Aviation Business Journal | Buyers’ Guide Issue 2022 17 The Best of the Industry Continued from page 15 ABJ: First off, what’s your reaction to getting this Distinguished Service Award, a career recognition? Bill Bohlke: I was very surprised and flattered that my name even came up to be considered for this. I guess it means I’ve done a good job helping the community out and helping people get a start in aviation. We’ve done that with a lot – a lot, a lot – of people. Bohlke International Airways is now a three- generation family business. Can you share the story of the very first spark that got you into aviation, following in your father’s lead? It started in New York: after World War II, my dad returned to his birthplace to build his own airport, which he owned from 1946 until 1959. When my par- ents got divorced in the 1950s, he decided to move to the Caribbean, looking to build another airport. He went to Puerto Rico first, then to St. Thomas, where the Governor of the Virgin Islands at the time said, “Well, you can take anything you want over in St. Croix because there’s nobody there.” So, he found a plot for a hangar near an over-grown WWII-era runway, sold his New York airport, and took a couple airplanes down to the Virgin Islands. I was still in high school, living with my mom, when he said, “You’ve got to come down here: you can get all your ratings.” In 1962, he came up to New Hampshire to solo me on my 16th birthday, and then I finally went down full-time in 1964 and never looked back. Thanks to my dad, and his foresight in putting me forward and giving me a lot of responsibility, I excelled very quickly. Do you have any favorite stories from your early days in the family business? In 1971, my father went into the cargo business after sell- ing his Virgin Island Airways to Prinair, the largest com- muter operating out of Puerto Rico at the time. He had a DC-3 and a Short SC.7 Skyvan, which is like a boxcar, but he needed bigger planes. The Bank of Honolulu had repo-ed three aircraft from a defunct airline in Honolulu, which they offered for $5,000 apiece, as is, where is. Two were flyable, and the third had a lot of good parts. So, he came back from Hawaii and said, “How would you like to go to Honolulu and fly a Curtiss C-46 Commando home?” I was 24 years old with a captain’s rating but a very small amount of captain’s time, I’d never flown over the Pacific, and these airplanes hadn’t flown for two or three years – yet I went out there and brought the first one back with two other pilots. We loaded it up with a tank, a bunch of groceries, and a bunch of parts from the third plane. I look back on that now: if that engine had so much as spit one time, we’d have been in the water, because we were way too heavy. But we made it back! It took 38 hours. We went from Honolulu to Phoenix, Phoenix to Dallas, Dallas to Miami, and Miami to St. Croix. When I got home, he asked, with a straight face, “How would you like to go and pick up another one?” I said, “No, sir. Once was enough!” NATA Distinguished Service Award Bill Bohlke, Bohlke International Airways Continued on page 18
