Pilots Wed On Cloud Nine

By Shannon Hicks

On St Patrick’s Day, pilots Robert Harris and Carol Froehlig of Sandy Hook took their marriage vows in their Cessna 172 airplane 2,000 feet high above Newtown. Justice of the Peace Cheryl Johnson conducted the ceremony.

All three were wearing headsets so that they could hear each other, and the ceremony took place as the couple was flying over their Johnny Appleseed Drive home. The flight, which lasted 30 minutes, originated from and returned to Danbury Airport, where the airplane is based.

“I thought it was fabulous,” said Ms Johnson of her first in-air wedding. “You know, you look for a new venue weddings and sometimes they just find you. It’ll take a lot to top this one.”

Carol Froehlig, who moved to Sandy Hook last July, is a former resident of Glen Head, N.Y. She is a commercial, instrument-rated pilot with more than 2,000 hours in her single-engine airplane. She is a volunteer pilot for Angel Flight NE, a charitable organization that provides free medical transportation for people.

She has also served as a docent for the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, N.Y. As a Long Island aviation historian, she has made presentations at numerous libraries on the history of Long Island aviation. She was on the board of the Long Island Business Aviation Association as the editor of its newsletter.

Bob, a longtime resident of Sandy Hook, holds commercial, ATP, and flight engineer ratings, as well as holding ratings in 20 different aircraft.

The two met in October 2007 when they both attended an Angel Flight picnic.

“It was a pilot event, a thank you for the work we do during the year,” Carol explained this week. “It was out on Nantucket, and usually about 100 to 150 pilots fly in from all over. They give out awards, and it’s a high energy time to meet with other pilots and catch up with some you may not have seen since the previous picnic.”

Bob was at the picnic with a friend of his, and he and Carol ended up sitting at the same table that day. The connection was pretty instant.

“We kind of knew from the beginning that this was just a perfect match. We were meant to be together,” said Carol.

“You can spend your life wondering if there really is someone who is just perfect for you, your soulmate,” she continued. “I know that word is overused, but he is mine. Bob and I just validate that idea. We couldn’t be closer. We almost think the same things at the same time. It’s almost eerie.”

This is the second marriage for both Carol and Bob, and once they decided to go forward with their wedding plans they moved quickly.

“On Sunday when we made the decision to call the Justice of the Peace, we looked at the weather,” said Carol. “Because we’re pilots we’re very weather conscious and are always looking five to six days out.

“We looked at Wednesday and knew that it was supposed to be a beautiful day,” she continued. “It kind of exceeded our expectations.”

The fact that last Wednesday also happened to be St Patrick’s Day did not enter into the equation.

“No, we just went for Wednesday because it happened to be there,” Carol said with a laugh.

Carol and Bob arrived at Danbury Airport 45 minutes before they were scheduled to take off Wednesday morning, so they had their prenuptial breakfast at Marcus Dairy. Their niece, Tamara Zimmer, met them at the airport to take some photos and then took Bob and Carol out to lunch at the nearby Olive Garden. Their wedding dinner was then celebrated at The Olive Tree in Southbury.

Carol and Bob do not have a honeymoon planned for the immediate future, but have a few ideas in mind to celebrate their union. They hope to have a family gathering at the beginning of the summer. He has three children and a number of grandchildren, and she has a niece and nephew, along with grandnieces and -nephews.

“We’ll probably have a gathering of them and some friends, when we can plan it a little bit better,” she said. “As far as a honeymoon, we’ve talked about going to Alaska, maybe at the end of the summer or early fall.”

Carol attended Queens College of the City of New York and received a bachelor’s degree in education. She taught elementary school for 37 years, and is retired from the North Shore School District.

Carol is the president of Sky Aerial Images, Inc, an aerial photography business, which she and Bob operate. Their services include aerial photos to showcase luxury homes as well as progress photos for construction sites. In addition, Carol has had solo shows that displayed her aerial photos at libraries on Long Island. One of her photos, “Awakening,” won an award from The Professional Aerial Photographers Association (PAPA).

Bob graduated from Texas Tech University with a bachelor’s degree in business. After college, he entered the Army and was sent to military flight school. He did a tour of duty in Vietnam, flying combat support missions.

After returning to the United States, Bob joined American Airlines, retiring as captain after 30 years of service. In addition to working with Carol in their aerial photography business, he has been a corporate jet pilot for Cablevision on Long Island, and taught primary and recurrent training for FlightSafety in New Jersey.

Carol says she finds it amazing that something, somehow, helped her find the perfect spouse. A few years ago, when Rhonda Byrne’s book The Secret was very popular, Carol found herself thinking of how she would describe the perfect man for her.

“The Secret encourages you to put out to the universe what you are wishing for, so I did,” she said. Using one email account to compose a letter, Carol put together an email with a description of the kind of person she wanted to meet and sent it to herself at her second email address. And then she forget about it.

Six months after meeting Bob, she was going through the second emailbox and came across her letter.

“I was just blown away by how much it described him physically, and how I had described his personality,” she said. “It was just uncanny.”

Bob, who had been quiet for the most part of this conversation, finally spoke up, saying, “You gotta be careful what you want.”

The newlyweds laughed together over that.

“I know it sounds cliché, but it really was love at first sight,” Carol continued. “You know the AARP commercial that’s running now where people say when I grow up I want to do this, and when I grow up I want to do that, and then there’s the woman at the end who says ‘I want to fall in love again’?

“It was just like that,” she said. “We both wanted to fall in love, and we did.”