By Anne Ruisi
Photo courtesy the Stringfellow family
Not too long ago, Allen Stringfellow watched his teenaged son, Perry, guide a green and white Cessna 172 in for a landing at the Shelby County Airport. The 16-year-old’s flight instructor standing next to him quipped, “I wouldn’t trust most 16-year-olds with a weed whacker, much less an airplane.”
While most teens Perry’s age are getting their driver’s licenses or their first cars, he made his first solo flight from the Shelby airport on Jan. 29. Now he’s preparing to get his private pilot’s license in early summer, when he reaches the minimum required age, 17, on June 12. He’s also working to achieve an instrument rating, a skill far beyond the visual flight rules every pilot learns. “Everything about it is really fun,” Perry says. “It’s a lot of adrenaline, because you’re flying in the air … it’s thrilling, even though it’s safe.”
A love for aviation is deeply embedded in the Mountain Brook youth, as Perry represents the fifth generation of Stringfellows who’ve answered the inner call to take to the skies. His father, Allen, is a licensed pilot, as are his grandfather Edward LaVerne Stringfellow III, and great-grandfather, Edward LaVerne Stringfellow Jr., now 96, who was a flight instructor until he was 88. His late great-great grandfather Edward LaVerne Stringfellow Sr. was the first pilot in the family. “I think it’s a gift that he has,” Perry’s mother, Amanda Stringfellow, says of her son. “It is something that came very naturally to him.” Her husband agrees. “As my granddad said, he took to it like a duck to water,” Allen says.
Moving on up
While Perry started formal flight instruction at a Shelby County flight school in early December, he’s been accustomed to flying in a private plane since he was a child. On one such flight with a family friend when he was 10, the pilot let the boy take the yoke and “steer” the plane. That was an experience that added fuel to his desire to learn to fly. “I always knew I would be allowed to fly if I wanted to,” Perry says.
Flight training is intensive and very involved. Students learn not only about the airplane and the mechanics of flight, but maneuvers, such as different types of turns, landings and take-offs. “I kind of moved through that pretty quickly,” Perry says. “And then you have slow flight, so you can get used to … the airplane’s controls.”
They also learn how to communicate with the tower and other planes. As at any school, there are written and oral exams a student must pass, along with a certain number of hours in the air to practice what you’ve learned, including what to do in a myriad of emergency situations. “It’s all about learning to be safe in the plane,” Perry says.
While he completed his solo flight and can fly alone for practice and training, Perry can’t carry passengers in the air—yet. He’ll be able to do so once he earns his private pilot’s license. And he won’t be able to fly in the clouds until he earns his instrument certification. He’s aiming to hit both targets for his birthday in June.
Quoting Edward Jr., Allen says the steps marking advancement in aviation are like an academic track. “My granddad said, ‘When you solo, that’s like graduating high school. When you get your private license, that’s like graduating college. When you get an instrument rating, that’s like having a master’s degree,’ and becoming a certified flight instructor is ‘like having a PhD in airplanes.’”
A family affair
The family tradition in aviation began when Allen Stringfellow’s great-grandfather bought an airplane in between World War I and World War II. “He wanted something to do with his son,” Allen says. “And so, he said, ‘Come on, let’s learn to fly together.’”
That father and son (Edward LaVerne Stringfellow Jr.)—who was 16 at the time—took flying lessons at the Birmingham airport. The younger Edward made a career out of what started as a hobby and became a corporate pilot and U.S. Air Force civilian flight instructor, Allen says. “He was teaching pilots to fly right after World War II,” Allen says, noting his grandfather wanted to go into the Air Force but couldn’t because he didn’t meet the vision requirements.
The yearning to fly was inherited by succeeding generations in the family. “We all grew up around airplanes, and he taught every one of his children, my dad, my aunt, my great aunt. My brother. We’re all pilots,” Allen says.
Unfortunately, Perry was too young to take flying lessons from his great-grandfather, who stopped formal instruction at 88 years old, eight years ago, when Perry was eight.
Will the circle be unbroken
When Perry completed his first solo flight in January, the back of his shirt was cut off, a tradition among pilots to mark the milestone. On it, handwritten in thick black ink, are Perry’s name, the date, the tail number of the plane and the type of aircraft he flew, a single-engine Cessna 172.
His parents will have it framed, to go along with Allen’s framed memento from his own first solo flight on Jan. 10, 1998, Amanda says.
It’s likely Perry won’t be the last of the Stringfellows to fly. Younger brother Robert, 13, is interested but has a few years to go before he’s old enough to solo. The boys’ oldest brother, William, 19, who is studying aerospace engineering at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, took 10 or 12 hours of instruction but prefers the mechanics of flight more than flying himself.
But aviation isn’t Perry’s only interest. He loves the outdoors, is on his school’s club cycling team and rides with a national-level team. He’s an honor student at Mountain Brook High School, where he’s a junior, and he works part-time at Bike Link in Hoover.
Perry says his dream is to receive an appointment to the U.S. Air Force Academy. If he’s admitted, his goal will be to navigate the requirements to graduate as a pilot for the service.
