Some people dream of being able to fly.

Others are working to realize those dreams.

Donnie Gardner, Floyd Balentine and Vic Smith, black airline pilots who doggedly pursued opportunities to soar even when their skies weren’t easy to navigate, want to smooth the way. Since 2014, their Twin Cities Aerospace Career Education Academy summer camps have been nurturing the dreams of future pilots, astronauts, and engineers of color.

The Twin Cities Academy is one of more than 30 camps associated with the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals.

“If you see someone who looks like you, it’s very motivating,” said Gardner, 36.

Says Balentine, 47: “We use everything in us to inspire the next generation.”

Their camps are open to anyone between the ages of 13 and 18 with good grades. The program was started not only to reduce barriers to flying among young African Americans, but also to spark their dreams in the aerospace industry.

“We did it because it just needs to be done,” said Smith, 61.

Of the 158,000 people listed as pilots or flight engineers in US Bureau of Labor Statistics data in 2021, less than 4% were black. Only about 2% of commercial airline pilots are black, Balentine said.

They each made careers in heaven at different times, but in surprisingly similar ways. All three admitted to childhood dreams filled with airplanes and pilot uniforms. Everyone had a different idea of ​​how realistic it was.

Vic Smith’s Story

Smith grew up in Memphis with a strong desire to fly. But living in a place “right in the heart of where black people were deprived of everything”, he said he could not conceive of the possibility of becoming a pilot.

“Even my mother said it was only for white people,” he said.

His father had served in the European theater during World War II, a skilled mechanic relegated to driving officers, he said. Once out of the military, Smith said his father went to a local Sears store to apply for a job as a fleet mechanic.

“He said everything went well,” Smith said. “It was a rainy day and he realized he had forgotten his umbrella. When he came home he saw the lady throwing his request in the trash.”

Smith’s father worked as a laborer at Sears for 33 years. Still, he instilled a love of flying in his son by taking him to air shows.

After starting the bass guitar at age 11 or 12, young Smith majored in music composition and earned a degree at Memphis State University. He still plays jazz in clubs today.

But the pilot’s dream persisted.

“I was practicing for my musical presentations in preparation for my graduation,” Smith said. “After rehearsal, my friend said, ‘I’m going to fly, why don’t you come with me?'”

A Cessna 172 flight from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi was enough.

“When I came back, I decided that was what I was doing.”

Smith’s mother, a nurse, worked extra shifts to help her son pay for flying lessons with a former military aviator. He started flying at age 23 and continued to learn while working as a musician. He obtained his instrument rating and became a flight instructor. He later got a job flying cargo in Florida, before moving to commuter airlines. In 1998, Smith joined Delta Airlines and is now a captain.

He is married and the father of three children, aged 21, 18 and 13. He and his wife, Trina, also run a food truck.

The Floyd Balentine Story

Balentine said he knew at age 5 that he wanted to be a pilot.

He grew up in the North Minneapolis drafts, the youngest of three boys born to a single mother. She worked as a cleaner in nursing homes all her life, and there wasn’t a lot of money.

But his mother would take him to Chicago and Arkansas to visit family.

“She hated driving, so we flew,” he said. “I loved the pilots in their uniforms. The pilots in the cockpit. They let me pull switches.”

Sometimes he and his mother would take the bus to Post Road near the airport just to watch the planes land, Balentine said.

“She opened my mind, my perspectives,” he said. “She taught me to work hard and believe in myself.”

After graduating from North High, Balentine knew that if he wanted to go to college, he would have to pay for much of it himself. He chose St. Cloud State because it had an aviation program. Two weeks after graduating from high school, he was attending a summer program on campus.

“I said to myself, I’m not going to find excuses not to go to university,” he said.

He joined organizations, took a public speaking course, and worked at various jobs to help pay for his education — as a camp counselor and residence counselor — and earned a degree in aviation.

Upon becoming a pilot, he paid for flying lessons by driving trolleys for a few years for Mesaba Airlines. He also worked as a certified flight instructor. After 16 years as a pilot for regional airlines, Balentine went to work for United.

He and his wife, Dee, have two sons, ages 16 and 18. His mother, Annie Balentine, died on December 20.

“As a child, I saw my mother really sacrifice herself,” he said. “I wanted his sacrifice to pay off.”

Donnie Gardner’s Story

Gardner said he had always been hypnotized by theft.

He grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. On family trips to California, “I’d get on a plane and three and a half hours later I’m on a beach.”

Her fascination with flying exploded after her parents divorced. He spent time with his grandparents when his mother, a doctor, was on duty. They lived below the flight path approaching the Kansas City airport. Gardner sat in the yard as the planes roared overhead.

But the real turning point, he says, came during his freshman year of high school. Gardner’s grades “weren’t the best” and his mother told him that if he did well in the first trimester of 10th grade, she would take him to flight lessons at the downtown airport. Kansas City.

“I was an only child,” he said. “And she had a mother bear grip.”

He made his first solo flight at 16, before he even got his driver’s license. He earned his pilot’s license his senior year. He attended Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, where he graduated in 2007.

After years of working as a flight instructor and then as a commuter airline pilot, he was hired by United.

During the pandemic, when much of the airline industry came to a standstill, Gardner’s aviation interests took a different approach. He started a business selling die-cast model airplanes. He blames his father.

“I found out a few years ago that Dad was a huge aviation enthusiast,” Gardner said.

Really, though, the clues were there, starting with his father showing him his collection of model airplanes. Gardner’s father, too, had wanted to be a pilot. Growing up in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in the 1950s and 1960s, he just didn’t know how.

“He was writing and calling the airlines, but they never called him back,” Gardner said.

So when Gardner was grounded for nine months by the pandemic, he started an e-commerce business. Sales took off. So much so that Gardner’s business — DG Pilot Aviation Collectibles & More — outgrew its St. Paul Lowertown warehouse. It is now a brick and mortar store in the Hamm building on St. Peter’s Street.

His father follows his son’s flights all over the world. Gardner said his story, and that of his colleagues, is one of the main reasons they became involved with the Aerospace Career Education Academy. Whet the appetite of young people and facilitate their professional exploration are the objectives.

“I don’t want any individual to know how to get into aviation,” he said.