A love of aviation helped Hilton Head man's life soar

Albert H. "Goldie" Glenn's father worked on the Wright brothers' airplanes.

As a child, Glenn was at the muddy field on Long Island, N.Y., the morning Charles Lindbergh took off on the first solo transatlantic flight.

As a teen he was a "super duper engine oil pan dripper cleaner" for the daring pilots who flew planes of wood and canvas for sport -- at a time most Americans thought if God wanted us to fly he would have given us wings.

As an employee of Grumman Aerospace Corp. for 38 years, Glenn helped Navy and Marine squadrons learn to fly planes to win World War II.

He was Grumman's liaison and trainer for the first Blue Angels demonstration team.

He headed Grumman's training department in its first two years of developing the lunar module that landed on the moon.

He was on the management team that selected Savannah as home for Grumman's corporate jet division in 1967. He built from scratch the production and service centers of Gulfstream, which is today by far Savannah's largest employer with more than 6,000 workers.

Glenn retired as Gulfstream vice chairman in 1993, and lives on Hilton Head Island, well away from the roar of jet engines.

At 88, he sits in a large office in his home, shelves lined with aviation books and models of jets he worked on over the years, and says he'd love to do it all over again.

"We actually shrunk the world," he said.

This Friday, Glenn will be inducted into the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame at the Museum of Aviation at Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, Ga.

"Because of Glenn's leadership, Gulfstream became one of the world's premier aerospace companies and has contributed immeasurably to Georgia's economy," a statement from the Hall of Fame reads. "In addition to its outstanding product line, Gulfstream offers a family of product support programs and services pioneered by Glenn that enhance the productivity, safety, and maintainability of its aircraft and continue to set the standard in business aviation."

The Golden Age

The hall of fame banquet will seem light-years from Glenn's childhood home in Hempstead, N.Y., and Roosevelt Field, where his father was a mechanic and policeman and where Lindbergh took off into history at 7:52 a.m. May 20, 1927.

"I remember it like it was yesterday," Glenn said. "When Lindbergh actually started his takeoff, everybody started running. I didn't even know what I was running from."

They thought Lindbergh was going to crash. The field was muddy. It was misty. The tail was dragging, but the "Spirit of St. Louis" bounced a couple of times and took off.

An Associated Press picture shows a young boy behind Lindbergh, standing by the plane's wheel. The boy was "Goldie," who got the nickname because of his childhood curls. That little boy would go on to have a front-row seat throughout the "Golden Age" of aviation.

Glenn didn't go to college, but graduated from the Roosevelt Field Aviation School with a federal airframe and powerplant mechanic license. He worked with mechanics, and met the greats and near-greats when he worked at the Aviation Country Club in Hicksville, N.Y. He took a job with Grumman in 1940, at first given the menial task of hand-riveting ammunition boxes.

"I was always inquisitive about the way things worked," he said, and he ended up changing the way the industry worked.

He helped organize things, writing consolidated training and operating manuals, establishing repair centers and insisting on ready access to spare parts and interchangeable parts. He was in charge of Grumman's service center and repair center in Bethpage, N.Y., when he was asked to move all commercial air production to Savannah. He didn't want to move, but he got to put in place his ideas of one-stop shopping for all design, manufacture, sales and service for the sleek jets that helped decentralize and transform American business.

Scholarships

"Aviation is still an exciting business," Glenn said. "They're always looking to do things better. We got a slow start, but it's something Americans have done very, very well."

He characterized the Grumman engineers as people who "never knew what they couldn't do. They'd take on anything."

He kept engineers down to earth by asking that things that work be left alone. "Better is the enemy of good," he said.

He says the next big thing will be supersonic corporate jets, if the law is changed to allow supersonic flight over land.

Helen, his wife of 68 years, and their four children, eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren may be more excited about the Hall of Fame than Glenn. He says he's "highly honored to be recognized for my contributions to the company and to our customers."

He's proud of the safety improvements he's seen in aviation. He's proud of the good it has done for transportation in general and specifically medical-related transportation.

He's also proud of the Goldie Glenn Scholarship Award Program for the children of Gulfstream employees. Now in its 20th year, it has helped more than 120 scholars with a potential for $8,000 each.

Glenn wants them to know that if he could soar with self-education, hard work and help from many others, the sky should be the limit for them, too.

This story was originally published April 2, 2011 at 5:51 PM with the headline "A love of aviation helped Hilton Head man's life soar."