I think it was the summer of 1983 when a nasty line of thunderstorms moved across DuPage Airport west of Chicago, upending a number of airplanes and damaging even more. I was not having a good time as a novice FAA operations safety inspector in the DuPage FSDO. Taking any initiative — doing something — usually landed me on somebody’s carpet, and doing nothing but reading manuals and shuffling paperwork put me to sleep in total boredom. A bright spot was that I sat next to Theo Moore in the bullpen; Theo was the accident prevention specialist (APS), and I was picking up tips about how — and how not — to run a successful safety program.
Back home in Cincinnati a friend, Ted Schneider, owned an aircraft salvage and repair business, and I thought he’d like the chance to bid on some crunched flying machines. Yeah, it was probably illegal and immoral if not fattening, but I slipped across the hall on the second floor of DuPage Beechcraft to the airport manager’s office.
