Pete Unverferth recently took a trip down memory lane, but not on foot. Instead he took to the air, in a plane once owned by his late grandfather.
Unverferth, 37, got to ride in the 1948 Navion single-engine plane on July 14, as part of an Operation Savannah charity flight at the Festus Memorial Airport.
That flight may have been the last community activity for the local airport, which is facing closure in the next couple of months.
David Bailey of Festus, a longtime aviation enthusiast who recently bought and restored the old Navion plane, piloted the recent flight that Unverferth and his son, Jack, took.
Unverferth’s grandmother, Vivian Shea of Perryville, got to witness the flight, as did Unverferth’s wife of 15 years, Alicia, and their other two children, Makenzie and Emry. The family lives in Ste. Genevieve.
“We went down to Perryville, landed, then flew back over Ste. Genevieve and Bloomsdale,” Unverferth said. “It was like I remembered – taking a little cruise just for fun.”
Operation Savannah was founded in 2014 by local entrepreneur Alex Bischoff to help and support veterans and first responders who have suffered trauma.
Unverferth certainly meets that criteria. He had been in law enforcement for 13 years, nine of them as a patrolman with the Ste. Genevieve Police Department, and in April 2021 he responded to what he called a “fairly routine” disturbance call that turned out to be not so routine, after all.
The suspect, 34-year-old Tyler Heise, threw a lighted Molotov cocktail at Unverferth, who suffered substantial burns to his arms, torso and legs.
“The sad thing about it is that it really wasn’t that big of a deal,” Unverferth said. “If he’d just talked to me, I probably would have just told him to knock off whatever it was he was doing and that would’ve been the end of it.”
Unverferth spent two weeks in the hospital and more than eight months recovering from home. After undergoing skin grafts and extensive rehabilitation, he returned to full duty in December.
Heise was charged with first degree assault and armed criminal action.
Uh oh
Unverferth’s grandfather, Joseph Shea, was a pharmacist who had developed a love of flying while in the military during World War II.
“He got his pilot’s license after the war,” Unverferth said. “He flew for as long as I can remember, and he had several planes. I’m not sure where he got this one, but he owned it and flew it quite a bit.”
When Unverferth was a teenager, he was on board with his grandfather on a routine flight when there was a problem with the landing gear.
“It was one of those things where you’re saying, ‘Looking good, looking good,’ and then you’re like, ‘Uh oh!’” Unverferth said. “We came in on the belly, skidded for a couple hundred feet and bounced over the safety chains and that’s where we stopped. There really wasn’t time to be scared; by the time I realized we were in trouble, we were stopped.”
Shortly after that, Unverferth’s grandfather fell ill, and repairs to the plane were put on the back burner.
“My grandpa died in 2012, and my grandma sold it,” Unverferth said.
Reconnecting
A collector purchased the plane, and David Bailey acquired it last year. He brought it to the Festus airport, where Bischoff has his Operation Savannah office.
“I helped David put it in the hangar and have been his helper while he’s been putting it back together,” Bischoff said. “I made a picture of the Navion the cover photo on our Facebook group.”
That was how Unverferth reconnected with his grandpa’s plane.
Unverferth and his two older children have been involved with the Experimental Aircraft Association’s Young Eagles program for several years.
“You sign up and the kids get a free 30-minute flight,” he said. “We do it a couple of times a year. My kids enjoy it.”
At the most recent event, Unverferth was chatting with one of the volunteer pilots for the program.
“He told me he remembered my grandpa, and then he said, ‘Did you see that his plane is back?’ So I went on Facebook and saw Alex’s post. I told him I thought it was my grandpa’s plane, because of the little emblem on the front, and that I’d love to come and see it.”
Bischoff was delighted and offered to do him one better.
“He explained his Operation Savannah, and offered to take us up in (the plane),” Unverferth said. “It was great that my grandma got to see it, too.”
Unverferth currently is taking flying lessons himself.
“I am in the process of getting my license,” he said. “I fly out of Perryville usually or Cape Girardeau, but sometimes Festus.
“It was great to go up in my grandfather’s plane. I’d have been happy with just seeing it, maybe taking some pictures, so this definitely went beyond my expectations. It was a blast.”