February 2005
He’s not really my uncle and, matter of fact, we’re absolutely no blood relationship to each other at all. I started calling him Uncle Nelson when my kids were very small, because that’s what they called him. He’s been in and around my life for 55 years so far, so I guess it’s fair to say that we know each other pretty well.
Nelson DeMille—the best-selling, world-acclaimed novelist—has been my good friend since we first met in school back so many years ago that it’s a wonder that we can remember those early days at all, yet somehow we do. We’re talking about a relationship that began in second grade and continued without pause all through elementary, middle and high school. As young adults we went our separate ways along some wandering career paths, but we always stayed in touch.
For those of you who know Nelson’s novels, you also know that a number of them have an aviation theme in or around them and might have guessed that Nelson must certainly have been or is a pilot. Not a chance, folks (more on that subject in a little while).
But for whatever credentials Nelson DeMille didn’t have in aviation and in other technical aspects of the world we live in, he did have something else: a long-standing professional relationship with me that has been in existence nearly as long as our close friendship.
Nelson’s early exposure to General Aviation occurred with me right next to him. Back in our high school days in Elmont, N.Y., Nels and I would cut out of our classes, drive over to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, and take a flight in one of the flying club or FBO airplanes that I had access to. I had a private pilot’s license in those days, and Nels and I would take some great trips together in a bevy of airplanes that ranged from Piper Super Cubs and Colts on through a particular Cessna 140 and—a few times, with high school girls with us—a four-seat Cessna 170.
The flights themselves ranged from staying in the traffic pattern for touch-and-gos on through lengthy cross-country sojourns. Once, in particular, I recall an all-day excursion that began at the crack of dawn when we climbed into a little Cessna 140 (we were both big guys; I was tall and thin, Nelson was shorter but more muscular—he played first-string fullback for the high school football team, I played second-string defensive end because I couldn’t remember the plays) and headed for my aunt’s house in Maine.
We stayed just long enough to have lunch, then headed back to New York. Nelson still talks about our departure. The little grass airport in question is long gone now but I can vividly recall the row of high tension wires pretty darn close to one end of the runway. I had made our arrival from the other direction, but, naturally, enough of a wind had kicked up to make a downwind departure away from those wires an imprudent idea.
I taxied out to the far end of the airport to get a good look at the obstacle that had my full attention, then taxied back and made the takeoff directly toward those very wires. With two high school guys and lots of fuel onboard, we had certainly taken up every ounce of useful load the little 85 hp Continental could possibly lift (does anyone know what the Statute of Limitations is for making an overgross takeoff?), but I had a plan to counter the effects of today’s load and density altitude.
I remember Nelson making some comment during the takeoff roll, something akin to “Do you see those wires?” “Yes.” “O.K…good,” he answered. Nelson was satisfied.
High school guys who played on the same sports teams and double-dated trusted each other explicitly and, besides, we were immortal anyway. I rotated the little two-seat Cessna, then pushed a little forward on the control wheel to keep the climb flat and allow the airspeed to build. Configured thus, I flew under the wires, then used the excess airspeed to zoom up to a good altitude before beginning our turn on course back to New York.
“Pretty cool….” was Nelson’s only comment, until the conversation turned to something more important like girls or cars.
After flying with me an untold number of times and, of course, handling the controls some himself, Nelson tried a few flying lessons on his own. It’s been my experience that the gods are generally good at not giving out too much in the way of varied talents to any one individual so that most of us have at least a scattering of something good to go with all the not-so-good we seem to possess.
In Nelson’s case, this very intelligent guy who years later would develop into a world-class novelist discovered that flying an airplane was just not his cup of tea. It was, as I recall, his flight instructor who strongly suggested that Nels might like to find some other way to spend his time and money.
A few years after high school I went into airline flying and Nelson found himself volunteered for the Army. He elected to try Officer Candidate School, came out a Lieutenant, and quickly found himself in Vietnam. His front-line combat and military experiences are the basis for two of his novels: “Word of Honor” (which was a made-for-TV movie) and “The General’s Daughter” (a major motion picture that starred John Travolta).
Those Vietnam experiences, which included far too many rides in Huey choppers on the way into battle, also provided him with a sense of dread about being off the ground. When Nelson returned from Vietnam, I was (in addition to my airline flying for Mohawk, soon to be Allegheny, etc.) a professional magazine writer and doing a monthly column for Flying magazine and other publications.
At that point in his life, Nelson decided that he wanted to be a writer himself and, through some introductions and networking, began to pen paperback originals for a small, flat fee. He would come over to my house or me to his apartment and I’d give him all the help that I could by providing editing and plot suggestions on what he was working on. We did a few small writing projects together that got basically nowhere, then Nelson came up with the idea that led to his first big breakthrough novel: “By the Rivers of Babylon.”
I was moving to Pittsburgh at the time because of the airline, so Nelson helped me load the furniture on a rented truck and all the way west we hashed out premise, plot and storyline. The novel involved the hijacking of two Israeli Concorde jetliners, and I was to provide the material and proofread carefully for those sections, and do some general editing on the rest.
“By the Rivers of Babylon” turned out to be a really good novel—and I can vouch that the aviation parts are quite accurate. One seed that “Babylon” planted was a line of introspection by the Concorde captain shortly before takeoff when he thought to himself that if the airliner had a complete decompression up at cruise altitude, then they’d all be brain damaged before they could get the airplane back down.
That nugget became the basis for “Mayday”—a novel that Nelson and I did together back in 1979, and one that did quite well worldwide. His publisher, Warner Books, asked Nelson and me to do an update, and the novel was released again in paperback in 1998.
Nelson has continued to fly with me periodically through the intervening years in whatever General Aviation airplane I had at the time and, slowly, he began to lose his apprehensions and began to enjoy flying again. We did a dog-and-pony show media tour for the re-release of “Mayday,” and we covered part of the southern route in the airplane that I owned at the time, a Cherokee 235.
Since then, Nelson has taken a few trips in every light airplane that I’ve owned. Because of our relationship, a number of the Nelson DeMille novels have airplanes and aviation themes in and around them. “The Lion’s Game” begins with a suspenseful airliner-in-distress opening and has—in addition to Nelson’s fabulous characters and well-set scenes—lots more aviation and high tech throughout.
The newest novel, just released this past Thanksgiving, is Nelson’s purest foray into aviation since it is a novelization of an actual airline disaster and its aftermath—the crash of TWA 800 off the coast of Long Island on July 17, 1996. Titled “Night Fall,” aviation people will enjoy this novel not only because of the brilliant writing and characterizations, but also because the aviation material in it is absolutely accurate—I can give you my personal guarantee!
Nelson and I continue to work together on aspects of some of his future novels, and I can promise the aviation-oriented audience that there will be lots of aviation and high technology in many of the offerings that Nelson DeMille will have coming up.
Another thing I can tell you is that in the future when Nelson and I are flying together in one of my airplanes, I won’t be flying beneath any high tension wires. Uncle Nelson has personally requested that particular promise from me, and, at this stage in our lives, I think it’s a good idea, too. (To learn more about Nelson DeMille and his novels, go to his website at www.nelsondemille.net)
Editor-at-large Thomas Block has flown nearly 30,000 hours since his first hour of dual in 1959. In addition to his 36-year career as a US Airways pilot, he has been an aviation magazine writer since 1969, a best-selling novelist and the owner of more than a dozen personal airplanes.
