PORT ALLEGANY – Michelle Mangold, formerly of El Paso, Texas,
and a seasonal visitor to Port Allegany, recently completed
requirements for renewal of her private pilot license at Bradford
Regional Airport.
While she was at it, she qualified in a Piper Cub hangared at
the airport and owned by local flyer Bruce Klein.
She also flew with her grandfather Don Mangold of Port Allegany,
and by herself, in the Tripacer she now owns, and hangars at the
airport. It is also flown, and meticulously maintained, by its
former owner, Mangold the elder, a longtime private pilot and
aviation mechanic and recent recipient of a rare
50-years-without-error award from the Federal Aviation
Administration.
Soon to enter her second year at the U.S. Air Force Academy at
Colorado Springs, Colo., Mangold is spending some of her summer
holiday with her grandparents, Don and Joannah Mangold, in the
Mangold family homestead on Broad Street. She has done so many
years.
Soon Cadet 3rd Class Mangold will return to her studies and
training at the academy, where she looks forward to “starting
jumping.”
“Fifteen-sixteenths of the cadets want to get that assignment
(parachute jumping),” she estimates. But very few do. Mangold
qualified on the basis of her good record, grades and physical
condition. She is compact, one of the shortest in her class, but
athletic.
Her career goal is to become a C-17 pilot, also a highly
competitive Air Force job.
Describing the C-17, Michelle enthuses that it is a h-u-g-e
transport plane, which can hold as much as a boxcar. It can fly
supplies and troops where they are needed, and can land on a fairly
short runway.
Grampa Don puts in, “That is one tremendous flying machine.”
Not that flying will be a new experience for the cadet. “All my
grandkids have flown with me; she was about three-months-old the
first time I took her up,” Don Mangold said.
But Michelle Mangold is the only one to have decided she wanted
to be a pilot, too.
Why? She can’t understand such a question. “Who wouldn’t want to
do that? I mean, if you have a chance to fly …”
Accordingly, Michelle had lessons when she was old enough, with
veteran pilot Ray Lewis as instructor. She also learned by going
along with her grandparents, both of whom are licensed pilots.
She soloed her grampa’s plane when she was 16. Delighted to see
that Michelle Mangold was going to follow in the family tradition
established by him, his wife and his late brother Neil, Don Mangold
made Michelle the official owner of the plane.
A “frequent flyer,” Mangold grandp^re saved up some flying time
and fuel in anticipation of Michelle’s visit. To get into the Air
Force Academy, a young person needs to do very well in school, be
fit and of good character, and be sponsored by a member of the U.S.
Congress.
A candidate also has to do “a lot of paperwork,” the cadet
recalls, looking back on “a fourth of my junior year and my whole
senior year” at Franklin High School in El Paso as having been
dominated by the endless forms.
Showing slides and other photos on her laptop, Michelle Mangold
recounts one of her proudest moments at the academy: the ceremony
when she received her “prop and wings.”
Freshmen cadets who make the grade look forward to getting the
cherished pin featuring a propeller and wings. This signifies that
they have been “recognized” as upper-class cadets.
The standard insignia is chrome or silver. But a direct
descendent of a member of the Army Air Corps or the Woman Air Force
Service Pilots, or a cadet with a parent with long term or wartime
military service, is entitled to a gold prop and wings device.
Michelle Mangold qualified for gold on several counts, she said
with evident satisfaction. Cadets can wear their prop and wings on
their flight cap.
Mangold met her boyfriend, FaiWah “Hugo” Ma, at the academy.
Born in Hong Kong, the cadet has already seen service in Iraq
before coming to the academy. He is in training to be a dentist.
Michelle notes that the Air Force is accepting of “joint spouse”
couples, both having Air Force careers.
She will have to commit to five years of ongoing service after
she graduates from the academy and is commissioned as a second
lieutenant. To be accepted for the C-17 program, Mangold will be
required to “give them 10 years.”
Training someone for that assignment is long and intensive, she
explains, and “it is a big investment for the Air Force.”
Don Mangold said he believes Michelle is the only female to have
entered the Air Force Academy already possessing a private pilot
license.
Michelle Mangold thinks very few cadets have a grandparent who
was an integral part of NASA programs, including the Apollo-Saturn
one and the first moon landing. And how many have been honored by
the FAA?
Mangold and her grandparents comprise a mutual admiration
society. Call it The Flying Mangolds.
