There will only be one Jerry

Throughout my 42 years in aerospace there have been people whom I greatly admired, looked to for advice, depended upon for action, and relied upon for their knowledge and expertise. Not everyone was a pleasure to deal with and not everyone did their job with a smile. Jerry Lalone was a guy who did all that.

I first met Jerry at AIM Aviation in Renton, WA. Jerry was a talented shop and liaison site support mechanic. Enthusiasm should have been Jerry’s middle name. When it came to helping out, stepping up for a customer, or solving a sticky site support problem Jerry did it with a smile on his face, a willingness to take heat, and a resolve to finding a fix. With his energy and determination to solve problems he did two things simultaneously – he made the customer feel better and our company look good. I knew if I was assigned to an installation anywhere in the world with Jerry I was in good hands. Jerry was the ‘A’ Team.

Jerry was also a storytelling and story making machine. His enthusiasm for living sometimes got him into a few scrapes. Like the time he locked himself out of his Hamburg hotel room in his skivvies. In trying to get back in he theorized he could go outside, climb up the trellis to his second floor balcony, shimmy the window open and crawl back into his room. Only problem was the outside doors also locked when you left, so this was an all-or-nothing play. Jerry was only thinking of getting into his room, so out he went. He only really thought of how he had totally screwed up when he found the window also locked. Oh well. If you have to go to the front desk in your skivvies, I guess it doesn’t really matter if it’s from down the hall or through the front door. His was all the more comical, however, when he came to the desk also wearing a bit of dirt, a few scratches from the brush and a couple grass stains. He had a little trouble explaining the scratches at breakfast because we were laughing too hard.

I wrote about a couple of Jerry’s other adventures in “Rocky the Flying Squirrel” and “The Watermelon Run.”

I learned of Jerry’s passing from his ex-wife Amy. Like many of his friends and the aerospace professionals who knew him, I was shocked. Fifty-one is way too young to be moving on. I know Jerry had his problems and his demons. Although I don’t know exactly how, I’m guessing Jerry’s caught up with him. And that is both the sadness and the irony of it. In my own way, I loved the guy. How could you not be enamored and admiring of someone who spent so much energy trying to get every last bit of the best of everything?

As Jerry’s career developed, it became plain his talent making customers feel great was probably being wasted as a site liaison mechanic. So he moved on to sales. He was a natural. Jerry was always about the customer and finding something they needed. I think he figured if he was convincing enough and the relationship was good enough, the sales would close on their own. He was right about that more than a few times.

There was one sales trip Jerry and I made together to Spirit Airlines when they were still headquartered in Detroit. Jerry was trying to set us up to do some aircraft interior reconfigurations for new airplanes that Spirit was buying. But they were a low cost carrier and they weren’t exactly flush with money. Nevertheless, Jerry had a good relationship with Don Z, the Director of Engineering and was feeling positive about the vibe he was getting from them, so off we went for a weekend of Walleye fishing on Lake Erie. I had never been fishing on the Great Lakes, and didn’t realize Erie’s average depth is only 60 feet.

Naturally, Jerry knew a Walleye fishing captain on Lake Erie. It’s uncanny to me how Jerry always knew someone, somewhere who could help us out in some way. And they were always happy to do it. Why? Because it was Jerry, of course. Who could say no to a happy, loveable cherub? But Jerry grew up in California – how could he know people in every geographic corner so well as to ask for and willingly get favors? It was an amazing testament to his abilities of remembering people and sustaining relationships.

With hangovers intact from our previous night of revelry, we drove from the outskirts of Detroit to some little fishing harbor over the border in Ohio. I have no idea anymore where. But we pulled in with Spirit’s directors of engineering and quality and headed to the boat where Jerry was warmly greeted by our crusty fishing guide. He wasn’t quite so charming to the rest of us. As we headed out for open water we were given a quick lesson in managing lines, baiting, setting poles and hauling in fish. We were told it was easy to catch over 100 Walleye in a few hours, so the four of us were going to be busy managing six fishing poles and choreographing our movements to efficiently haul in fish, remove the hooks, rebait and reset poles.

It was pretty calm for awhile. We just sat and drank beer while our guide searched for the hot spots. Then it hit. All at once, every pole had a fish on. Somehow the four of us managed to understand what the others were doing, what needed to be done next, which pole to grab and which to set. Within a few minutes we were a well-oiled machine, moving in time to each other and the poles that had fish on. It was non-stop like that a couple of times for 30 minutes or more while we hauled in over 150 fish. When it was all over, I remarked how efficient I thought we had been and how much fun it was working around each other like that. Even our captain nodded and said, “When I first saw you guys I thought there was no way. But you actually did it like your supposed to.” High praise from our crusty guide.

When we got back to the launch we suddenly realized we had a problem – one hundred and fifty fish. I didn’t want to clean them and I sure as hell didn’t know what to do with them. Thankfully our airplane inspector knew of several fish gutting services along the roadside. All we had to do was find one and pay the man to clean our load. All they were was several tables and 55 gallon drums with running water next to a finger of the lake. Some had tin roof covers, most did not. As I remember they had our fish done in about an hour.

“Okay, Jerry, now we have clean fish in coolers, but what are we going to do with them?” I said.

“You should take some of these home. They’re good eatin’,” he said.

“How am I going to get these home? I’m not stinking up the plane, or my luggage.”

“Piece of cake,” says Jerry. “We’ll stop at one of those convenience stores around here and I’ll get us one of those portable food vacuum sealers. The we’ll go back to Spirit’s admin building, lay out a couple of tables and start an assembly line.”

“In the office?! How are we going to clean up?” I asked, thinking this was going to be a disaster and we would never be welcome back.

“No, no, it’ll be a piece of cake. We’ll just put down some butcher paper and have it all done in no time,” Jerry insisted.

He was revved up. I couldn’t think of a better way, so back we went to the admin building. Don and his chief inspector headed for home, somehow entrusting that Jerry would leave everything neat and tidy with stacks of Walleye in the company lunchroom freezers.

We started our assembly line and before long had all those fish bagged, vacuum wrapped and in the freezers for those happy bastards to find on Monday morning. We took a couple dozen for ourselves, double bagging them and boxing them up for the trip home. Seems to me we even made them carry-on, fashioning handles out of cord and tape. I was skeptical but Jerry was right – everything made it home in one piece.

That was Jerry. Positive, enthusiastic, energized, solution-driven. All the stories, the adventures; a guy who could make work an adventure! How many people can do that? He was special. He had his troubles, but for all that he was a genuine one in a million who cared about people. Thanks for being my friend, Jerry. I’ll miss you.