Since he was a young boy, senior Grant Williams wanted to fly. He wasn’t sure exactly what about airplanes appealed to him, but his fascination began when his older cousin joined the Air Force.

“I just thought that was the coolest thing,” Williams said.

The senior didn’t take his passion seriously until he applied to shadow at the Kansas Air Center his sophomore year. The Kansas Air Center is a Fixed-Based Operator, a company that cleans and refuels planes when they land for maintenance. Williams watched and mimicked the FBO’s employees three days a week.

“Working at the FBO basically started me out in this career field,” Williams said. “I didn’t really get any hands on with flying, but all the fuel handling and ground service work, that’s me. I’m marshaling — I have the little wand you’ve probably seen.”

Williams also began taking flight lessons at that time. He sat in the cockpit with an instructor who first manned the vehicle exclusively, then gave over more and more control to his trainee. Williams said the process has been methodical and challenging, but worthwhile. He wants to eventually gain a license.

“The first time I took off I felt like that’s what I wanted to do the rest of my life,” Williams said. “It was amazing — just the excitement and the adrenaline. It was amazing.”

After Williams’ junior year, he accepted a full-time summer job at the FBO.

“[Co-workers at the Air Center] really welcomed me,” he said. “It was really nice.”

During the school year the senior fills part-time hours whenever he can. Williams says balancing school and his job was hard during musical rehearsals, but he made a mental commitment to work at the FBO every Sunday.

Williams took his first solo flight a few weeks ago. He was with the rest of German Club at Junction City’s Christmas Market when his flight instructor texted him inviting him to take a last-minute trip to Wichita. Williams left his stall at the market and went to the DOB, where he and his instructor took off in separate planes and traveled in formation, or side-by-side.

“It was so much fun,” Williams said. On the way back, Williams stopped by Lloyd Stearman Field Airport, an uncontrolled center with a diner in Benton, after asking his flight instructor, who was then riding with him, if they could take a quick detour. Williams had been there before as part of an aviation camp but he’d never gotten a t-shirt, so he landed to buy one before returning home to Manhattan.

Williams’ parents knew about the flight — and his dad even found a way to witness part of it.

“My mom was absolutely terrified,” Williams said. “My dad went and parked in the parking lot of Bill Snyder Family Stadium and I just flew circles around it for ten minutes, waving at him.”

Williams plans to major in Unmanned Aircraft at the University of Salina next year and hopefully go into the Air Force as a fighter pilot afterward.

“I actually considered being just a regular airline pilot, but I met with General [Richard] Myers which is actually, funny enough, the president of K-State,” Williams said. “He was the highest ranking general in the Air Force at one point, and he heard about me through mutual relations and wanted to have coffee with me. And so I met with him and told him what I wanted to do with unmanned aircraft and commercial, and he said, ‘but that’s not as fun as going Mach 2 and being able to do cool 9 Gs,’ you know, and dogfighting and all that. He had me. And then he actually gave me his book that he wrote and signed it. I’m in the middle of it right now and he has sacrificed so much, and I feel like I can use my passion to make something of myself to serve the country basically. It would be an amazing thing to do.”

The senior now knows why he has always been drawn to aircraft and why he is pursuing it today.

“[The aviation community is] one of the most awesome communities you can be a part of,” he said. “All pilots are just nice to each other … But the reason I love aviation so much is humans were not meant to fly. We don’t have wings, so we made wings and we defined what our natural bodies could do, and that’s just amazing to me.”