By the way, Mr. Baruch's counsel was not totally lost on me. By then Eileen and I had four small children to clothe, feed, shelter and educate. So I got Mr. Trippe's okay before I began this new venture. He let me keep my flying job at Pan Am as long as I restricted my FlightSafety business to off hours and my days off.

For a long time - a frighteningly long time - there wasn't much business to conduct. Most of the corporate pilots I approached had a single mindset: They already knew how to fly just fine, thank you, so why did they need advice from a bunch of outsiders? Of course I had to agree they were fine pilots. But I tried to convince them that FlightSafety could help point out ways they could work better as a team and that a session or two in the procedures trainers would help sharpen their instrument-flying skills. For the most part, my pitch was unsuccessful. Fortunately, I had already sold Mr. Trippe.

Although I never asked and he never offered to invest in FlightSafety, he was a great supporter of the company. Many of his friends were CEOs of companies that operated airplanes, and he urged them to have their pilots get training at FlightSafety. In many ways he was FlightSafety's original ambassador to the Fortune 500.