I remember exactly where I was standing, precisely what time of day it was. Someone had paged me and announced that the editor of FLYING Magazine was on the phone. I thought it was a friend playing a joke. As I looked out over the controlled chaos of the intensive care unit where I worked as an oncology surgeon, I heard a voice claiming to be Mac McClellan.
I had known him by email, but had never spoken to him. In 1998, I sent a piece “over the transom” to FLYING. It was about the many similarities between surgery and flying. It ran in July of that year—I bought about 50 copies. I had tried to convince Mac that I should be a regular columnist at the magazine that I read with religious devotion since the early 1970s. Mac pointed out that many people are passionate about flying and that some write very well, but that they usually have just one or two great stories in them and a column comes around once a month. So, I resolved to send him a piece a month, just as if I were a regular.
