After 26 years of teaching people how to fly, Frederick
”
Bud
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Collom has lowered his landing gear for the last time.
San Martin – After 26 years of teaching people how to fly, Frederick “Bud” Collom has lowered his landing gear for the last time.
Collom, 85, a flight instructor for 2 Genes Aviation, has taught more than 1,000 students in his career, most of them in San Martin. He has accumulated 32,000 flying hours, but recently decided to follow his doctor’s advice and retire.
“The doctor said, ‘You’ve got more than 30,000 hours, why don’t you quit flying? … And if you don’t, I’ll ground you,’ ” Collom recalled with a laugh.
Dressed in a white shirt and donning a “Pearl Harbor Survivor” hat, Collom is humble, praising Gene Mecadon, owner of 2 Genes, for his achievement at the airport.
“The airport wouldn’t be as it is if it wasn’t for him,” Collom said.
Mecadon, however, says Collom is responsible for his own success as a flight instructor.
“Bud is the consummate aviator,” Mecadon said. “He’s got it all. He’s a pilot’s pilot. He’s trained people that some said were untrainable.”
Collom, a veteran and Pearl Harbor survivor, dreamed of flying ever since he was a young man. In 1940, at the age of 20, Collom enlisted in the Navy, then got married and attended flight school in 1943. In between, he and his squadron survived the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7, 1941.
“We lost all of our airplanes except two, and our hangar burned down.” Collom said. “Most of us were down in the hangar when it got hit.”
Collom spent the next 30 years flying in the Navy. He maneuvered C-130s, R-16s, and the Convair R4Y, a 90-passenger aircraft. During Word War II, Collom was in the gunner’s position in the Coral Sea Battle off the Australian Coast.
And he fought in the Battle of Midway, north of Hawaii.
He hauled people and cargo into Saigon, and his squadron assisted others during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
After Collom retired from the Navy in 1967, he moved to Morgan Hill and taught flight school in Salinas. In 1979, he moved to Gilroy to begin work for 2 Genes at the Santa Clara County Airport in San Martin.
Flying hasn’t been his only love. He got involved in real estate while raising four children. He now has seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
He lost his first wife in 1991, and later married his second wife, Maryann.
Though he has retired from teaching flying, he hopes to continue the traveling that he and Maryann love.
Collom averaged about 15 students a year at 2 Genes, and his students often moved on to private piloting, flying in the Navy or Air Force, or flying commercial airplanes. All students had their own individual style of learning.
“Some students had trouble learning to land, others had trouble skimming the instrument, it just depends on the student’s aptitude,” Collom said. “The biggest problem was getting the students to study.”
By Joanna Parsons
