Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

A longtime Albert Lea pilot participated in his 50th year of the annual wreath drop Monday morning on Fountain Lake in honor of Memorial Day. 

Jim Hanson, the operator of the Albert Lea airport, said his first year participating in the tradition was in 1964. Though he missed a few years while in the Army and a few more while living in Houston, he has participated in the Albert Lea tradition for 50 of his 60 years of flying. 

Hanson said the wreath tradition was started immediately after World War II. The American Legion and the VFW decided that an appropriate way to honor all service members was to pay tribute to those who served on land, at sea or in the air by dropping a memorial wreath into Fountain Lake from an airplane. 

This has happened in the years since except for last year when the lake was being dredged, leaving him with a smaller portion to operate from. He ultimately decided instead to drop flower petals, and they floated down to the lake. He has also dropped petals over the cemeteries in Albert Lea and the surrounding area. 

Hanson said he took his first flight lesson in August 1962 at the age of 15. 

“It seems that like most kids, I wanted to test the limits of what I could do,” Hanson said. “I had been a summer exchange student in Mexico that summer, and people said, “You’ve been on your own in a foreign country — how are you going to top that?” Off the top of my head, I said, ‘I’m going to learn to fly!’ My parents looked into it and checked it out.”

They told him he could do anything he could pay for with their permission. 

He soloed on a plane on the day he was old enough his 16th birthday in 1963 and actually had a pilot’s license before a driver’s license. 

From there, he said he mowed lawns and worked at the lumberyard in Clarks Grove and continued his flying. He took his private pilot check ride on his 17th birthday. 

He said he actually owned his first plane before he owned a car. 

Flying has taken him to 83 countries around the world — plus Antarctica. He has owned operations in Owatonna, Faribault, Austin and Rochester as well—and built operations for others in Houston and Long Island, New York.