All of us who learned the art of cross country soaring  from him and became his friend will never forget him.  I can’t think of anyone more admired by all who met him, than Vern Frye.  Vern was responsible for the tradition of assigning ‘bird’ names to the pilots of NSA and Airsailing.  He spent literally thousands of hours in the pursuit of promoting soaring, training new and old pilots, flying tow planes, maintaining the fleet of club aircraft,  flying tow planes, and organizing.

Vern may have done more to promote soaring than anyone in the world, starting or promoting soaring clubs in places ranging from the USAF Academy to the Berlin Tempelhof Aerodrome in Germany,  where he served a tour of duty as  the commanding officer of our USAF base there.

Vern was prominently featured in retired General Bell’s book about the air war in Vietnam, “One Hundred Missions North.”  It is a very good book, and has some entertaining stories about Vern, who bunked with the author while they were flying combat missions out of jungle strips. (Vern actually flew 106 missions north, exceeding the required limit by six, which was so typical of  him).