Current Board Members

Jeff "Jazz Hands" Cohen, Treasurer

Jeff came by his love of aviation and aerial feats naturally.  His parents were both in the circus as trapeze artists and would tour the country with Jeff in tow.  Just for fun they would shoot Jeff out of the canon as the human canon ball.  He loved it.  Then, when Jeff was 17, he ran off to work the carnival circuit.  He was in charge of setting up the rides.  Jeff loved being a “Carnie”, where not only could he have all the cotton candy he could eat,  he could also hone his skills working with tools since the rides were always breaking down.

 

As life wore on, Jeff decided not to wait any longer and wanted to combine his workmanship skills with his desire to get back in the air (albeit with a little more control this time).  He is currently working on a Vans Aircraft RV-7.  Anybody that can get that darn ping pong ball in the gold fish jar gets a ride!

 

Jeff is the Treasurer of the financially sound EAA Chapter 333.  However, we haven’t really heard from Jeff in the last few months since he packed up everything, including his plane project, and moved to the Bahamas.

 

….Real Bio to come…right Jeff?

 

Larry grew up in the Wayne - Westland area near the old National Airport where he used to ride his bicycle to watch aircraft take off and land. Now retired, he worked for Ford Motor Company for 45 years as an engineer in truck manufacturing. Larry is married to Ginger, who works part time as a Pilates instructor at the Chelsea Wellness Center, and has one daughter (Halley) who is a financial analyst at the University of Michigan. Larry has been flying since 1992 and is currently building a RV-7A at his home in Chelsea, Michigan. Larry has been an EAA member since 1997.

 

After a small town Iowa youth spent riding my bicycle to the  library and reading Model Airplane News, I eventually graduated from my venerable Sig Kadet (and college- go Hawkeyes!) to building rally cars and racing through the woods with my brother. Several job changes and a home purchase later, I got back to finishing up the private pilots license I'd started 20 years earlier.  The following year, I drove my girlfriend to Oshkosh - a place I’d last been as a 13 year old in 1987- for her first time, where we camped in a muddy parking lot.

I currently fly with a local club while waiting for used aircraft pricing to return to earth so we can take mountain biking trips to far off lands without days in the car. I’m pretty new to the chapter, but I’m very curious about building, and enthused about the opportunity to help build a thriving local aviation community.

I am a life-long Michigander, spending my childhood and early 20’s in Traverse City and the surrounding area.  My love of aviation came very early and naturally – passed on from my father, who was a liaison pilot during WWII.  After the war he went to medical school and became the town doctor in Boyne City, Michigan.  He bought a 1957 Cessna 180 and although I don’t know how old I was (4 or 5 years?), I still remember my first flight.

 

I have loved anything that flew in the air or space for my entire life, but especially WWII airplanes and history.  Frankly, I never dreamed I would be able to afford to become a pilot myself, much less own my own airplane, but fate was kind to me and 2 months before I turned 60 years old I earned my Sport Pilot certificate.   I am still a relatively low hour pilot, but as retirement nears I plan on flying more and more.

 

My first plane was a RANS S-12S, purchased in May 2017 to learn in, since my two previous attempts at learning through flight schools ended prematurely (one plane was “bent” by another student and now replace, and the other’s radio didn’t work and the flight school insisted there was nothing wrong with it).   The previous owner was a Sport Pilot CFI and he and I flew it back to Ann Arbor from Grand Junction, Colorado.  As fun as that plane was, and the fact that I had flown it from Colorado, the S-12S is NOT built for travel.

 

In 2021 I got the opportunity to partner with Bob Steinmetz on building a Vans RV-12iS, and in March of 2023 we finished it.   It is currently housed in the EAA hangar at KARB.

I was born in 1955, in Salem, Massachusetts. My Dad was a private pilot and my mother hated airplanes. My Dad would wake me up on weekends at about 5 AM and we would go off on a flying adventure. My first flights were before my memory developed. I was told I was held in an aviatrix’ lap on my very first flight in 1957 or 58. I was too small to sit alone in the seat.  Times were much different then. Airplanes had minimal equipment, like J-3’s and Champs, but there were many military trainers at local airports. The FAA was the CAA I was told. The local pilot groups were made up of former fighter and bomber pilots who had returned from WWII and yearned for the sky. After work was out for the day, those pilots made a beeline for the airport and soon, dogfights would erupt battling for air supremacy over the local skies.

 

 Many a Saturday or Sunday early morning flight was logged long before the world had awakened. My Dad would spirit me away to Northeastern airports near and far. Often, rumors of prized warbirds, that rekindled memories of earlier days, and were said to be at airports just waiting to be explored, inspired adventures. Being a veteran of many flights, I knew what was happening as we operated on the airport surface. I was quite aware we were taxiing toward the runway. Soon, the puttering of the 65 hp engine became a roar and we accelerated for takeoff. I used to love to watch from the tandem rear seat as the left tire spun round and round, faster and faster, the surface of the runway speeding by while changing from dirt to grass to sandy patches and back to grass again, and that wheel went faster still until suddenly, the ground fell away, and we were carried aloft by that magical airplane. This was a typical event on a weekend morning or in the afternoon in my young childhood.

 

 My father was an airplane builder. We had an airplane in our garage which meant, I was just about the coolest kid in the neighborhood. All I had to do was raise the garage door and that was that. I remember my father having multiple projects that he built with friends from what we now call EAA chapters but back then were GI’s sharing their skills with friends.

 

  Did I mention my mother hated airplanes? This led to my father building our family home and selling almost all his airplane stuff, never to hang out at the airport again to my knowledge. It was sad for my Dad and me, to say the least. You talk about going through withdrawal. I was addicted to flying!!! It hurt to be a 5 year old FORMER denizen of the sky. I longed to get airborne again.

 

  When I got to college, I started taking flying lessons from Howard F. Dutton. He was a famous aerobatic performer who used to do the inverted ribbon cut just above the runway at airshows. Howard was the National Aerobatic Champion of 1941. He was very down to earth and you would NEVER know his history except when someone else would mention it. I was flying with Howard the day Charles Lindbergh passed away. After we landed, we were told of Lindbergh’s passing and Howard proceeded to tell me all about Lindbergh. He said the papers called him Lucky Lindy but there was no luck involved. I think the flying fraternity was very very small back when Howard, and my Dad for that matter, started flying. I think Howard knew Lindbergh personally but that was just my gut feeling listening to him speak about Lindbergh. I remember my father talking about Roscoe Turner. There were just so few pilots in those days and it stands to reason these people knew of each other, but again that was my intuition telling me that.

 

  As I flew with Howard, I progressed until soloing in August of 1974. It cost $9.75 to rent a 172 wet in those days and it would cost me $15 for the instructor. I would take my paycheck of about $70 and one third of my income was going to pay for my weekly flying lesson. I quickly realized this was not going to lead to my becoming Sky King anytime soon. I just wanted to learn to fly and get my license. I was not thinking of becoming a professional pilot just yet. But silently, I yearned to get back in the air.

 

  In October of 1975, the Boston Red Sox and the Cincinnati Reds played one of the greatest World Series ever played. I dutifully tuned in on a black and white 19” television. I left my dorm room door open and in strode my friend Eric Wiseman. Eric was dating Jane, a co-ed on my dorm floor. We had become friends. It was the famous game 6 that went into extra innings. The local TV station was normally off the air at the time, but they kept broadcasting as this was the WORLD SERIES! Up to the plate strode Carlton Fisk and the rest is history. As Fisk was waving his famous game 6 winning homerun fair into the left field screen at Fenway, the local TV station was primed to sign off and go home. As Curt Gowdy announced the final score from Fenway and bade goodnight to the audience, the TV station immediately started its sign off. Soon, the Star-Spangled Banner played and then a video of an F-5 fighter jet cloud chasing as someone read the poem High Flight. Eric oohed and ahhed at the sight. He thought that would be sooooo cool to do. I replied yes, I love flying. I have even soloed a Cessna 172. Eric was impressed and I yearned to fly. I soon realized I wanted to be a Commercial Pilot and fly airliners for a living.

 

 As much as I respected Howard Dutton and his skills as an aviator, I knew my one lesson a week was not going to get me into an airline cockpit. One day, Jane came walking by and I asked her where Eric had been. I hadn’t seen him in a while and I knew they were still an item.  She told me he had graduated that December. I was graduating in May of 1977.  You could have knocked me over with a feather when she replied he had joined the Navy to become a Navy pilot. I thought that was so cool. Soon, graduation day came and I took off for a drive around the US with my brother. We traveled from New England to Florida, Florida to San Diego, San Diego to Port Washington, Washington, and back to New England. We had pretty much visited just about the whole US when you figure in all the zigs and zags we had added to that trip. One day during the trip, we stopped in Pensacola, Florida where my old friend Eric was a newly minted ensign. He was assigned to Whiting Field in Milton, Florida. I went there and Eric showed me his squadrons’ flight line full of highly polished T-28 Trojans glistening in the sunshine. My jaw dropped and I fought the urge to drool. Eric looked at me and told me before I left, he was going to have me signed up to become a Navy pilot. I chummed around with Eric for a few days and quickly realized being in the military was nothing like the popular media had portrayed it. The other flight students were really cool and flight school looked awesome! I drove to Mainside Pensacola Naval Air Station to sign up for the Navy and was told to sign up once I got back to Boston. When our trip around the country was finished, I did just that. I visited the recruiting office in Cambridge, Massachusetts and before I knew it, I was in the Navy.

 

  After I got my Navy wings, I was assigned to fly the S-3A, a twin engine multi-crew airplane, my first choice. I reported to North Island in San Diego, California where I did my transition training. I joined VS-24, embarked aboard USS Nimitz in August of 1981. I did my carrier quals as the Nimitz was steaming out of Norfolk, Virginia, towards the Mediterranean. I did two cruises and workups on the Nimitz. Then I detached and joined VT-21 flying TA-4Js in Kingsville, Texas in 1984. I flight instructed for a year and a half in VT-21 and then detached from the Navy in 1985.

 

  I was hired by Delta Air Lines in September and trained to be a B-727 Flight Engineer. I stayed with Delta for just about 20 years flying B-727s, B-757s, B-767s, MD-88s, L-1011s and retired in 2005 as a B-767 Captain. Soon, I yearned to fly again and after a cup of coffee to regain my currency at Comair, I joined Eos Airlines flying B-757s from New York to London. I would fly to London, to NY, back to London, to NY. You get the picture. When Eos bankrupted in 2008, I went to Mainland China to fly B-747-400s from the coast of China to Europe, Africa, and South America. I left there to flight instruct at FedEx Express in 2011. I ended up teaching the MD-11/10 program including FTDs and full motion simulators. I went to the line to fly in 2015 flying first as an MD-11/10 First Officer and then as a B-757 Captain. I retired in 2020 when I reached age 65.

 

  I have an RV-8A project in progress in my basement and hope to be flying it soon. I am a member of the Michigan Flyers and EAA Chapters 333 and 113.