When former Jefferson Countian Marlis Thum, 92, answered a survey asking residents at the assisted living facility where she now lives about their dreams, she never expected hers would be fulfilled.
“They asked, ‘If you had one wish, what would it be?’ and I said I’d love to take one more flight,” she said. “That was it; I didn’t think anything would come of it.”
But Festus Memorial Airport officials helped her make that dream come true.
On June 1, Marlis, who earned a private pilot’s license in 1971, went aloft in a Cessna 172 with pilot and flight instructor Paul Karasek at the controls.
“The pilot was so nice,” she said. “He had his hands on the yoke, and he said, ‘Put your hands on there and take control.’ I did it very timidly at first – it had been a long, long time and I didn’t want to mess anything up – but then I was flying it, and I got that old feeling.”
Marlis said that special feeling is the reason she enjoyed flying for more than half a century.
“Oh, it’s the peace and quiet when you’re up there,” she explained. “You take off, and you have to make an immediate left turn – that’s mandatory – but after that you do what you want to do. There is such peace in flying. You are alone but not alone, if that makes sense.”
If you get to, I get to
Marlis and the late Joe Thum were married in 1950 and had three children – Steve, Donna and Rick – in three years.
“Joe was an entrepreneur,” Marlis said. “He liked to start a business and then, when it was going well, he’d sell it and buy another.”
He did well enough that the couple was able to build a home on a 36-acre tract overlooking the Mississippi River in Arnold. By the time their fourth child, Nita, came along in 1966, the Thums were in a financial position to take up aviation as a hobby.
“Dad said he had saved up enough to take flying lessons,” Nita recalled. “Then my mom said, ‘You’d better have enough money for two, ’cause I ain’t sitting home alone.’ So they both took lessons at the Festus airport.”
“I would take Nita to kindergarten, then go down and take my lessons and come back and pick her up,” Marlis said.
She and Joe both got their American licenses in 1971, although not without some resistance.
“My father told me, ‘Sis, why not wait till I’m gone?’ He thought flying was not safe,” Marlis said. “He didn’t realize flying was safer than the big truck he was driving.”
Flights of fancy
Once they had licenses and knew they wanted to fly a lot, the Thums went searching for a plane of their own with another couple, Paul and Willie Politte, who lived in De Soto and were licensed pilots.
“Paul had seen an ad in the paper for a Cessna 182,” Marlis said. “We went to look at it at Festus and the poor thing was sitting, one wing up and one down, with gas stains all down the side. Paul flew it from Festus to Spirit (of St. Louis airport in Chesterfield) and they got it all cleaned up.
“It didn’t take long and they had it up and going. The nice part was it held four people, so it could take Joe and I and Nita and a friend.”
Nita said she and her parents built many good memories in that plane over the next few years.
“They’d take a flight to Florida just for fun,” she said. “They had passes to Silver Dollar City and we’d fly down to Branson and go there.”
One trip featured a near-tragedy.
“We had friends in Atlanta we’d fly down and see,” Nita said. “One time, we picked up their daughter, who was my age, and were headed to Walt Disney World. As we were taking off, one of us looked out and saw something dripping down the wing, and we just kind of casually asked, ‘Is that supposed to be there?’
“It was a ruptured gas tank. Needless to say, the flight was delayed.”
Marlis was in the pilot’s seat that day.
“We declared an emergency, and it took three days to get it repaired,” she said. “Joe put on his old clothes and got in there and worked with the mechanic. He technically wasn’t supposed to be doing it, but he started handing the guy tools and the next thing you know they’re both elbow deep in the engine.”
Nita said the family took 100-mile trips as casually as most families go down the block.
“We used to go weird places like Paducah for lunch, just to get flight time in,” she said. “They took turns in the pilot seat.”
There were a few challenges, however.
“One of the things about flying by yourself in a small plane is that there’s no potty,” Marlis said. “You had to stop at an airport and hope they were open. And once you’re at the airport, how do you get around? But you know, most airports had an old jalopy they’d let you use.
“Everybody thought we were absolutely nuts.”
The Thums kept their plane about 10 years, with Joe doing much of the maintenance.
“At Festus, they knew him and they trusted him,” Marlis said. “Of course, they checked his work.”
The Thums and Polittes sold their Cessna in the early 1980s.
“We wanted to sell it and buy a six-seater so we could all go together,” Marlis said. “But we started looking, and the prices just didn’t work. We ended up selling the plane, splitting the proceeds, and buying motor homes.”
No regrets
The Thums continued to fly occasionally.
“In 1993, the big flood, we rented a plane and flew over all that damage,” Marlis said. “It was horrendous.”
Joe Thum was diagnosed with stomach cancer and died in 2007. Marlis didn’t take the controls of a plane again until her June flight.
“We went down there at 9:15 a.m. and my brother, Steve, went up with them for about an hour,” Nita said. “My mom was able to take the controls for a time. They went over our old house in Arnold, went down along the river to Rush Island.”
Marlis, who now lives at an assisted living community in Affton, said she encourages people to give flying a try.
“If you can afford it, by all means do it,” she said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of; just use your head. It’s a lot of new learning you do; and you use your feet, your hands, your eyes.”
Marlis said she loved her recent flight but regrets she didn’t relax more.
“I was so nervous! But it was wonderful,” she said. “I’d go again tomorrow if someone would take me up.”