Enlarge Photo

Photo: Robinson Helicopter

It's always interesting to see how success changes a company. In aviation (and in other industries), we can all point to a few examples of innovative, entrepreneurial companies that made it big and, in their success, lost all of the vision and drive that made them great to begin with. Those companies, sadly, are not rare cases.

The ones that start lean, earn success and then somehow, some way keep that spark, those are the rare ones. In aviation I can name two or three of them. That's it.

The first one that springs to mind is Robinson Helicopter Company, which was the life work of Frank Robinson, the founder and visionary who committed himself for 40 years to making the company match his vision. He succeeded in doing just that and retired earlier this week at the age of 80 on his own terms, something, again, that doesn't happen every day.

Once upon a time, Robinson was, like many of us, a guy who worked for a big company--actually, a succession of big companies, Cessna, Hughes, and finally, Bell--working on the nuts and bolts of other people's designs. But Robinson had a dream of his own, a small, affordable helicopter that would bring rotary winged flight to the masses. Again and again, he pitched this dream to his bosses but had no takers until finally, one day, he decided to do it himself. And Robinson Helicopter Company was born.

If you'd somehow walked past that little tee hanger on Torrance Airport in 1973 in which Frank Robinson's one-man band was busily working on the helicopter of his dreams, you probably wouldn't have as much as slowed down for a second look. But that's the nature of dreams, you know. It doesn't take a critical mass of approval to propel a dream; it takes only the belief of the dreamer, and Frank Robinson has never been the kind of person to wait for outside confirmation before proceeding with any project.

I've had the pleasure on several occasions over the past many years of being one of a handful of journalists invited to dine with Frank and others from Robinson at the company's annual, informal press dinner at the HAI convention. It is truly one of the highlights of the year for me.

What kind of a guy is Frank Robinson? He's a guy who loves a great steak, a good glass of wine and spirited conversation. And he is, as you might guess, pretty opinionated. He is "opinionated," I should clarify, in the way that really smart people with clearly reasoned and well thought out ideas are opinionated. And he's funny. Like many dreamers, Frank has that gleam in his eye. He loves a good joke and his sense of humor is wry and incisive. He's focused. Ideas he has, like the one to create a small turbine-powered five-place helicopter, seem to come fully formed, and he sees them through. And he's a man of action. From that tee hanger, filled to overflowing with one man's dreams, came a company that has produced nearly 10,000 helicopters and employs more than 1,000 people in a half-million-square-foot complex.

And did I mention that he is fiercly independent? As if it could be otherwise!

Still, he knows to surround himself with talented people, people who know manufacturing, design, certification and marketing. Some of those people, no surprise, are Robinsons too. They are, like their dad, smart, talented, delightful people in their own right.

Frank's son Kurt has taken over the reins at Robinson, though he has been working there since 1987, and has had so much responsibility in every segment of the business for so long that the the transition is sure to be seamless.

Will Robinson be the same company without the founder's everyday presence? Nope, it's just not possible. But there's no doubt that it will continue to be a great company, perhaps in ways that Frank never envisioned. But there's no escaping the fact that Robinson Helicopter will continue to be constructed on a foundation of principles that guided Frank as he struck out on his own and began building his dream, one blade at a time, until it took flight.