Ask

Steve | 1972 | Second Grade | Mrs. Keith’s Class | The Pod | Lockwood Elementary School | Clovis, New Mexico.

One of the obscure corners of the vast Intertubesnetweb, AirBeagle has been online since 1999. Its creator, Steve, has been inhaling and exhaling since 1963. Steve is a former small-town daily newspaper reporter, public education communications director, elementary/secondary teacher and author.

He has over 36 years writing experience in a variety of media. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Cameron University in Oklahoma and a master’s in elementary education from the University of Michigan. He currently lives in Nashville, TN, with his partner, Frank, (a university research librarian). They have five rescue basset hounds: Roux II (6); basset/beagle Bo (5); and a family of three, basset/treeing walker coonhounds Goose, Charlie, and their sister Cordelia (Dilly), (all 9). Hounds from the house who have passed over the Rainbow Bridge include their beagle brothers, Feargal (2015), Fergus (2021), and Fred (2012); basset hounds, Roux (2019) and Sascha (2018); chocolate lab, Tessa (2018); beagle; basset/corgi/beagle Bosco (2018); and the mother of the three siblings (Goose, Charlie, and Dilly), Loula (2024). They are missed terribly.

Steve Herding Pigs | 1976 | Duncan, OK

Steve was born in Roswell, NM, at the Eastern New Mexico Medical Center. In his family are his mother and a couple of siblings with scads of kids and grandkids; his father died in 2013.

He and Frank met and fell in love 27-Feb-00 in San Francisco. Their first commitment ceremony was presided over by Gavin Newsom, current Gov. of the state of California. They also had a real wedding at a lovely bed and breakfast on the river overlooking Detroit from Windsor, Ontario, Canada. An American celebration was had on the beach at Malibu, California, in 2008, which made them one of only 18,000 couples to tie the knot in the short period before California voters were pressed by the Mormon Church to ban marriage equality, a vote that was overturned in 2015 by the U.S. Supreme Court, thank you very much. Frank is a native of the Los Angeles area, mainly Pasadena. He is a university research librarian.

Steve, Frank and Bayley | Ann Arbor, MI | 2005.

Steve fell in love with airliners at the age of five during a fateful encounter with a brand-new Pan Am 747 at the Roswell Industrial Air Center, New Mexico, in the fall of 1969, just before the 747s wdere put into regular passenger service. He has lived in Roswell and Clovis, NM; Duncan, OK; Plano and Dallas, TX; Pleasant Hill, San Francisco and Brentwood, CA; Highlands Ranch, CO; Ann Arbor, MI; and Nashville, TN. He is the author of Deadly Turbulence: The Air Safety Lessons of Braniff Flight 250 and Other Airliners, 1959-1966, his first aviation book, released in 2014, and is currently planning, researching, and writing his second.

Deadly Turbulence | by Steve Pollock | 2014 | McFarland Publishers

—30—