Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award
On Saturday, September 26th, Terry Stern was awarded the Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award for an incident-free 50 year flight career.  Jay Flowers from the Federal Aviation Administration presented the award to Terry on a foggy morning at the Brainerd Lakes Regional Airport.
The FAA started presenting the awards on August 11, 2003, to honor pilots with 50-year clean records.  The FAA evaluates applicants for good, moral character, so there is a vetting process that applicants have to go through.
Flowers brought a record book of all of Terry’s flight data, about an inch thick, going back to his very first flight.  Friends and family looked on as Flowers noted Terry’s achievements and presented the award in the airport’s conference room.
According to the FAA’s online database of Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award winners, there are currently 55 honorees in Minnesota, but Terry is the first from the Brainerd lakes area.
Terry took his first solo flight in February of 1964, when he was 17 years old.  Now 68, Stern is coming up on the 52nd anniversary of his solo flight.  He wasn’t surprised by the award, as he knew that once he hit the 50-year mark, he could apply for the distinction.
Terry submitted his application, and a couple of his pilot friends, Chuck Datko, Bruce Olson, and Janaka Bolduc, submitted letters of recommendation on his behalf.  All four pilots are part of a group called T-6 Thunder North American Flight Team, which performs flyovers for different events.  For those flyovers, Terry flies his 1944 North American Aviation T-6 Texan.
Terry has logged about 6,500 pilot hours.  He worked as a corporate pilot for a time, where he did on-call flying for different companies, which gave him the chance to fly a wide variety of planes.  For the last 15 years, he has been flying in the Commemorative Air Force, which gave him the chance to fly more classic, military-style planes.
Terry, and his Father, Donovan, started Stern Rubber in 1969.  Terry said that flying played a key role in the company’s development.  He said, “We used aircraft to visit customers, and to deliver parts to customers.  Just being able to move people around quickly and help a customer out if they had a problem.”
Terry’s time in a plane varies these days, but he averages a couple of flights per week.  He said he’ll go two or three weeks without flying, and then have a weekend like a recent one where he flies in five different flyovers.  With the Commemorative Air Force, Terry does a lot of missing man formation flyovers at funerals for fallen pilots or veterans.  “The idea is to remember the people that sacrificed everything for us”, Terry said.  “That’s probably our biggest mission, is remembering the veterans and the people that gave everything they had to protect our freedom.”