But the last sight symbolized the pilot’s funeral Thursday. As the flag was handed to his widow, attendees couldn’t help but point into the air. A plane was cutting through the sky. It was fitting for Mitch.
The funerals of Mitchell Cary and Don Gum were held Thursday in Clark and Greene counties. The two pilots were killed July 30 when the Wright “B” Flyer, Inc’s “Silver Bird,” a lookalike of the Wright brothers’ first commercial aircraft, crashed in Clark County during a test flight.
Gum’s life celebration service, which family asked to keep private, was held Thursday morning at Beavercreek’s Peace Lutheran Church.
Gum was described as a devoted family man who could design and build nearly anything, whether that was a wooden stool, his own house or an airplane.
The 73-year-old was an engineer who worked at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and helped design flight simulators.
“Science and learning and curiosity were things that I think, for him, gave life meaning in addition to his family,” said his daughter, Erica (Gum) Burson, who described her father as a “quiet perfectionist” who taught his children “how to do things well and how to do things right.”
Gum is survived by his wife, Janet, children Erica Burson, Benjamin Gum and Maria Heady, six grandchildren, his brother Bill and numerous nieces and nephews.
Friends and family shared stories of how Gum used a personal touch to help design seats for flight simulators, found materials for his homemade plane at Home Depot, was an animal lover and how he was a quiet showman who loved aviation history.
Phil Beaudoin, the president of Wright “B” Flyer, Inc., described how Gum constructed a center flap on an upper wing that could also be used to move the antenna.
“He’d design it and then build it with his hands,” Beaudoin said. “He formed the metal, riveted it and it worked just as planned. That’s really what Don’s talent was.”
At the end of his remarks, Beaudoin told Gum: “Don, keep flying.”
Fellow Wright “B” Flyer, Inc. pilot Don Stroud said he and Gum were aviation “soul mates” who both loved the exhilarating feeling of open-air flying.
Burson said her father had a plaque of an Abraham Lincoln quote that summed up his existence: “And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”
Cary, 64, of Yellow Springs, was unusually balanced intellectually, said Phil Coughter, a friend. Cary held several engineering degrees and was pursuing studies in theology. He was a bomber pilot, tanker pilot and test pilot in the U.S. Air Force, and retired as a lieutenant colonel. He was employed by WPAFB as a program manager and chief of cargo and trainer propulsion branch.
He is survived by his wife of 26 years, Judith; sons and daughter-in-law Mark and Julianne Cary and Christopher and Kathryn Brandt; daughter Lisa Cary and Ryan Meade and five grandchildren, who loved ones say “mellowed him out.”
Cary’s three children addressed the mourners holding hands, sharing stories of how he explained to a 3-year-old granddaughter how to “lift, pitch and roll” a plane.
“He passed away in the plane he loved,” Cary’s son, Mark, said. “We should all be as lucky.”
Coughter, Cary’s close friend, agreed.
“Wherever he is...,” he began, “I hope they have at least one of every airplane.”
Contact this reporter at achaffin@coxohio.com.
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