Walter Stock
Old Lyme — Walter Stock, 88, a pilot who helped launch the jet era in both military and commercial aircraft, died recently at his home in Old Lyme.
Stock spent 20 years in the U.S. Navy, earning his wings during the Korean War among the first group of aviators to land a jet fighter plane on an aircraft carrier. A sober and stoic pilot, Stock was nevertheless thrilled by what the Navy’s machines could do. He had a fondness for acrobatics and flying under bridges at night, including San Francisco’s Golden Gate and Bay Bridge. He was among a small cadre of pilots trained to drop nuclear bombs on Soviet bases.
After active duty, Stock went on to log 32 years in the cockpit at Trans World Airlines, a tenure that started under Howard Hughes flying some of the early trans-Atlantic flights in Lockheed’s propeller-driven “Constellation.” His final flight was in a different Lockheed plane, the L-1011, which went nearly twice as fast and carried six times as many passengers.
Stock never crashed a plane, although in recalling some of his stunts and mishaps, he often said: “It scared me and I’m fearless.”
Stock was born in Nuevo, Calif., as the Great Depression first began hollowing out the country. The stock market crashed before his first birthday and his youth was marked by thrift and industry. In California, Stock and his siblings went through much of the school year without shoes, as did their classmates. At the time, he could not have imagined the spectacular life that lay before him.
His mother was a schoolteacher and his father was a grocer, carpenter, painter or whatever else would put food on the table. Eventually, the family relocated to Storm Lake, Iowa, to help on the family farm and open The Sail Inn Motel. Stock chipped into the family coffers early by raising chickens, selling them via classified ads and delivering them on his bicycle.
When Stock accidentally threw a knife into his foot, his father consulted a book of homeopathic remedies before cutting open a football, filling it with honey and oatmeal and sewing it over the injured foot. A few days later, the cut was healed. Twice, Stock nearly died after falling through lake ice in winter. On one occasion, it was only the faithfulness of a family dog, barking from shore, that saved him.
Stock graduated from the University of Iowa where he played in the marching band and ran a brisk trade selling cigarettes to his fraternity brothers. One of those brothers, a World War II pilot, piqued Stock’s interest in aviation and provided lessons.
Stock soloed an airplane the day he graduated and with the Korean War reaching full boil, applied to be an Air Force pilot. He failed the hearing portion of the exam, thanks to a teenage stint firing howitzers in the U.S. Army Reserves. Undeterred, he applied to be a Navy pilot, this time cheating on the hearing test. The ploy worked. Over a 20-year career, Stock flew at least 14 Navy airplanes and made a number of tours on straight-deck aircraft carriers, a more dangerous iteration of today’s super-carriers.
In 1958, Stock had just filed paperwork for yet another tour at sea, when he overheard a friend gushing about the hiring spree at Pan Am and TWA. Stock promptly circled back to the mailroom and pulled his envelope from the outgoing box; it was a decision that drastically changed the trajectory of his life.
A few months later, he was in TWA training, launching a decades-long career of international travel. In 1966, Stock grew tired of New York City and built a cabin on a remote spit of land in the middle of Connecticut’s Candlewood Lake. Without power and accessible only by boat, Stock nevertheless completed his cherished A-frame in a few months, almost single-handedly. He enjoyed it for the next 50 years.
Eventually, Stock married a TWA flight attendant and settled in Teton Village, Wyo. When kids were in the offing, they relocated to Connecticut to be close to his office, TWA’s famous Eero Saarinen terminal at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport.
After required retirement at age 60, Stock never touched an airplane yoke again. He spent his later years working on his classic cars and hopping around the globe for bicycle tours. In the fall, he would return to his native Iowa to hunt pheasants and in the winter, he would decamp to Wyoming to stalk elk and ski, two passions that he pursued well into his 80s.
Ultimately, Stock did not excel at marriage, was useless with a computer and was overly fond of martinis. Yet, he was a great shot, a gifted pilot and a wonderful father.
In the end, after a life of calculated risk, Stock lost a brief battle with a nasty cold. He died surrounded by his children, Kerstin and Kyle, and his grandchildren, Basil Louise and Walter Roscoe.
Wheels up.