A Special Person

I think most of us can agree that we have all had at least one person in our lives that has really touched us. I have had several, but today, I wanted to write a little note about someone that both Ben and I have known for nearly 10 years now (Wow, that is crazy!). That person is Dr. Pat Mattson, one of our college professor's and a great mentor and friend to both of us. Pat's aviation background is Air Traffic Control, so he is a bit strange! (You have to be a bit strange to handle that job!) But we love 'em anyway.

I think I met Pat the first or second day of freshmen year of college. My work-study job was assisting a professor in the aviation department and I therefore got to know all of the professor's rather well. There was an immediate connection with Pat though. He was at SCSU from Wisconsin too! He was also highly organized, full of ideas, and always willing to help. Throughout my four years of college, Pat was the go-to guy for me whenever I had any kind of question from school work to jobs to personal. And he was always there. Pat was the one who recommended me to my first internship and who wrote me many recommendation letters for scholarships and job openings. Pat is also the one who notified Ben of an opening in the operations department at Spokane International Airport - a position that was not advertised on the popular airport job search sites. If not for Pat, we never would've known about the job that Ben has been doing for almost five years now.

We still keep in touch with each other and most recently, Pat has told me about a few possible aviation writing jobs that I might be interested in pursuing. While I was ecstatic to hear about the options, the thing that amazes me even more is that it has been 6.5 years since I graduated college, he has since retired from teaching and is back and Wisconsin, and Dr. Pat Mattson is still looking out for me. Pretty awesome, huh?

Thank you, Pat, for all that you have done for the both of us! We sure do appreciate you!