1594: Longevity Lessons from a 100-Year-Old Colonel with Charles Cone

Robert Plank 0:00 Colonel Charles Cone is here. He's 100 years old. He's lived through a century of change, challenge, and courage, and he has a deeply personal and richly detailed autobiography, which is out called A Burning Desire to Fly by Charles Cone, and he reflects on a life shaped by duty, service, and unwavering values, from the battlefields of Korea and Vietnam to the boardrooms, church pews, and community halls of post-war America. His story is more than a memoir, it is a legacy. Sounds familiar. So, Mr. Charles Cone, glad to be speaking with you.

Charles Cone 0:40 Hey, thank you very much. That does sound familiar.

Robert Plank 0:43 Yeah, just a little bit. And so, is it true that when you turn 100 do you get like a letter from the President and all kinds of like gifts in the mail? Is that a thing?

Charles Cone 0:55 I got a letter from a senator, but I didn't get one from the President.

Robert Plank 0:59 Oh no, too busy.

Charles Cone 1:02 Yeah, I looked for one, but never came.

Robert Plank 1:05 Okay. Well, fair enough. Well, and just out of curiosity, just as we're getting started, like, did you do anything really fun for your 100th or was it just any other day?

Charles Cone 1:15 Actually, they celebrated my birthday starting in Labor Day last year, I grew up in Western New York, and I hadn't been back there in 25 years or so. So, I have, I'm the oldest of 10 kids. So, we had a lot of nieces and nephews that I had never even met, didn't know their names, but my nephew puts on an air show, which is a very elaborate one, and he invited me over, and I got to fly the F 51 and a B 25 with him, which I'd flown before in the Air Force, and so we had a really whole weekend of elaborate, like Hollywood kind of a weekend, it was fantastic. In fact, my kids were here last night, and they, they were reminiscing about that, and how what a remarkable weekend it was. So, then on my regular week birthday, we had a party in Michigan here, where my kids, I said, 'You plan it, I'll pay for it. I didn't know they were going to plan, I didn't know they were going to run my bank account down to zero, but anyway, it was okay. We had a great party at 100 people, and in a nice setting, and that was good to see a lot of friends I hadn't seen in quite some time. It was very nice, so, so I had two celebrations, very, very nice. Both of them had great, great appreciation for that.

Robert Plank 2:48 Very good. So, what a life, right? You have the, the years, there's the quantity, but many people squander those years, but not you, right? You have the relationships, you have the memories, you have these connections with family, and you've lived through a few things. We're looking at the back of your book here. It says that you achieved the rank of Colonel in the US Air Force after serving 30 years in the military. Six were in the Navy, starting in 1944 You have two Legion of Merits, Air Medal, Presidential Unit Citation. You're a veteran of three wars, you've seen some stuff, and I, my understanding is that you've put a lot of that into this book talking about World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, the Cuban Missile Crisis, etc.

Charles Cone 3:33 Yeah, yeah, I covered most of it, and I was just talking to a former student of mine who called me from Pennsylvania, and he was wanting to know if I was going to write the rest of my book, because I probably forgot a lot of things, you know, it was.. I tried to remember most everything, and in detail, but I know I left out some stuff, but I'm not going to write another book. I told him that first, a numbers person, and so I was lucky to get, or maybe not lucky, but I was fortunate to give at least one book out of me that started with when my son wanted me to write some stories for his grandkids. I have 10 great grandkids in Texas, and he wanted me to tell them how my youth and beginning was compared to theirs. They're all, I would not say affluent, but they're close to it they're all one's a minister and one's worldwide director of acquisitions and mergers and acquisitions for her company and and my son they all have done very very well and so my. Beginning was totally different, don't porn in a house out in the country with no utilities of any kind, and my mother died when I was born, and so I started writing that by when I got to about 20 installations, as I call them, installments rather, it was I must write a book, so I then I began writing a book, and it was, it was, I enjoyed most writing about my kid, my, my childhood, which was my stepmother, and I were not on the same page ever. We were not in good graces, but the childhood in memory was much, much better than I thought it was when I was living it, and we had, I don't know, whether you know about chunk stoves or not, but those are stoves where you put big chunks of wood in, and we had one of those in each room that was our heat, and in milking cows and dragging in water from outside in the wintertime, and so it was, and I went to a one room schoolhouse, one all eight grades in one room.

Robert Plank 6:34 Whoa.

Charles Cone 6:35 And we didn't, we didn't have any encyclopedias, we didn't even know the word encyclopedia, and the dictionaries were had pages torn out of them, but we, we survived, and some of us did okay.

Robert Plank 6:47 Yeah.

Charles Cone 6:48 Most of us.

Robert Plank 6:49 Yeah, mostly, but that's close enough. So it's amazing what, how much has changed, right? I mean, indoor plumbing, even just that alone, right? Indoor electricity, there's so many parts of life that we don't even think about that we really take for granted, and so, and it's great to hear that one, and I mean, your childhood was, you know, so long ago, Great Depression era, and so, but when she started writing, it seems like a lot of it came back to you, and do you experience the same thing I do, where it seems like childhood was like 50 years long, like it seems like I'll keep having memories of like when I was seven or when I was 10, and then the adult years, I mean things happen, but it just seems like those those child years, like it just, there's seems to be a heck of a lot more packed into them than the grown-up years, don't you think?

Charles Cone 7:39 Yeah, actually, when I was writing about them, I thought, gee, there's not that many years yet. It seemed like, seemed like it was forever when I was going through it. Yeah, the first, well, through grade school, through eighth grade, you know, we were pure country, we didn't get electricity until I went in the Navy, and my dad wired the house when we, when they, they provided electricity down the road where we lived, and that one, you're right, it was a long time, but in retrospect it was very short time.

Robert Plank 8:20 Yeah.

Charles Cone 8:21 7 years, 12 years, 15 years out of 100 is not that many, 7% 8%.

Robert Plank 8:28 Yeah, and, and you're older than, you know, television, there's, there's, there's so much, never mind, you know, the, the internet, and just the, you know, the world has just changed so much in the decades, is there anything that stands out as far as like way back then versus now? Is there like, I mean, everything's changed, but is there anything that just is like just still blows your mind, or anything that's like quite a contrast between now and then?

Charles Cone 8:54 Well, actually, I got the first computer science degree given at Texas A and M, that, of course, I was pretty old at that time, 40, I guess, something like that. So that doesn't go back as far as childhood, like you're suggesting, but I started flying in 1943 and I still fly, and that has changed tremendously from from a little old 40 horsepower Piper Cub off of a farmer's field to today, you know that there's a plethora, plethora of airplanes, all kinds of them, people building them, and not only flying them, but building them, and in the early 40s it was a few people that flew, and of course the war was started, war was on when I started flying anyway. Yeah, yeah, airplanes have tremendously improved and changed. I mean, there's no comparison. It's like Henry Ford's the first 19 three cars to today's car, from the initial airplanes to today's airplanes, and same with computers, you know. When I started in computers, we had, we only had punch cards. There was no other entry or exit, and tapes came along later on. In fact, I wrote a program for a company called Mohawk Data Sciences to convert punch cards to paper tape, and today I look at my watch, and there's terabytes, almost, of information compared to 1k when we had the very first computers.

Robert Plank 10:55 Yeah, it's amazing what's changed back then. You needed a, you know, a huge room, and your phone, just one single phone, or even like one single watch, is like more powerful than you know, 500 of those rooms. It hurts your brain to think about how much has changed like this, and it's also fun with the because when I was a kid, every now and then I'd have the nostalgia, and I'd find, like, you know, my dad would show me like a reel to reel tape, or you know, I still record on cassette tapes when I was a kid, but the, you know, the physical media is changed so much right now, it's like the tiny little cards, and, and you know, now there's like drones, right now there's planes that fly themselves versus those old original airplanes, which I'm sure were really rickety and scary, and so you have all this like military experience, which you know you go into detail about the book, but just to give us an idea of what's in the book, What were those military years like?

Charles Cone 11:56 I, and you know, I won't say I enjoyed my career, but I, I did, I liked, I liked what I did, and I, and when I first went in the Navy, and this is where the term of burning desire to fly came from, my first day of enlisting in the Navy, I finished the all the physical and mental tests for the day, and a little wave said, Well, you're not finished yet, you got to go see the psychologist, and so the psychologist was asking me why I was learning to fly with a on my own when I was going to be a Navy pilot, and I said, well, the Navy may not accept me because I had hay fever, and which was a debilitating problem. Anyway, he wrote in my form a burning desire to fly, and that that phrase carried me through two years of physicals for flight training and beyond each time I take a physical get to the eye, your nose and throat specialist, and they say, well, son, you don't, you don't quite make the meet the requirements here, but I'm going to pass you, but don't expect to pass the next stage, and that went on for two years, so that phrase just carried me on.

Robert Plank 13:30 How wonderful.

Robert Plank 13:32 Yeah, and the interesting good lawyers guided me most of my life, and it turns out that I had, I rode the milk truck wagon from our farm to Rochester, New York, to enlisted in the Navy, and I was just a dumb farm kid, I didn't know anything about anything, and I walked down the street of a couple blocks from the jury, and you know you can imagine a hay seat looking up there at those tall buildings and stuff. I went into the facility, and I saw all these people dressed in nice clothes and uniforms and stuff, and I said I'm a bashful kid anyway, so I turned around and walked out. On the way out, I stopped at the men's room, and as a fellow came in, Lieutenant came in, and he asked me, "How was going? I said, "Oh, it's going fine. And he said, "What stage are you in? I said, "I really haven't started it yet. So he said, follow me, and that started me on my, my career, and it turned out he was a psychologist that finished the day for me, and it was just a chance meeting, and that's where most, most of my life has has been anyway of. And I went through pilot training in the Navy, I became a Navy pilot, and I wanted to become a Navy pilot for some reason or another. Nobody knows why, how, because my folks never went through the sixth grade, and nobody in my family had even gone to high school. We were strictly farmers scraping the soil to get by, and but I decided, for some reason, I to be a Navy pilot, and I worked all my life, all my, all my 18 years, first 18 years, 17 years to become a Navy pilot, and I just ignored the fact that I didn't qualify physically that I had a problem. I just ignored that and made out like, and I'm going to go through anyway. So, and I did, and that's the way most of my life was, and when I finally got through pilot training, and they were giving out the assignments. I wanted to fly to Corsair. That's all I ever.. that's why I joined the Navy, was to fly the Corsair, and everybody wanted - not everybody, but a lot of people wanted to fly to Corsair. The officer giving out the assignment said, I've got seven people who want to fly Corsairs. I've got three billets, I've got four for PBMs, and nobody wants to fly PBMs. PBMs are big seaplanes, and who wants to fly a seaplane? I mean, we're hot, hot shot fighter pilots, we're, we don't want to be flying off of water anyway, and he says we'll do it this way. The first name I draw out will go to Corsairs, the second name of PBMs, and the first name drawn out was a friend of mine sitting next to me, and he had said I'm going to fly a single engine, I'm not going to fly PBMs, so he volunteered to fly SB doocies, which were dive bombers, and his name was the first one drawn out for Corsair, so he was very unhappy. The next name drawn out was mine for PDM, and nobody could have been more unhappy than me. I went back to the officer, I said, 'Keep my damn wings, I don't want them, but he gave me some sage advice. He said, do what you do, whatever you do, do it the best you can, and he said things will work out for you, and you know, you, you may get to be a fly a corsair before you even think about it. Anyway, he was, it was sage advice, great advice, and so I became the youngest patrol plane commander of flying PBMs in the Pacific, and had a lot of experiences with the PDM, which I detailed some of them in the book, one of them being when we were leaving Saipan from Manila to avoid a typhoon coming through, we went through a typhoon and we were going upside, up, down, and around in all directions at one time. Anyway, it ended up that one of our crewmen got a fractured skull and our turrets were knocked off extracts and we lost all communication and navigation capability, so now we're flying in the dark at night, just chugging along, guessing at a heading to go to 1500 miles away to Manila, and we just had to guess at a heading. We had a radar on board, and that had a separate power unit, so we turned on the radar after about six or eight hours, and nothing showed up, so we figured that was gone too, but we kept charging along and eventually turned on the radar again, and we saw islands. The thing was that none of us Philippines have about 1000 items, and we had no idea which island was one we were headed for, and so we had to just keep on going. We're running out of fuel, and we made a decision whether to bail out or crash land at night, neither, neither choice was very good, but we decided to crash land, and so we kept the radar on, so we wouldn't run into the hills and the mountains, and as we now, we're about 10 hours now, and as we broke out of the clouds, descending the bow turp observer said lights 15 degrees starboard, and that was Manila, and so we ended up where we were supposed to be. I call it Miracle. Was no other explanation for it, but we had probably 10 minutes of fuel, maybe not even that much left when we landed, and our squadron mates had already made it there. They were way ahead of us, and nobody had heard from us for 10 to 12 hours, so they'd given us up. They thought we were gone, and we had a good celebration that night, finished the night out anyway, and that was one of the, that was one of the highlights of my PBM careers. I guess I had a few engine failures, and which were not exciting.

Robert Plank 20:43 But still I imagine extremely scary.

Charles Cone 20:46 Well, yeah, you just, you fly out of it. The first time we were a heavy overweight for flying, we were working with a submarine, our own one of our own submarines up about 30 miles north of Guam, and the engine just quit, and I was, I was a co-pilot, and the patrol plane commander was very good, and he, he managed to get us down, and without blowing up, which we sort of thought would happen to us, but it didn't, and that was the first one that I had in Asian failures, but anyway, those, those are some of the stories that I've got in my book, but then I switched over my on the day I was supposed to get discharged from the Navy, my crew and my roommate were all killed. They were flying in another airplane because I'd had an engine failure, so my airplane was being worked on, and my roommate was getting a check ride with the operations officer, and on the 31st of August 1949 and I saw them as they went off the shore into the water, but I couldn't see very far, more than a half of a block, because the weather was 00 and so I went over to do my physical for discharge, and then they called me and said it had been a crash, and I was apparently the only person in squadron that knew everybody on board, because we had detachments like Yokosuka, Japan, St. Todd, China, Philippines, Okinawa, other places, and a new person would come in to a detachment from the rest of the squadron, maybe never saw for a year, maybe, and so I was selected to do the initial identification of the body visas that were pulled out of the water, and so for the next seven to 10 days, I don't remember exactly, I went out with Mary Ann and the divers picking up parts of the airplane and the bodies, and so when, when we finally got my roommate, and everybody was accounted for, I took my roommate's remainings home to his home in Milwaukee, which we had planned on driving, I was going to drive to Buffalo and drop him off in Milwaukee that day because they were all getting a 30 day leave started when they landed from the trip and turned out I took him in a different way, and when I, when the viewing was ready in the evening, there was this lady standing at the head of the casket, and our eyes locked, and they never unlocked. And so we were married, and our first child was a son that was named for my roommate. That changed my life tremendously, you know. I'm rambling on here. I don't know.

Robert Plank 24:08 I'm taking it all in. You just, you've seen so much, and, and so you know, we're making sense of, of all the life experiences, and you've given us so many, right? You've told us how, how important it is for someone to sometimes, like, you know, step up and say, 'Hey, you know, you're new here, go this way. You've talked about the burning desire, which in itself is just because someone wrote something that maybe didn't even realize how encouraging it was, right? Just that one phrase helped you out for years, and but it can go both ways, can't it? Someone can say one mean thing, and then that sticks with you instead. So, you've given us lots of interesting tidbits to think about, but as far as the life lessons, the things that you've learned in the past century, does anything stick out at you as far as like the best ways to live or the secret to life? Life, anything like that.

Charles Cone 25:02 The secret to life is to breathe, but I always, I always remember that what that person has said, who was handing out the assignments, that do the best you can, and don't, instead of arguing and fretting about the assignment, do it.

Robert Plank 25:28 Yeah.

Charles Cone 25:28 Go at it, like, like you, you're the last person to do this job, and you got to do it right, you know. Anyway, that's I think this persistence, keeping track of things, keeping on track, and keep trying, never give up, never give up, and that's what I learned, and I tried to do that, and no matter what assignment I got, I did the best I could, and I was on the general's list for him, I retired from the Air Force, and that was another story, because I had a survey and job offer that was twice as salary that I was getting in the Air Force, even as a general, so.

Robert Plank 26:14 Whoa, so yeah, so you're, you're, you've had many accomplishments, right? Because you, you say, well, I could fret about it, and I could like talk myself out and have all the doubt, or I could use that same energy to get things done. And were there any time? I mean, you mentioned, like, so many, you know, times of stress, so many times of conflict. Were there any moments when you felt like quitting, even for a while, and then you had to get back on track.

Charles Cone 26:43 Oh, yeah, yeah, I did. When I was really getting close to retirement age in the Air Force, I was unhappy because I wasn't in a flying operation, and all I wanted to do was fly. I didn't want to do all the other kind of things that needed to be done, and so I was, I was just thinking about retiring, and talked to a friend of mine, who was, we'd gone to Ohio State together, and he was involved in a pretty fairly high position in his company, and and we talked about it, and I ended up staying and just settling down and putting my head down and go at it again, you know, and that, that was there, was that time very well, you know. It'd be nice to say that never happened, but it did happen, and I think all of us get discouraged at one time or another in some circumstance, and if you can just sit back and get rid of that discouragement, and say, well, let's get, let's get on with it, let's get, let's, let's do what needs to be done, if it means quitting and changing, change, but don't, don't just fret about it, get, get at to us.

Robert Plank 28:06 Yeah, do what needs to be done. And when we're, I mean, you could say that a lot of being an adult is doing what you don't want you to do and doing it anyway, but when you're a kid, you still had homework and you had to get dressed and go to school, so it seems like you know childhood or adulthood is always like, well, you have a task in front of you and it's not forever, but you do have to get this thing done, and then maybe you can go and play on the playground after, or you can take a nap, but for now, like, it's time to buckle down, and especially writing a book, that's a big undertaking, right? You say you started with the 20 installments, and then it's you said, "Hey, there's a whole connectiveness here. And when you were writing this book, did you discover anything about yourself in that process?

Charles Cone 28:55 No, I don't think I did, although I guess if I realized that my, my persistence had gotten me a long ways, that there was that sort of thing of not giving up. Don't give up, and I still say that today, when I, when people complain about certain circumstances, and they want to know whether they should quit or not. I say don't give up, don't give up.

Robert Plank 29:22 Yeah, I like that. Well, speaking of not giving up and continuing forward, what are your plans for the future? Like, as far as you said, you're only doing the one book, but there's always other projects, there's promoting the book. So, what do you have planned for age, you know, 101, 102 and beyond.

Charles Cone 29:43 I don't really have any plans, but I plan on living to 110 so I got 10 more years to go, and I have speaking assignments coming up, and which I'm always surprised at the number of people. I want to talk about the book and read it and ask her questions, like you've been doing, you know, because I'm just, I'm just an ordinary old jerk, and it's kind of surprising to me when I wake up now and then, say, "Well, yo, you're what they call you an author, and you're not really an author, you're just a plain old guy.

Robert Plank 30:31 They call that imposter syndrome, and you know what also impresses me is, you know, as we both know, a lot of people don't live to be 100 like I'll be so grateful if I, if I live that long, and some people that, if they're 100 maybe they're not physically well or not mentally well. Like, do you think is there a secret to your longevity? Is it a matter of like staying active, staying busy, or why are you just doing so well health wise at age 100

Charles Cone 30:58 Well, I think I always exercise my whole life. I used to get up and run three miles in the morning, you know, three times a week, or so, and I always did a lot of work in the gym, and when I was in Strategic Air Command, we had tests every quarter, and I was usually number one in the school for various pull-ups, push-ups, running, you know, that sort of stuff, and I tried always to be in good physical shape, and I go to the gym, like I said, three times a week now with a personal trainer and I've been doing that for five years or so and just stay in good good health.

Robert Plank 31:52 Yeah.

Charles Cone 31:53 I try, I try not to try not to abuse my body.

Robert Plank 31:56 Yeah, because you only have one. Well, well, good, right, yeah. So you're all about the discipline and the care of yourself and others, and we've been speaking about your life lessons, and also this amazing book that you're an author of, which is called A Burning Desire to Fly by Charles Cohn. And in our last few minutes of our conversation here, Charles. Do you have.. do you think there might be a missing question in our conversation that I should be asking you? I just don't know to ask you.

Charles Cone 32:32 I can't think of any.

Robert Plank 32:34 Okay, fair enough. Well, in that case, where should people get the book?

Charles Cone 32:40 At Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any online bookstore.

Robert Plank 32:47 Okay, very nice. So, Amazon, Barnes and Noble online bookstore, you look for A Burning Desire to Fly by Charles Cone, so you can find that on Amazon. We will have a link, and then his website is charlescone.com and he achieved the rank of Colonel in the US Air Force after serving 30 years in the military, and he has seen some things, right, World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, Cuban Missile Crisis, and he was the first computer science major at A and M, and has accomplished so much since, and it's really getting to my curiosity here, Charles. That Spirit of Detroit Award behind you, what is that?

Charles Cone 33:27 No, that was from the Council of Detroit. It was, it was given to me for social activities I've performed, like with my Lions Club and various other organizations, Hendrickson School for Disabled Kids, and I flew nursery flights and things, and they kind of surprised me when one night with that Spirit of Detroit Award.

Robert Plank 34:00 Oh.

Charles Cone 34:01 It was another nice honor; yeah.

Robert Plank 34:04 Very cool. You're a man of many accomplishments. You help many people.

Charles Cone 34:09 Yeah. Thank you.

Robert Plank 34:11 Very cool. And so, A Burning Desire to Fly is the book by Charles Cone. And in these final seconds of our conversation, it's time for the scary part of the podcast where I ask you about a fun or interesting quote or lesson that has served you, so what comes to mind as far as a fun or interesting quote or lesson?

Charles Cone 34:32 Never give up, that's my quote.

Robert Plank 34:37 Very good, just that simple.

Charles Cone 34:42 Yep, yeah, nothing complicated, nothing elaborate, such plain old. Don't give up.

Robert Plank 34:50 Don't give up. The rest will take care of itself. And you out there, you don't give up on getting a copy of this book, A Burning Desire to Fly by Charles Cone. It, you'll be glad that you did. So, A Burning Desire to Fly by Charles Cone. Get it, read it, you'll love it. There's many amazing stories. There's been so many cool stories in this podcast. Imagine what there is left to read in that book. So much more. A Burning Desire to Fly by Charles Cone. And thanks for being here, Charles, and just telling us what we need to know. I'm very grateful.

Charles Cone 35:22 Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss this with you. It's been a pleasure.