Hint: It's In The Genes
In his career as a pilot, 71-year old Pat Epps has been an
aerobatic pilot, rescued an ice-bound warbird and has created one
of the friendliest, most profitable FBOs in the South. All the
time, he's remembered the advice of his father, aviation pioneer
Ben T. Epps, who began flying in 1907: "When you're flying, you've
got to know where you're going — and you've got to keep your
alternatives open. If I get blocked in one direction, I go
another."
Epps Aviation at Peachtree-Dekalb Airport is an Atlanta-area
institution, steadily expanding for the past 40-years. "I used to
get a call a week," he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
recently. "I enjoy what I do. I've got good people operating the
business. I only work five or six days a week -- and then it's only
for eight hours a day. It's not nearly as demanding as it used to
be."
Perhaps one reason is the help he gets from his son, Patrick,
and his two daughters, Marian and Elaine. Together, they give the
FBO a family feel -- in a time when its all corporate glass and
chrome.
"My emphasis is on service, not the bottom line," he told the
Atlanta paper. "You have to watch your costs, and you can't spend
money you don't have. But if you pay attention to the customer,
you're going to come out all right."
That's the philosophy he developed during the past decade when,
at one point, business was so bad he had to lay off people and even
clean the bathrooms himself in order to save the money he would
have paid a janitor. It's a lesson you don't have to teach his
daughter, Marian, more than once.
"I know how hard he's worked
to get what he has," she told the Journal-Constitution,
"and it's my job to protect it."
You might remember Epps as the driving force behind the recovery
of "Glacier Girl," a P-38 stuck in the ice of Greenland much the
way a bug might be entombed in amber. In all, the
Journal-Constitution reports, Epps made seven trips to help
carefully recover and restore the Lightning.
"It was something I got into by accident and there was no
graceful way out," he told the paper. "I'm stubborn, so I just had
to see it through."
Epps, who lost his father in an aviation accident when he was
only three, is indeed a... well, he probably wouldn't mind the term
"stubborn" -- man.
"He's very driven and focused on the goal," his friend, auto
parts company owner Don Brooks told the Atlanta paper. Brooks
helped finance some of the Glacier Girl expeditions. "We had some
dissension on our expeditions, some indecision. Pat would listen
for a while. Then he'd step in and say, 'OK, this is the way it's
going to be,' and everyone respected him for it. He has a rare
ability to pull people together and get things done in the face of
overwhelming adversity."