I (Ray) gave a short speech about some of my favorite memories:
Mom was a great pilot. She got her pilot’s license before she
got her driver’s license and, with Florence Robinson-Weber, bought
their first plane, a Cessna 140, in 1950. They flew the plane to
Alaska and spent the next 6 years exploring Alaska with it.
The 140 was a great plane for flying around, but the Florence’s were
doing geology and for that they decided to get a better plane: a
Super Cub on floats, which they bought in 1956. Flying to
Alaska on floats was an adventure few guys would tackle in the
1950’s—gas was hard to find and the places you could get it were few
and far between. Even 40 years later when I considered flying
south Mom discouraged me due to the difficulty in finding
fuel! But they made it without trouble, even flying to
northern Canada (down the MacKenzie River to the arctic ocean),
before flying on to Fairbanks.
Mom was occasionally teased that the Super Cub was why Dad married
her! It is likely that having the Super Cub contributed to
their getting to know one another, for Mom would fly it to
Minchumina to visit Dad. They would often fly to local lakes
for picnics, often bringing both float planes (Dad had a Cessna 140
on floats) so friends could join them. They married in 1957,
and spent most of their honeymoon flying around the lower 48.
After my sisters and I were born Mom flew less and less, and she
almost stopped flying entirely when we bought the Cessna 180, which
she never felt comfortable flying. She did continue to fly
into the late 1970’s, when she began to get dizzy spells and had to
stop flying entirely due to them. Even after she stopped
flying herself she still loved to get up in the air with family,
friends and on the mail plane.
The Cessna 140 has remained in the family, and my sisters are still
flying it. I crashed the Super Cub in 1979, and we sold it to
Arvid Weflin, who completely rebuilt it.