BW: Retired from the Reserves, yes, but not from flying.
YP: True. I commuted to various Delta bases throughout my career. I was type rated in Lear Jets, Citations, DC-9s, B-727s, B-757s, B-767s, and L-1011s. I flew internationally from JFK and LAX. I retired from airline flying in March 1997. I have flown own light plane(s) since.
BW: You must have piled up a passel of hours over the years. Would you care to throw some numbers out there?
YP: I flew various USN training aircraft for 306 hours. I piled up 1200 hours in A-4s, 1,200 hours in F-8s, and 256 hours in F-4s. My airline flying time totals up to more than 30,000 hours. Plain old civilian flying time adds up 1800 more hours.
BW: How about your family? They have played some memorable roles in the Youthly Puresome stories over the years.
YP: My wife of 55 wonderful years is Carolyn Volpato Woodul (AKA Tunita the Child Bride). My son Douglas lives in Round Rock, Texas with his wife and my granddaughter and grandson. He does something beyond my understanding in the international computer chip business. My other son Chris lives in Fort Worth, Texas with his wife and my other granddaughter and grandson. Chris collects and sells military hardware. Carolyn and I moved to a mountaintop ranch in Northern New Mexico in 2005.
BW: For those who are not familiar with the Youthly Puresome stories, who exactly is Youthly Puresome and how did he come to be?
YP: Youthly Puresome is a character of my invention. He is clearly a manifestation of me, but I loathe using the first person in story-telling. When I started writing my stories, I started using Youthly.
BW: Many of the Youthly Puresome stories are clearly written from experience. Are Youthly’s experiences derived primarily from your own experiences, from the experiences of others, or both?
YP: At least 95% are from my own experience. The rest are sea stories I heard from other people, or common stories around naval aviation that were too good to let get lost.
BW: What developed your interest in flying?
YP: I was a World War II child. We lived in Grand Prairie, Texas, and there were airplanes in the air constantly, from the North American plant that bordered Hensley Field (NAS Dallas) and the big bomber plant at Fort Worth, pumping out B-24s. Our back yard fence was also the perimeter fence for NAS Grand Prairie, where students flew the “Yellow Peril” Stearman, some of which ended up in yards in my neighborhood. My favorite uncle was a B-17 flight engineer / top turret gunner with the 303rd Bomb Group in Molesworth, England. He was killed in action on February 22, 1944. He was later brought home and buried in the family plot in Hubbard, Texas. It was a military funeral, and also the first time I heard “Taps.” That made a huge impression on me. In the third grade, back in Portales, there was a booklet in the library called Wings of Gold which chronicled a lad’s path thru Pensacola and earning his wings. I memorized it and the different iterations of it through time. The real cementer was a movie called Task Force with Gary Cooper, which I sat through twice. That movie convinced me that I was going to be a Naval Aviator.
BW: What was the first airplane you ever flew?
YP: I got rides in various light planes when I was a kid, but the first plane I flew was a Piper PA-18 Super Cub. I was able to finance 22 hours on my own before I completely bankrupted myself. The next airplane I flew was a Varga 2150 Kachina which I flew courtesy of Navy ROTC to get my private license.
