Milo Peltzer, Farmer and Flier
Milo Peltzer and I have been acquainted since 1962 when he enrolled at Porterville High, which of course makes us both older than dirt. He’s also a good friend of last-week’s subject of this column, Bob Forbes.
Bob and Milo have much in common. Both are skilled drivers of flying machines. Each has had a great interest in aviation for much of their lives. Milo’s history in the air isn’t as extensive as Bob’s, but it’s still significant.
Milo was born into a family who owned an orange orchard in the Orange County area. He grew up playing among the rows of orange trees which ultimately became a familiar piece of real estate. The Disney Corporation built a rather well-known theme park where the Peltzer oranges used to grow.
Even though his roots have remained in farming his entire life, he was introduced to the world of aviation at an early age. In 1952 a well-to-do aunt and uncle dressed the seven-year-old lad in a suit and tie in order to take him out to dinner with them. They all boarded a commercial flight to San Francisco, ate a marvelous dinner there and returned to Los Angeles the same evening. He was thus introduced to using an airplane to travel long distances in a short period of time.
In 1960 Milo, now 15, was attending the Moonlight Fly-in at the Porterville Airport with his family. Ken Billingsley took Milo for a flight around the Porterville area. The high point of the evening was when Ken urged Milo to take the controls and fly the airplane.
After this experience, Milo was quite interested in taking flying lessons. He started taking lessons in the Los Angeles area, but when he moved to Porterville, he engaged the services of Clair Coe as his instructor.
By the time he turned 16, Milo had a student license. By 17 he’d earned his Private License, and by the time he turned 18 he was a licensed commercial pilot. He quickly turned his new skill into an after-school job. He’d hurry out to the Porterville airport, load the hopper of an old Stearman biplane with Parathion, DDT dust, Malathion, or sulpher for the grapes, and spend the late afternoon and early evening hours being a crop duster.
One afternoon in late spring of 1962 young Peltzer got an exciting phone call. Skipper Marsh, a neighbor and friend of Milo’s grandfather, had a contract with California Division of Forestry, otherwise called CDF, for a B-17 fire tanker which would be stationed in Porterville. He knew the youngster was interested in flying, and needed someone to fly as his copilot to ferry the craft to Porterville.
After flying the WWII bomber to Porterville, Milo got a second call. The man who was to serve as Skipper’s copilot all summer lived in Oregon and couldn’t get to California for another two weeks. Would Milo like to stand by with Skipper in Porterville? If they got a fire call, Milo would be the co-pilot. Sadly, the two weeks passed with no fires breaking out. Milo relates they did do a demonstration drop of 2,000 gallons of water on the Porterville Airport.
The general manager of TBM, Inc. in Tulare was a friend of Milo’s. One day In 1982 he called Milo. “You flew in the early B-17s as a relief pilot back in ‘65 and ’66. Would you like to pilot our last B-17 tanker? You can have last week of our CDF contract at Porterville. Go see Jerry Glenn who is the co-pilot. He’ll bring you up to speed. If you get a fire call. Take it!”
Milo went out every evening at just about cut-off time, made a few high-speed taxi runs though never got it in the air. Once again, there were no fires during the week. But on Nov 2, 1982, the CDF contract was over. The airplane was being retired from flying and had to be flown from Porterville to Sequoia Field. The tanks were full, so they made a water drop at Porterville, then flew low level across the Valley floor to Sequoia Field. Milo realized this was what it must have looked like to the Army Air Corp pilots of WWII, flying cross country over the English countryside after a bombing run. TBM, Inc had given Milo the bragging rights to be able to claim he had truly been a B-17 fire tanker pilot.
In 1968 Milo got a job with a charter service in Van Nuys, flying a twin engine Bonanza. His passengers included names many of us will recognize. A few of his clients were Bobby Vinton, Neil Sedaka, Cliff Robertson, Mel Torme, and Buddy Ebson and his two dancing daughters. The most interesting one was Elizabeth Montgomery, who’s best known for her role as the witch Samantha Stephens in the TV series Bewitched. Milo even dated Miss Montgomery’s double, a young lady by the name of Shannon Christi.
However, in 1973 Milo met and fell in love with Margaret Mckenney, the daughter of Chester and Effie Mckenney, well known residents of Porterville. They were married in 1973 and were husband and wife until her death in February of 2018.
Because of Milo’s connection to farming, and making many trips to Lawrence Tractor, he became friends with Jerry Cannon, the general manager of dealer relations for Deere & Company. Jerry knew of his experience flying a twin engine Bonanza, and in 1974 offered to make Milo his personal pilot, flying the corporate Bonanza all over the western United States. In late-1975 Deere & Co purchased a Grumman Gulfstream G-1 with twin turbo-prop Rolls Royce Dart engines. The last year with Deere & Co was spent in the Gulfstream.
Milo Peltzer has long had a great love of aviation. He loved the thrill and excitement of having been a pilot or co-pilot in a wide scope of aircraft. In his younger days, he was able to combine flying and agriculture by being a crop-duster pilot. If the opportunities to be a pilot dried up, he aways returned to working with family in the agriculture industry. When the gear finally touched down on the tarmac and the brakes were set, he’s always been inexorably drawn back to farming.
He emphatically stated, “My passion is flying, but my roots will always be in farming.”