

The crash site was in line with the runway of the airport on Highway 24 in Peyton, where Pond and about 20 other World War II pilots regularly meet to fly.

“There are fewer every month,” he says.

His wife, Doris, took word of the crash like a seasoned pilot’s wife. “There wasn’t anything for me to get all shook up about it,” she says. “I’ve always known my husband was not a daredevil.”

Pond served in two wars. He taught ROTC at universities. He’s flown C-130s. He’s piloted numerous family missions, from coastal vacations to sprints “to Pueblo for a $100 hamburger.”

He has taught hundreds of people to fly, including a grandson. He still teaches. Lessons were put on hold during his recovery, during which time he caught up on his sideline, Artistry in Wood. His bowls fetch $600 in upscale art galleries.

Pond had two prior aircraft crashes in 1945 when he was flying B-25 Mitchell bombers. “Nothing major,” he says. “I had a couple in Korea that were shot up pretty good. We try not to a make big thing about it.”

Ditto for the latest crash.

“Everybody has crashes,” he says. “It’s not a unique thing.”

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