"Palm Springs Aviation Director enjoying his career"

Monday, October 18, 2004

Aviation director enjoying his career
By Pat Maio
The Palm Springs (CA) Desert Sun


Richard Walsh got his first taste of aviation's lure when his father took
him and his sister to watch the Navy's precision flying team, the Blue
Angels, power their F4 Phantom fighter jets over the skies of industrialized
Rochester, N.Y.

The 7-year-old was hooked for life as the jets made screeching passes
overhead in tight formations, leaving contrails across the skies. 

As he was growing up, Walsh kept his dreams alive by building model balsa
planes powered with small engines.

He attended all-boys parochial schools and was reared in what he described
as a "Leave It To Beaver" home where his mother cleaned, did the laundry,
cooked meals and did the raising.

Walsh's dad worked full-time during the days at Xerox Corp. and took night
work as a security guard to help make ends meet.

The 1980's were the defining moments for Walsh. When he graduated from high
school in 1982, he joined the Army where he took an air traffic controller
operator course at Fort Rucker in Alabama.

By then, President Ronald Reagan had fired 11,000 of the nation's air
traffic controllers and had filled the empty jobs with military
controllers-- like Walsh -- with little experience. The teenager earned his
spurs at the Pyongtaek military air base in South Korea where he oversaw the
landing of U2 spy planes, military helicopters flying in formations and
fast-moving fighter jets.

"It was fun," Walsh said.

By the time he returned from overseas, he knew he had to cobble together a
college education in order to get an E-ticket behind the wheel of a fighter
jet. 

Walsh had accumulated enough college credits to enter as a junior at Embry
Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., about 50 miles north
of Cape Canaveral. 

It was there that Walsh said he bumped into some of life's cruel rules. He
said his Polish heritage didn't seem to be the right ethnic background to
give him a pass to learn how to fly jets, so he joined the ROTC to learn how
to fly helicopters.

He was within two weeks of graduating from ROTC courses, and with professors
at Embry Riddle whispering into his ears to get a job in the local aerospace
industry, when he jumped into the private sector. 

But times were tough in the industry and Walsh's ambitions also outstripped
his experience.

"I was applying for VP and president jobs because I thought I knew more than
them," he said.

So, Walsh, with pockets empty and ego deflated, headed home to Rochester to
reinvent himself. 

For a year he worked as a night janitor, cleaning toilets, sinks and floors
for $5 an hour. "It was the best thing that ever happened to me. It knocked
the chip off my shoulder." 

He finally struck paydirt with his first real job as a transportation
planner in the roads division of New York State's Department of
Transportation. He worked on two airports and learned how to write business
plans, which caught the eyes of his superiors. 

He's brought the same go-to attitude to jobs since at international airports
in Pittsburgh and San Francisco. 

Which brought him in February to the helm of Palm Springs International
Airport, his $130,000-a-year salary a happily long way from his $5-an-hour
cleaning job.

Attached Photo:

Richard Walsh

20041018020258_bg1.jpg