There will be a celebration of Sam Wright’s life Aug. 24 at the Chilkat Center in Haines. Wright, 78, volunteered to fly Coastal Air Service owners Hans Munich and Tanya Hutchins home from Juneau to Yakutat on July 20. They never arrived. The search for Wright’s 1948 Beechcraft Bonanza was suspended three days later.
Haines charter pilot Drake Olson called Wright a mentor and “true aviator” who possessed an “innate” understanding of all aspects of flight from philosophical to mechanical. “The conversation, the technical help; I always wanted more time with Sam,” Olson said. Southeast Alaska is “a difficult arena, and there are very few, really a small few, who have his level of knowledge.” Wright received the Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award from the FAA.
Between 1979 and 1981 he flew seasonally in the interior for Yukon River fish camps. He began flying full time for Wings of Alaska in 1988. In 2002, when Wings of Alaska owner Bob Jacobsen formed Wings Airways, a flightseeing company affiliated with Taku Lodge, Wright became one of several employee business partners. “I was glad he joined us as an owner and invested his own money with us,” Jacobsen said. “Everybody loved Sam. He was a very good pilot, a very good mechanic and even when we were grounded due to weather, he’d help in the shop picking up a broom or a wrench.” Wright retired in 2017 but remained a partner and continued to assist with Wings Airways maintenance.
At the same time, Wright was also the self-appointed “maintenance supervisor” of the Fort Seward Condos and pretty much all things related to Haines’ historic Army base, from plumbing to celebrations. “Sam loved the Fort and he loved this town,” said life partner Annette Gregg Smith. They lived together for 31 years on Officer’s Row, including for a time with her now adult daughters, Jade and Christina. Wright co-hosted parties and family reunions (wearing a tuxedo T-shirt), pedaled a side-by-side tandem bike dressed as Uncle Sam with Smith as Lady Liberty in Fourth of July parades, strung thousands of Christmas lights for the annual Lighting of the Fort, assisted with the Snow Dragon and volunteered behind the scenes with Lynn Canal Community Players.
His white beard and warm smile made him a perfect Santa Claus. Wright’s flying Santa image was on many Wings Airways company Christmas cards. “Sam was a background kind of a guy, but secretly I think he enjoyed that,” Smith said.
Samuel Bolling Wright III was born in Rahway, N.J. on Feb. 21, 1946, into an affluent family. He spent early childhood in Mexico City where his grandfather owned a manufacturing plant that employed his father. When Wright was four, he contracted tuberculosis of the spine and was ill for several years. Concern over his health prompted his mother, Eleanor “Ellie” Mershon Roberts Wright, to move the family to Santa Barbara, California. From the beginning, Wright was a worker and an adventurer. His first job was in a local bicycle shop. By the time he was a teenager he was into building and driving drag-racing cars. He learned to fly, sail and hangglide. After graduating from San Marcos Senior High, he attended Ventura College and wed childhood sweetheart Janet Bell on Aug. 13, 1965. Wright worked for several air services including Murray Aviation in Oxnard as a charter pilot and flight instructor. He hoped to become a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, but the effects of TB made him ineligible.
In between flying professionally and aviation tech classes, Wright opened several successful California businesses including the Vista 76 service station which he operated in the 1980s.
He and Janet, who is also a pilot, had two sons who were weaned on planes, Sam IV, an accomplished architect, and Mike. Mike said that on one of his first flights with his father to the Channel Islands, they landed on a muddy road and got stuck. A farmer pulled them out “and gave me a bottle of goat milk. I was about a year old.” Before heading home, his father set him on the tail of the Cessna 310 and Mike slipped, splitting open his chin. “Mom was none too pleased to receive her son back with a bloody rag wrapped around my head and a dirty diaper,” he said. Years later, his father taught him how to land a plane on a beach. “He was always teaching people how to do stuff and how things worked,” Mike said.
Friend Tom Ganner said, “The world is a lesser place without Sam. He was a kind, generous soul who was so capable and a lot of fun to fly with.”
In addition to Annette Smith, Wright’s family included sister Peggy Lauer, children Samuel B. Wright IV, Michael Wright, Christina Baskaya and Jade Scheele; grandchildren Elise, Ava, Jordyn and Dylan Wright and Aidan and Quinn Scheele, and the extended Gregg and Wright families.
Wright was an avid recycler. Memorial donations may be made to Haines Friends of Recycling at P.O. Box 822. Haines, AK 99827 or hainesrecycle.org.