Today's Featured Biography

Leslie Sargent

After graduation from DuPont in May 1973, I began my professional aviation career in July 1973 by enlisting in the U.S. Army. I worked as an airplane mechanic and crew chief stationed at Ft Campbell, KY, and later in Mannheim, Germany. After leaving the Army in 1977, I went to work in Nebraska as a civilian aircraft mechanic and began my flight training.

In 1984, eleven years after high school graduation, I changed my life direction and decided it was time to pursue a college education (using my GI benefits) at Middle Tennessee State University. In addition to full time college studies, during the summers of 1985 and 1986, I went back to Nebraska and worked as an ag-pilot and aircraft mechanic. I graduated (magna cum laude) in May 1987 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace, majoring in Aviation Maintenance Management. Another major life change was about to happen…

In July 1987 I accepted a position as an Aviation Safety Inspector (Maintenance) with the Federal Aviation Administration in Honolulu, Hawaii. In 1993, after five years of living in paradise and travelling the Pacific, I bid for a position in the FAA’s International Field Office in Frankfurt, Germany. While in Germany for the second time in my life, I traveled in both Europe and Africa for two and a half years. In 1995, I requested and was accepted for a position in the Oklahoma City Flight Standards District Office (FSDO), and returned to the good ole USA. From there I bid on a position with the Designee Standardization Branch as an Airworthiness Instructor, still based in Oklahoma City, but doing seminars all over the US for the next sixteen years.

Another life change happened in 2004 when I met and married “Sparky” Barnes Sargent who is a pilot, aircraft owner and restorer, and an aviation writer and author. She was living in far eastern Tennessee when we met (mountains), but she was willing to join me living in a small airpark community near OKC (flatlands).

I retired from the FAA on January 31, 2014, after 30 years (and four days) of combined military and civilian federal service. Since retirement we have moved to another small airpark community here in Tennessee. I have been working part time as an Instructor at the FAA Academy in OKC, have been appointed as a Designated Airworthiness Representative – Maintenance (DAR-T) by the Nashville FSDO, and I am doing some aviation maintenance related consulting. Sparky is still writing aviation stories and books, and we continue to fly and enjoy our vintage airplanes: her 1948 Piper Vagabond and our 1961 Cessna 180…

Life is good!

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