Basalt – Jack Holst took the path less traveled on the way to his centennial birthday. A path along air currents.
It began with pilot training in 1923 at the age of 17. Through the years, “Captain Jack,” who turned 100 on Jan. 23, amassed more than 37,000 hours in the air, all carefully recorded in his log books. By comparison, a modern fighter pilot may average 5,000 air hours after 20 years in the service, according to a spokesman at the Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution.
During his career, Holst flew 64 different planes – a dozen as a test pilot. He barnstormed, he flew sightseeing trips at the price of a penny a pound for passengers, and co-founded an airline in Costa Rica.
He became a United Airlines pilot in 1933 and was the first to journey from Denver to Omaha, taking off from a grassy field.
It was an adventurous and glamorous time for aviation. The industry was small, and pilots were admired and envied. It was a perfect role for the Norwegian-born Holst, who was tall, dark and handsome, and exuded assurance and authority.
“Jack was a legend in his own time … a folk hero to many pilots,” says his son, Leslie Holst, also a United pilot from 1960-85.
On one occasion, bad weather on the East Coast detoured eastbound planes to Cleveland. Jack Holst, who loved to fly in bad weather and declares proudly, “I never canceled any flight,” studied the information available at the time, and decided to make the flight.
When officials demurred, he said: “Call Patterson” (United’s president). Charlie Patterson agreed to the flight, and Holst delivered his passengers to New York.
“To be a pilot in those days, you needed to know you were never wrong. You couldn’t ever make a mistake,” Leslie Holst says. “Pilots didn’t have all the technology they have now. They flew by celestial navigation, by the seat of their pants. They had to know what they were doing.
“They invented flying.”
Holst was born Jacob Kielland Holst on Jan. 23, 1906, on the southwest coast of Norway. An older cousin was a pilot, and at age 14, Holst knew what he wanted to be.
His parents thought he was going to mechanic school when he left home at 17, but instead he became one of the 13 original cadets in the Royal Norwegian Air Force. He was there less than a year when his age was discovered, so he went to mechanic school in Germany, and then to Canada until he could immigrate to the United States. Once in the States, he anglicized his name to Jack.
By 1927 he was in Wichita, where he was a stunt flier and a barnstormer and flew charters.
He likes to recite directions given by a pilot as they flew from Wichita to Kansas City: “You go down the highway past that railroad track, toward the hillside, and there’s a dead horse in the road – turn left there.” They flew a lot lower then.
Next he went to Brooklyn, flying eager passengers in a seaplane over New York Harbor. Fortunately, none were aboard when the plane fell apart: Leslie Holst recalls his dad later saying the tail of the plane passed him as he went down. What Jack remembers is that the crash knocked out his teeth.
A young hairdresser from Norway captured his heart, and they were married in 1930. When he was hired by United in 1932, the pair moved to Oakland, Calif., and he ran the flight-training school. Their son, Leslie, was born a year later, the same year Jack became a naturalized citizen.
A flight student from a prominent Costa Rican family proposed that Holst join him in buying an airplane, fly it to Costa Rica, and start a flying service, Aerovillas Nationales.
Holst took a leave from his United job to start the airline. He got in the newly purchased plane, along with his wife and son and supplies, including a year’s worth of baby food, and headed south.
At a refueling stop, he noticed iron filings in the gas tank, and decided to take the long route along the coast rather than fly across jungle.
The plane crashed upside down in the water, with sharks circling. “I had to swim to shore several times, first with my wife and baby, then with supplies, and finally with the baby stroller, which we used to walk down this blazing hot beach. I think the Pablum scattered all over the water is what kept the sharks away,” he jokes.
The compass from that plane is a cherished souvenir.
To establish the new airline, the government required flying every day, a grueling schedule, and Holst was glad to rejoin United in 1934. His daughter, Karen, was born in 1935. During World War II he flew in the Pacific operations as part of the U.S. government’s lend-lease plan with three commercial airlines.
He delivered cargo and passengers, including Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the Jack Benny troupe, which entertained the troops. He flew to the Aleutian Islands, and to Canton, China.
After the war, he took a temporary leave and operated
TransOcean Airlines in 1947, relocating immigrants and displaced persons from Europe. When he returned to United, he was based in Denver. As he flew over the mountains, he would point out Aspen and extol the virtues of its ski mountains and instructors over the loudspeaker.
Flying, skiing and Aspen are intertwining threads in the Holst family saga.
After Holst retired from United in 1961, he settled in Aspen, holding on to his pilot’s license until he was 75. He got his glider license in 1966, flew 133 hours, and taught others the intricacies of powerless gliding.
“I always enjoyed that; it’s totally different from flying a plane,” he reminisced.
He also taught skiing on terra firma. He would instruct a class, and because he owned an Aspen travel agency, would sell class participants plane tickets to New York, then fly them to the Big Apple, all in one day.
“They couldn’t believe it when they saw me in the cockpit,” he laughs.
After a particularly hard fall in 1989, at the age of 84, he stopped teaching. He believes the fall contributed to him becoming dependent on a walker and wheelchair in 2002.
Holst’s offspring followed in his footsteps. Leslie was in pre-med school when he realized he had no interest in the career. He became an Air Force cadet in 1954 and left in 1960 as “the last B-29 instructor and aircraft commander pilot on active duty in the USAF.”
Leslie became a United Airlines pilot, and Karen was a flight attendant. For publicity shots, United put Jack Holst, co-pilot son and stewardess daughter on the same plane, the only time they flew together.
The marriage to Vera ended in 1951. He later married Janet, a United flight attendant, who died in 1973. In 1975, he married Shirley, a professional dancer who came to Aspen to ski.
Unlike most family photo albums, Holst’s albums are also filled with photos of airplanes he flew, and he remembers them all.
There’s the Jenny, the oldest, from World War I; Travel Air’s Speedline; the Ford Tri-Motor, the only plane built by the auto company; the Aeromarine – the “lousiest airplane I ever flew”; the Eagle Rock, which was built in Colorado and now displayed on the concourse at Denver International Airport; and his favorite, the DC 6.
“I can’t imagine being anything other than a pilot. I’ve been so lucky, very lucky.”
