Our Little Pilots: Sixteen Years of Family Adventure
A personal tribute by James “Jimmy” Meegan, for Kaiden, Kylo and Leah, with gratitude to my father, James Meegan. October 2026.
I wanted my children’s interests to become things they could touch, try and remember. For our family, that has meant time around airplanes and helicopters, days on the water, summer trips, and the quieter work of helping a child explore an idea.
This is our family’s account of sixteen years of encouragement. The recovered photographs and dated correspondence preserve particular moments within that larger story. Dates are included where known; an unknown date, location or hour total stays unknown.
View the family slideshow
Use the arrows to advance through the 23-slide presentation. The PDF link below offers a portable copy for reading or presenting.
A family interest across generations
My father James belongs in this tribute. The children’s adventures sit within a family history of spending time together and encouraging the next generation to explore. The aviation archive includes family photographs beside the same Cessna. The copies were saved in August 2020, but their original outing dates have not been established.
Family archive beside the same Cessna. Copy saved August 9, 2020; original outing date unconfirmed.
Kaiden: making room for aviation
Kaiden is sixteen now. My account is that he has had at least ten supervised airplane or helicopter sessions, generally described as one to two hours each, around the Appalachian mountains. Most were out of Joseph A. Hardy Connellsville Regional Airport over roughly eleven years. He has personally handled controls with an aviation coach or specialist, including steering and participating in takeoffs and landings under supervision.
Those are my recollections. Session duration, airborne time and instructor-endorsed logbook credit are different measures. Individual logbook entries and historic invoices were not recovered for this edition, so the tribute does not turn a remembered session into a verified flight-hour entry or a pilot qualification.
Beside a training aircraft. Google Photos date: August 9, 2017.
Family beside a helicopter. Archive date: August 13, 2021; filename carries a different date.
The original photograph beside a training aircraft carries August 9, 2017 at 1:21:03 p.m., GMT−4, in Google Photos; its filename also begins IMG_20170809. Its exact location is unknown. The helicopter photograph has an archive date of August 13, 2021 at 11:56 a.m., while its filename reads 2021-10-23. That discrepancy is preserved rather than silently resolved.
The cockpit as a place to learn
The children also explored aircraft on the ground. Cockpit images in the archive are dated June 18, 2023 at 4:01:48 p.m. and 3:59:22 p.m.; a related cabin image is dated 4:02:51 p.m. Their exact location and displayed time zone are unknown. These are visits and moments of discovery, and they are not added to the flying totals.
Aircraft cockpit exploration on the ground. Archive date: June 18, 2023.
Kylo and Leah belong in the whole story
Our family account includes aviation time for Kylo and for Leah too. I do not have a dependable individual total for either child in the recovered records, so I have not assigned one. Each child’s opportunity matters on its own.
Kylo’s labeled “Build a Water Model” science worksheet was sent in a family email titled “Kylo science project 1” on December 18, 2025 at 7:15:20 p.m., −05:00. It is a personal example of observing, drawing and learning about water. Its completion date and location are unknown.
Kylo’s “Build a Water Model” project. Sent in a labeled family email on December 18, 2025. Student header cropped for display.
Leah is my stepdaughter and part of this family story. Her archive includes a handmade thank-you to a veteran, captioned “Thank you so much Leah!”, dated November 10, 2022 at 11:49:31 a.m. It also preserves her birthday cake, dated September 17, 2023 at 8:18:59 p.m. Exact locations and time zones are unknown. Her creations and milestones deserve attention beside the big outings.
Leah’s handmade thank-you to a veteran. Caption: “Thank you so much Leah!” Archive date: November 10, 2022. Signature area cropped for display.
A little Pennsylvania winter in summer: Carousel, Ocean City
The Carousel Resort trips were a summer tradition we made every year. We only got to see Kaiden in the summertime, and he always wanted his Pennsylvania snowy winters. At a time when we could not easily find snow activities, the resort’s indoor ice rink gave us a way to bring him closer to home. Choosing a place with that rink was one way to listen to what he missed and make our time together feel familiar.
The annual pattern and its meaning are my account. A recovered email from Carousel Resort Hotel and Condominiums via Booking.com, titled “Thank You for Staying with Us!”, is dated June 21, 2019 at 11:02 a.m. It thanks James for a recent visit to the Carousel Oceanfront Hotel and Condominiums in Ocean City, Maryland. Exact arrival and departure dates, the displayed time zone and the attendees are unknown.
The skating photo index separately shows August 27, 2017 at 11:23:48 a.m.; June 16, 2019 at 9:17:09 p.m.; and June 15, 2021 at 4:50:47 p.m. Those are observed archive timestamps. The exact skating venues and time zones were not verified from the recovered metadata, so those images are not used to invent additional confirmed Carousel stays.
On the water, learning together
I report that we earned boating certificates together and spent hundreds of family hours aboard in different waters, including Pennsylvania, Texas, Louisiana and Florida, on Gulf and Atlantic waters. The recovered photographs show family time aboard and life jackets. They do not establish a numerical lifetime total, and certificate copies and a consolidated vessel log were not recovered.
Together on the water in life jackets. Facebook copy saved June 19, 2020; original outing date unconfirmed.
A family day aboard. Google Photos and original filename date: June 19, 2020.
The original helm photograph is dated June 19, 2020 at 12:19:30 p.m. in both its filename and Google Photos. The waterway and displayed time zone are unknown. Other June 2020 boating photographs are later copies; their save dates are not counted as additional outings. The places recalled above come from our family account, not from assigning this one photograph to several states.
The personal investment behind each opportunity
Supervised flight involves real expense, as well as planning, transport, preparation and attention. Published examples help explain the scale. Aero Club of Pennsylvania’s 2025 Cessna 172 benchmark lists $200 per aircraft hour including fuel and $100 per instructor hour: $300 combined. Panhandle Helicopter Academy lists Robinson R22 instruction at $475 per hour, or $400 per hour when buying a ten-hour block, including instructor and fuel.
If the first ten sessions recalled for Kaiden contained ten to twenty billable flight hours, an airplane-only comparison would be $3,000–$6,000. An R22-only comparison would be $4,000–$9,500. These are alternative scenarios, not amounts to add together, and not proof of what our family paid. Actual aircraft mix, ground time, historical prices and billing remain unknown.
For Kylo and Leah, the same hourly comparisons explain the commitment without inventing lifetime totals. At these benchmarks, an illustrative mixed-aircraft total would be $300 multiplied by airplane hours, plus $400–$475 multiplied by R22 hours. Their individual hours were not reconciled, so no dollar total is assigned. Travel, ground tuition, equipment, lodging and boat ownership costs are outside this calculation.
The hours around the adventure
The photograph is a moment. Around it are the decisions to plan, drive, prepare equipment, wait for conditions, pay for instruction, share a school project and keep showing up. Those are also ways of caring for a child’s interests. I wanted the children to know that what interested them mattered to me.
A family email sent October 14, 2025 at 11:08:56 a.m. UTC is titled “Kaiden and Kylo with the American bald eagle.” It names the boys as a pair and preserves time outdoors together. The photograph’s capture date and location are unknown, and the distant bird’s species was not independently verified from the image.
Family email titled “Kaiden and Kylo with the American bald eagle,” October 14, 2025. Email date is not an independently verified outing date.
We lost a hull. We keep the memories.
Our family recently lost our main personal boat hull after damage, weather, age and bad luck. That is my account of the loss, not an independent survey or cause determination. The boat carried us for a time; the shared experiences remain part of our family.
For Kaiden, Kylo and Leah
May you always know your interests mattered. I wanted you to have room to explore, people beside you and opportunities to discover what you could do. With love, Dad. And with gratitude to my father James, and to the people who helped the children learn.
About the archive
This tribute combines original selected family photos, labeled correspondence, the father’s recollections and the public sources linked above. Retrieved photos carry archive dates from 2017 onward. The sixteen-year span is the family’s account, not sixteen independently documented annual entries. Duplicate copies and aircraft exploration on the ground are not counted as flight sessions. People in unlabeled photos were not identified through facial recognition.
The separate statement of 120+ personally logged hours remains unassigned between activities and people; it has not been added to another total or monetized. Unknown dates, locations, certificates, billing and hour allocations remain unknown. Public sources were reviewed October 25, 2026. Private contact details and unrelated correspondence are omitted.
Comments