July 28, 2005

Nora Barth received her pilot’s license in May after a year of lessons and study.

By Diane Chiddister

Nora Barth isn’t the first 66-year-old woman who found that, at a time when her life should be settled, she had to begin again. She isn’t the first whose decades-long marriage crumbled, and who found herself, in a world full of couples, suddenly solo.

Barth certainly isn’t the first to face these difficulties. But she may be one of the few to come out of one of life’s challenges with a pilot’s license in hand and a plan to move to Morocco.

When Barth’s marriage fell apart in May 2004, she said, she did what most people do.She felt hopeless. She went on and on to her friends. But she also did what many people could not imagine in a difficult time — she followed her dream. Most of all, she said, she always wanted to learn how to fly.

After a year of hard work and learning, Barth reached her goal on May 25, when she earned her pilot’s license from Flight Basics Flight School in Springfield, becoming the first woman and the oldest student to graduate from the school.

Barth’s flight school graduation followed a year of lessons and intense study. A week after her husband moved out of their Dayton Street home, she aimed her car to the Springfield airport and the sign she had passed countless times. The sign offered flying lessons but Barth had always cruised by. First she had three children to raise, then there was work, and flying lessons cost way too much money. But last year, Barth decided, there was absolutely every reason to learn how to fly.

“You reach a certain age when if you don’t do something, you won’t get to do it,” she said in a recent interview. “I’m not getting better and better. I’m getting older and older.”

After Barth signed up for lessons, she found herself within days at the controls of a small plane, with her teacher beside her. She taxied down the runway, pulled back on the throttle and headed up into the sky.

Immediately, Barth said, she fell in love.

“I adore the feeling of flight. It’s like walking on air,” she said. Even better, she found, she left her problems down below. “It seemed I left my life behind me on the ground. Pain, anger — in the air they all went away. It was a freedom from myself.”

Barth threw herself into her new love with her characteristic intensity. She took lessons as often as she could afford to, about twice a week, and diligently studied aviation rules. She has always loved learning new things, Barth said, and throughout her life has been an occupational therapist, a potter, a weaver, an engineer and a dog trainer. But she learned those things years ago, and found that at her age learning posed more of a challenge. But that challenge didn’t daunt her.

“Learning is harder now, but I still love it,” she said. “So it’s difficult. So what?”

To her flying teacher, Toby Eastin, Barth was a promising student because she wanted so badly to learn.

“She was determined,” he said. “She was well-prepared and persistent.”

Eastin, who has been flying for three decades, said he has two types of students. There are the young people who want to become professional pilots and then the older ones, like Barth, who “always wanted to fly and now find themselves with the time and money,” he said. While the younger ones have excellent eye/hand coordination, they may lack the persistence to learn ground school regulations and may also lack good decision-making skills. The older pilots, like Barth, can make up for older bodies with diligence and good sense.

“Nora was exceptional in decision-making,” he said.

Barth is the first to admit that things didn’t always go smoothly, and she laughs with Eastin about some of her rockier initial landings. Flying proved more difficult than she expected, she said, and especially challenging was mastering the aeronautical lingo that she needs to communicate with airports and other pilots. But she persisted and found that, as well as loving the feeling of flight, she loved the beauty of the new world that she saw from above. Last winter, she took her first solo flight.

“You see the ground and the houses covered with snow, the edges of the fields outlined, the houses with white roofs, and you’re flying in this crystalline air,” she said. “It’s just gorgeous. It’s so beautiful you almost forget to fly.”

As well as learning to fly, Barth tried other new paths. She traveled to the Galápagos Islands this year and will soon go to Alaska. She always loved traveling, she said, but during her marriage didn’t do much. Now, she does.

Her travels will soon take her further afield. Barth has applied to the Peace Corps, and she has been notified that she is being considered for a position in Morocco, working with craftswomen. She would like nothing better than helping third-world women make a living, she said, and fervently hopes that she passes the physical that she plans to take shortly.

But she has a fall-back plan, too. If she doesn’t make the Peace Corps, Barth plans to join an air safari group in Australia, where she will spend three weeks flying a small plane around a continent she’s never been to before.

In the meantime, though, Barth is selling the home she has lived in for decades. A native New Yorker, she came to Yellow Springs to attend Antioch College, from which she graduated in 1961. She moved to New York for a few years, then she and her husband came back to Yellow Springs, where she has lived ever since. She hates leaving the longtime friends she has made, she said, along with her many new single friends. But she believes that she needs to leave town to complete her emotional healing, so after her house sells, she will move to Boulder, Colo.

This Saturday, July 30, Barth’s home at 317 Dayton Street will go up for auction, along with antiques, furniture and household goods. The auction will begin at 10 a.m.

The last year has been both the most difficult one of her life and one of the most rewarding, Barth said.

“In a way it’s been a wonderful year,” she said. “I’ve learned so much. I’ve learned I’m a big risk-taker. I’ve learned new social skills and met wonderful single women. I’m tremendously optimistic about what there is out there for me.”

If you hear the buzz of a small plane above on a blue-sky summer day, you might want to look up. It could be Nora Barth, flying off to her newest adventure.