GREELEY - Two aviation icons came together this week at the Greeley-Weld County Airport. Ed Beegles, 84, who was instrumental in founding the airport, got to take a ride in a 1950's vintage T-33 jet.
Sporting the same red, white and blue paint job used by the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds, the jet streaked across the airport at nearly 300 mph.
"That was really great," Beegles said afterwards. "We did a couple of rolls."
"He kept grabbing the stick and saying 'Let me show you how it's done, sonny,'" said Roy Halladay, a corporate jet pilot who spent 10 years restoring the T-33.
He keeps it at the Jefferson County Airport but recently made a refueling stop in Greeley where he learned about Beegles' desire to ride in a jet.
"I brought the airplane in here and there was a lot of interest from the people. They said. 'You know that's something that he's always wanted to go for a ride in. Would you be interested?' I said absolutely."
Beegles' name is well known in Colorado. The company he founded, Beegles Aviation Services, hauls away the wreckage of almost every plane crash in the state. During more than 50 years of restoring aircraft he's flown in hundreds of different airplanes, but never a high performance jet.
"It's been a lifelong ambition to go in a jet," Beegles said.
His friends and colleagues at the Greeley-Weld County Airport made sure his dream came true.
"He's been kind of a mainstay of the airport, kind of an anchor out here," said Ken Harris who runs a business at the airport. "And just a great guy, with a heart as big as the world."
"Ed's kind of an icon around here," said longtime friend Wayne White. "He was here when they first opened this airport."
That was in 1944 near the end of World War II. "We had a German prison camp west of town," said Beegles. "Our first terminal was the latrine from out of there."
In the early days the airport even had passenger service. "At one time we did have five flights a day," said Beegles. "Challenger Airlines was in there with a DC-3."
More than 60 years after he helped start the airport Beegles still goes there almost every day to tinker on planes. "I don't know what it'd be like not being able to fly," Beegles said. "It's part of my life you know."
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