“I’ve wanted to be a pilot since I was a little kid, but for a long time it didn’t seem possible,” Mike Grossmann, president of Castle Aviation, told AIN. Born in Germany and raised in Buffalo, N.Y., Grossmann and his family moved to Youngstown, Ohio when he was 14. “Not once did we live anywhere near an airport, so when I finished school I went with my second choice and became a firefighter.” In 1978, after working fires for three years, Grossmann and his wife decided to move to Kansas City, Mo. “I had accepted a job with the fire department there, we had a house lined up and within one day of closing on our Youngstown house my wife changed her mind and didn’t want to move.”
So Grossmann made his wife a deal. “I told her we’d stay in Youngstown but I wanted to take flying lessons. It worked, and I took my first lesson in March 1978. It took me about two years to get all the ratings, and in early 1980 I was offered my first flying job at the airport in Grove City, Pa. It was only 50 miles from home so I worked there as a firefighter and on my two days off every week I flew,” he said. It lasted until Aug. 11, 1983.
More In Maintenance and Modifications
