Leslie “Les” Brissette, early Pan Am pilot, passed away on August 26, 2018 at the age of 103. Always sunny and optimistic, Les was always armed with a pocket full of jokes to keep any crowd laughing.
Born and brought up on a farm in Saranac, New York, Les declares that he “didn’t see much future in farming and it sure wasn’t paying” so he took a temporary Civil Service job with the 1940 census.
With WWII on the horizon, the government set up seven “free” flight training schools around the country and Les was assigned to what he refers as “Parkersburg, West-By-God Virginia” and started training on the UPF 7. “Very maneuverable” he recalled. Then he transferred to Northeastern’s flight school in Burlington Vermont where PAA came recruiting.
Next stop, 4th officer on the Flying Boats out of Miami (where he claimed his job was sorting US Mail), then the Boats out of La Guardia to Lisbon. Back to Miami, on to Panama and then to the IGS. Like many of the IGS pioneers he and his family started out living in England but ultimately moved to Berlin where he retired in 1975.
Then, Les and his wife Lilo (who subsequently passed away in 2010) began a new career of adventures. It included 270,000 miles in a mobile home, residences around the country and a ranch in Colorado before they settled down in the San Diego area favored by many of the pioneer pilot crew.
(Information from http://pcnflightwest.blogspot.com/2018/09/paa-capt-leslie-c-brissette.html)