While Franklin may be aware that long-time resident Stacy Guffey is the current vice mayor, many are not aware he is also a private pilot.
His full-time job is with UNC Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, for which he manages economic development projects within the 17 western counties of North Carolina.
“It’s good work because if there is a small business or local government that is expanding, we bring in analysts who will do financial work or planning to assist with capacity challenges, such as space or employee numbers, realized by those entities,” he stated.
Guffey has been on the Franklin Town Council for four years, and prior to that he served as Franklin’s town planner from 2004-2009. Guffey briefly spent time, after graduating in 1992 from Franklin High School, in Puerto Rico and then Colorado Springs before returning to his Macon County roots – where his ancestors have lived for generations. His father’s family resided in the Brendletown area, while his mother hailed from Cowee.
It was his grandfather, or “Papaw,” who first piqued Guffey’s interest in flying. At a mere 3 years old, Guffey, accompanied his grandfather, a Southern Baptist preacher, and his grandmother, on a cross-country flight to Dillon, Mont., for a mission trip. Despite the multi-hop nature of the trip, along with severe weather, Guffey still attributed it to his initial love of flying.
In addition to revealing that he “used to draw runways on a piece of wood and played with little planes instead of matchbox cars,” he recalled a funny story about that Montana trip he still laughs about today.
“I was fishing with Papaw one day while in Montana, and I caught a few small ones that I then put in my pocket before a long car ride on a warm summer day. We were driving along and about three hours into the trip, Mamaw yelled, ‘What is that smell?’”
Later, in middle school, the local Civil Air Patrol (CAP) squadron afforded Guffey opportunities to get closer to airplanes and an airport environment. He said that “when he got serious” at 14 or 15 years old, he worked with the CAP to gain limited exposure and aeronautical training. While he did not get much flight time, what he did get was free; that was important because he had no money to pay for lessons.
“We could sit in the cockpit and follow along with the pilot as they searched for crashed planes. For us, we would try to locate aircraft using the ELT, or emergency locator transmitter.”
Guffey relayed that the training was intense, with physical training three times a week after school and some regional trips to Air Force bases for longer encampments.
“It was a great program! I wish it was still available for kids today,” he said.
His family could not afford to pay for the training, which presented a challenge – one that continued into his later years as well.
“It took some convincing to get my dad to take me down to the airport to talk with John and Middie McSwain, then managers of the airport. John told me if I would come back with $200 in cash, they’d make a deal with me.”
Guffey set about working odd jobs, such as mowing grass using his father’s mower, which he labeled with his phone number and signage that read: “You grow it, I mow it.” He managed to eventually save up the money and returned to the McSwains to prove he was serious about training.
“When I went back down, they gave me a job at the airport sweeping the hangars, and helping clean, move, and refuel the planes, as well as tie the planes down when people came in. It was a lot of good exposure,” he remembered.
The McSwains exchanged hours worked for flight time to provide Guffey’s initial training. He continued with learning and training “rather intensely” through high school, before life took a different turn. He met his first wife and they decided to move to Puerto Rico, where he started college. However, within a couple of years he returned home to be closer to family because his wife was pregnant with their son.
Taking flight
Asked about challenges associated with his path to licensing, Guffey smiled and said, “Number one, is money – number two, is landings. You want to be consistent every time, but you can’t be. For me, it’s the most important part of flight. They’re never the same; always a little bit different. You can have a smooth flight all along and then make one small mistake on the landing. Your passengers may not notice, but you’ll be thinking about it all day long.”
Despite gaining additional flight hours and training over the years, he still did not qualify for a license. Fast forward to 2016 and an opportunity to be part of a team purchase of a 1962 Cessna 172 airplane materialized. As one of five people, Guffey only needed $5,000 for a plane he could fly.
“It was the deal of a lifetime. We got an opportunity we’d never find again from a man who worked with us on the purchase. And, I finally got my license,” exclaimed Guffey.
From a practical and financial sense, purchasing the plane provided additional benefits.
“I finished my training in it because it’s so much cheaper to do it that way. It’s an added expense if you have to rent a plane and hire an instructor,” he said.
In order to get his private, or Class Three, license, Guffey needed to get back in the cockpit and finish what he had started so many years earlier.
“I needed some refresher training so it didn’t take long to start flying solo. And then you can do the rest of the training hours on your own.”
Guffey’s single-engine Cessna has four seats and can climb to 14,000 feet, but is also limited in terms of how far it can fly before refueling. While he has also flown single-engine Piper Cherokee planes, there is a threshold in terms of performance for either airframe. In order to fly higher performance planes, pilots need to meet additional certification requirements.
Guffey relayed he has flown as far as Missouri and Charleston, S.C., and to Georgia a few times, but he has a bucket list wish still on his mind.
“I want to fly back out to Montana, where my grandparents lived [for a while]. I’d love to make that trip,” he admitted.
Asked if he had any advice for Franklin High School students enrolled in the current aviation program held there, Guffey answered, “Take advantage of every bit you can – most importantly, don’t stop. The breaks I took in learning how to fly caused me to have to go back and refresh and it puts you that much further behind. If you have the means to do it, don’t interrupt your training.”