When I was a youngster growing up in Latrobe, a small Pennsylvania industrial town east of Pittsburgh, one of my fascinations was with airplanes and aviation. Like so many other boys of that time, I built and crashed my share of balsa wood models. But it
went far beyond that.
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| When I was old enough and had the opportunities, I would spend time at the old terminal building at the airport listening to the pilots trading stories about their planes and their adventures in the sky. Early on, a friend of my family who was an Army pilot took me for a ride in a Piper Cub. He did some things he probably shouldn't have done, and really gave me a scare. Even though it shook me, it also gave me the resolve that, just as soon as I could aff ord it, I would take lessons and become a flier. Little did I realize what an important part of my life -- athletic, business, and family -- aviation would become. | |||
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My formative years on the tour solidified my determination to get my own plane -- and for more than just the pleasure I knew I would get from flying itself.
I started out on the pro tour in 1955, motoring west with my wife, Winnie, in a car barely powerful enought to tow the trailer in which we lived. Those arduous trips from tournament to tournament around the country -- you don't realize how big our country is until you drive it -- were not only exhausting, but certainly didn't do my golf game any good. On some of the longer jumps between tournaments, I almost literally climbed out of my car upon arrival in town and stepped onto the first tee. |
Arnie on Meeting His Wife |
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As good things began to happen to me on tour, the highways became less and less a part of our lives. I began taking those flying lessons I had dreams about as a kid, and in 1961, I acquired my first aircraft -- an Aero Commander 500.
I moved up to a 560F Commander two years later, and had gotten so busy by then that I hired a part-time pilot to fly with me.
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Arnie on Flying |
To put it quite simply, I could never have accomplished even half as much as I have in my golf and business careers over the last four decades without having my own airplanes. | ||
| This tremendous savings of time, and wear and tear on body and soul through private flying has been more evident during the last two decades, when I have devoted more and more of my non-tournament time to the design, co nstruction, and operation of golf courses across the country and abroad. The time saved enables me to get to the sites of projects hundreds of miles apart that same day. Weeks are translated into days because of my airplane. | |||
I purchased my first of six Cessna jets, a 500 model,in 1976, and replaced it with a faster Citation II in 1978. I upgraded again in 1983, taking delivery of the first Citation III off the company's Wichita, Kansas assembly line, an aircraft considered to
be the cream of this level of business jets. Two years later, I went into an improved Citation III, and obtained a Citation VII in early 1992. I purchased one of the very first Citation X's in 1996. It has intercontinental range, and will be particularl
y valuable to me in my vast and growing course design business overseas.
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 Palmer Describes His Journey |
I have been involved in some memorable achievements in my aviation career. The most celebrated came in 1976, as part of our country's bicentennial celebration.
The Lear Jet Company had a Model 35 plane repainted in appropriate red, white, and blue, renumbered it "200 Yankee" in recognition of the anniversary, prepared it for extra-long-range flying, and sent four of us -- Jim Bir, Bill Purkey, writer Bob Serl ing and me -- out of Denver on a pre-planned flight around the world. It was one of the most exciting things I've ever done. | ||
| With stops in Boston, Wales(an unplanned one for fuel),Teheran (while the Shah was still in power), Colombo in Sri Lanka, Jakarta in Indonesia, Manila, Wake Island, and Honolulu, we arrived back in Denver in 57 hours, 25 minutes and 42 seconds, a new reco rd for that class of business aircraft. | |||
| Honolulu was the focal point of another highlight of my flying career. I had flown commercially to the Orient in late 1986 to play in a tounament and inspect a golf course project for my company in Taiwan, and was on my way back to the mainland via Hawaii . After careful calculations and thorough planning, my pilots Lee Lauderback and Lance Long flew the Citation III to Honolulu to meet me and we returned safely to the West Coast with 1000 pound of fuel to spare. It was the first West Coast-Hawaii round tr ip for a Citation III. |
Winnie Palmer on Arnold the Pilot |
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| Who knows what lies ahead with my aviation? I have every expectation of maintaining a busy business and golfing schedule for quite a few years to come in my new Citation X and have no intention of changing my modus operandi very much at all. | |||
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