| Jon Johanson |
| 2006 WPSA Recipient |
OKLAHOMA CITY – On January 26,2007 the Wiley Post Commission presented Jon Johanson with the Wiley Post Spirit Award in recognition of his many aviation achievements. Johanson, a nurse and midwife from Australia, is the first international award recipient. His many accomplishments include being the first person to fly solo over the South Pole in a single engine aircraft and the first person to circumnavigate the world solo three times in a home-built aircraft . Johanson also holds multiple world speed records. "The Wiley Post Spirit Award was created to recognize an individual in general aviation who best exemplifies the innovative and pioneering spirit of Wiley Post," said Bob Kemper, executive director of the Wiley Post Commission. "In particular, we want to recognize someone who hasn't had the financial support of either the government or of a large corporate backer, but has dedicated their own time, money and hard work to further advance the field of general aviation. Johanson fits these criteria perfectly." Neither nursing nor flying paid enough for Johanson to purchase his own factory built plane, so he decided to build his own Van's RV-4 aircraft. Once Johanson worked through his personal hurdles of no money, no tools, no shop and no skills, the project took him only two and a half years to complete. Johanson jokes that he couldn't take too long, because he was paying rent on the shed he was working in. When Johanson set his mind on long distance flying, he realized the limitations of his airplane and made the necessary modifications to accomplish his goals. Although many critics including aeronautical engineers told him it would be impossible, Johanson has gone on to set multiple world records. It is because of these accomplishments and dedication to the field of general aviation that Johanson is being honored with the Wiley Post Spirit Award. In 1931, Wiley Post, with his Australian navigator Harold Gatt y flew around the world in a record time of 8 days, 15 hours and 51 minutes. In 1933, he became the first person to make a solo around the world flight. Johanson is the third annual recipient of Wiley Post Spirit Award. Past award recipients include Andy Keech of Washington D.C. and Cheryl Stearns of North Carolina both of whom have accomplished multiple achievements in the field of general aviation. The Wiley Post Spirit Award banquet will be held in Oklahoma City on January 26, 2007. Among the attendants at this year's awards banquet will be aviation enthusiasts, past award recipients and Winnie Mae's granddaughter. Winnie Mae was the daughter of Wiley Post's employer F. C. Hall of Chickasha, and the person whom Wiley Post named his famous Lockheed Vega aircraft after. Wiley Post's Winnie Mae of Oklahoma aircraft now resides at the Smithsonian Institute. During the awards banquet, the Pearl Carter-Scott Aviation Scholarship will be presented to a member of the Chickasaw Nation who is pursuing a degree in the field of aviation. Pearl Carter-Scott, famed Chickasaw aviatrix, was a pioneer in her work in aviation and in her work with the Chickasaw Nation. She was a founding board member of the Wiley Post Heritage of Flight and Transportation Museum and personal friend of Wiley Post. Nominations for next year's Wiley Post Spirit Award and Pearl Cater-Scott Aviation Scholarship can be made by contacting the Wiley Post Commission at (405) 789-0005 or go to our contact page on this site. Tickets to the Wiley Post Spirit Award are tax deductible with proceeds benefiting the Wiley Post Heritage of Flight and Transportation Museum. Tickets to the event can be purchased by contacting the Wiley Post Commission. The Wiley Post Heritage of Flight and Transportation Museum is a 501(c) 3 charitable education and scientific organization. The organization is currently working to restore the 1928 Curtiss-Wright Wiley Post hangar. Wiley Post used the hangar extensively from 1929 to 1934 as a base for the Winnie Mae and to design and modify the airplane he used to set several national speed records, high altitude exploration of the stratosphere and two around-the- world flights. The completed hangar will be the first phase in the development of an aviation center which will include an aviation and transportation museum, a 1920's -30's style air terminal, fly-in hotel, dining, shopping and event center. |
"Jon Johanson Exemplifies the Pioneering Spirit of Wiley Post" |
| Jon Johanson Has Done What No Other Homebuilder Has Done |
| The Person The Plane Trip East Trip West Australian Jon Johanson has done what no other homebuilder has done with his or her aircraft. He has flown it around the world, not once, but three times. Jon's adventures have taken place during the summers (Northern Hemisphere) in 1995, 1996, and 2000. The information here on our site is an article that was compiled by Jeremy Benedict about Jon's first two flights. Jon Johanson appears to be a normal man and he had what is, for pilots at least, a normal dream. He wanted to build an airplane and fly it to Oshkosh. Oh, there were a couple of small problems: people told him he was not capable of building an airplane, he didn't have the money or place to do it if he was, and he lived in Darwin, on the north coast of Australia, about 10,000 nautical miles from Wisconsin, on the far side of the world's biggest ocean. Well, it turns out this ordinary fellow is capable of extraordinary things. Jon, a 38 year old nurse-midwife now living near Adelaide, did not aim from boyhood to follow in the footsteps of Charles Kingsford-Smith or Gordon Taylor. "I was never good in school...actually, I was pretty awful" Jon recalls. "Corporal punishment was common in Australia when I was in grade school. We got a whack every time we missed a word on a spelling test. Spelling tests were always ten words, and I regularly got seven or eight thumps." This kind of encouragement went on for several years. "I never quite quit, but the message I got from school was that I was too "thick" to amount to much, so I shouldn't expect much out of life. So for a long time, I didn't. I just got by, day to day, not thinking much about anything." Out of school, Jon ended up as a carpenter's apprentice. It wasn't something he particularly wanted to do, but when you don't think much about the future, one thing is as good as another. He found himself on a small crew, building homes. "We poured concrete, framed structures, hung doors and windows, everything except maybe the wiring and plumbing. And we did it in all kinds of weather." Jon says. He found he could hold his own, could learn what he had to to get a job done. Nobody on the crew seemed to think of him as anyone special, but they weren't calling him thick, either. One day, on a lunch break, he was talking with one of the older guys on the crew. Somehow, the subject turned to flying, something that had begun tickling around in the back of Jon's brain. Whenever he had thought about it consciously, though, he had pushed it away. Flying was something for other, brighter, types; certainly not something for someone thick or slow. Jon's companion had been around, and in the course of his woodworking career had spent some time working for an aero club, repairing wood gliders. "I dunno," he said, "Didn't seem to me that the chaps flying those aeroplanes were so different. They all learned how, one step at a time, same as you're doing here. They'd make mistakes and fix 'em. Sometimes they'd make mistakes, and I'd fix 'em. But they were an ordinary bunch, having a good time... seems to me you could do it if you wanted..." Two weeks later Jon was at the local airfield. He found that flying lessons cost $25.00 an hour. He was making $27.00 a week. Even so, he managed a lesson every second or third week.... Not long after he got his license, construction work began drying up and even though he had successfully completed his apprenticeship, he found it difficult to stay employed. His mother had always been interested in health and medicine, but the realities of raising four children had kept her from pursuing it as a career. Jon must have inherited some of the fascination, because he made the decision to pursue a new career as a nurse. He enrolled at a hospital -- at the time, most nurses in Australia were graduated from hospital programs with a certificate, rather than from a university with a degree. The programs were focused and intense. Jon, who arrived a day late to begin the course, was behind from the start. He ground away the days in the hospital and classroom, the nights studying. Even after the successes of his apprenticeship and achieving his pilot's license, he could hear echoes of his earlier schooling...maybe he just wasn't smart enough to keep up. He never quite failed, but his grades floated around in the lower strata. The final exams at school were tough and it took him two tries to pass. And there was the final hurdle; the dreaded Board Exams, necessary to gain the certificate and practice. Wrung out by months of work and strain, Jon knew he simply did not have the reserves to "sit the exam" more than once. He just could not afford to fail, even though the exams were so difficult it often took top students more than one try. "I threw everything I had into it. I come from a religious family, and my mother and grandmother prayed. My mother asked God to see me through and keep me from despair if I didn't make it, but my Gran wasn't settling for that! She more or less told Him that she wouldn't settle for anything less than my passing with honors -- a "distinction", we call it." And this time, when the marks were posted, there it was: Jon Johanson, with distinction. "Never underestimate your Gran." says Jon. After graduation, Jon left Australia for a six month stint in the shattered country of Cambodia. He ended up staying two years. "Until you do something like that, you have NO idea how fortunate you are to live in a country like the US or Australia." he remembers. "We kept people alive, even healed them, in conditions where it didn't seem possible. I don't think I even started to realize, until then, what people could do if they really, truly, had to." When Jon left Cambodia, he settled in Sydney, in southeastern Australia. He soon tired of the politics of nursing and besides, the flying bug had bitten again. He free-lanced in local clinics and slowly paid his way through flight training, eventually gaining the Australian equivalent of the ATP. "In Australia, to get a entry level flying job, you have to know someone or get lucky," Jon says. "I got lucky." Luck came in the form of a Partenavia, a light fixed gear twin. Jon flew charter work out of Darwin, ferrying people and goods in and out of strips all over Northern Australia. Rules restricted charter pilots to a certain number of hours a month, but in the relative remoteness of Darwin, they weren't always strictly observed. "I'm not saying I flew more than I was supposed too" Jon grins. "I'm just saying I flew a lot. Quite a lot." Droning away in the Partenavia, dreams of having his own airplane, something that helped him through some bad times, resurfaced. Neither nursing or flying paid enough for him to even consider a factory airplane, so his ideas began to revolve around homebuilts. When he heard rumors about an homebuilt project in Darwin, he tracked it down. He walked into the workshop, and there was an airplane he had heard about before, in Cambodia. Something called an RV-4. "This thing was just the ticket. Rugged, simple, went fast, went slow, could handle bush strips. But I didn't know anything about metal or how to build with it, and I didn't want to get into something I couldn't handle, so I didn't do anything." Still, he couldn't stay away, and every time he was in Darwin, he stopped by to see how the RV was coming. Finally, the builder, in exasperation, asked Jon when he was going to quit looking and start building his own airplane. "I gave him the usual excuses." Jon remembers, laughing. "No money, no tools, no place to work, no skills..." "I'll bet you've got a thousand dollars somewhere." the builder challenged him. Jon allowed that he reckoned he could scrape a grand together. "Well, then," said the builder, sweeping a load of scrap off a workbench with a crash. "Here's your place, there's your tools, and I'll show you what to do when you need it. What's your next excuse?" Jon didn't have one. The order went to the States the next week. (This article is courtesey of Van's Aircraft) |
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| Richard VanGrunsven Honors Johanson |
| Richard Van Grunsven of Aurora, OR made the trip to Oklahoma City January 26th, 2007 to a surprise afternoon reception for Jon Johanson. It was one of Van's designed aircraft, an RV-4 that Johanson has made his three trips around the world and over fifty FAI recognized aviation records for his aircraft type. On the right is VanGrunsven and his wife, Diane. On the far right is the early arrivals at the afternoon reception. Left-Right are: Jon Johanson, Bob Kemper, Andy Keech, Richard VanGrunsven and Mike Grimes. |
Left: Keynote speaker Gen. Jay Edwards
Above: Andy Keech, Cheryl Stearns, Jon Johanson
Upper Right: Johanson with WPS Award
Right: Thomas Luman(middle) receives scholarship
Above: Andy Keech, Cheryl Stearns, Jon Johanson
Upper Right: Johanson with WPS Award
Right: Thomas Luman(middle) receives scholarship
| Silent Courage |
| Andy Keech's Introduction of Jon Johanson |
| Good evening ladies and gentlemen. It is a great pleasure to be here again to introduce Jon Johanson, the 3rd WPA Spirit awardee in this impressive venue. It is most fitting for this very special occasion. The Wiley Post Spirit award is top of my annual social calender. Your invitations have a thumbnail of Jon's achievements. In a few minutes he will elaborate further. In the meantime I would like to start on a personal note. Ever since I was young I have had an armchair interest in the north and south poles, and have not been to either. However, sled dogs have been to both. These strong, enthusiastic, non quitters are Man's best friend at their best. Of those, the absolute best, the alpha dog, has place of honor in the front harness. This is the TOP DOG position, out in front of the others. This animal knows that in any other position the scenery does not change much from day to day. Being top dog is important to all mammals. With humans we know one when we see one. Sled dogs went with Ernest Shackleton on his quest to cross Antarctica. This effort was doomed to fail when his ship, the Endurance, became trapped and crushed by sea ice leaving his party to live in the open. However, what began as a failure became last century's classic survival triumph. The desperate endeavor to survive covered a year without re-supply or contact with the outside world and it involved one of history's memorable open boat navigations. Shackleton navigated a 22' lifeboat 800 miles from the edge of Antarctica to a whaling station on South Georgia island- a 20 mile speck off the Argentine coast. From there he proceeded to rescue all his men from the ice. They had been there in the open for 12 months. He lost not a single man. Shackleton's success is due to his mastery of leadership, his grasp of man management, and preparation. To recruit his expedition he placed the following advertisement in a London paper. |
This ad would fire the blood of any adventurous reader. Of those, perhaps 1% put pen to paper in application to go on this expedition. Of several hundred applicants Shackelton further narrowed the number to 28 men. These were men with real world trades, capabilities, skills and experience- Team players, with active, useful lives and talents--Schackleton had, from the start |
| quintessential men. Quint essence: Old French words for the 5th distillation, the highest standard for chemical purity. He had the ingredients for a most effective team. To go alone into such places of desolation with only one's own preparation and resources, with no reasonable expectation of rescue when things go wrong, requires one remaining quality…one so uncommon that it is mentioned rarely in our lifetime, but is instantly recognized. It is that of lonely courage. Going solo into the deep unknown. Charles Lindbergh had it when he flew to Paris, Wiley Post had it when he flew solo round the world, Charles Kingsford Smith had it when he pioneered vast Pacific ocean air routes for the future. Tonight you are meeting another, modern day aviator, with that 6th distillation. Ladies and Gentlemen… Jon Johanson. |
"Officers wanted for long journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness.Safe return, doubtful." |