Last month, the prestigious Aero Club of New England presented its Honored Member Award to Chester Motyka of Plymouth, Massachusetts. The citation for this distinction reads, "in recognition and appreciation of his many contributions to aviation and aircraft maintenance." A good citation but it does not in any way live up to the story of Chester (Chet) Motyka.

Born in Attleboro, Massachusetts, his parents were hard workers in an age of financial turmoil. Motyka, who had the typical boy’s adulation for Charles Lindberg and other pioneers of flight, spent hours making model aircraft. Full of youthful confidence and raised in the family work ethic, he decided at age 14 that high school offered little of value to his plans for a rewarding life. To solidify this decision, his first (and last) act as a high school freshman was to walk back out the door!

Motyka’s first job was an eye-opener. As a stamping machine operator for a local jewelry manufacturing firm, he found the load, stamp, unload cycle boring to the point of desperation. With a talent for mechanical things and firm in his desire to get into aviation, he signed up for night classes in aircraft maintenance at the Allen School of Aeronautics in nearby Providence, Rhode Island.

Rudely interrupted by the Pearl Harbor attack and the draft, Motyka decided he had better enlist before he got whisked into a foxhole or a cook tent. A sympathetic recruiting officer told him to write a letter to the Army Air Corps, citing his abilities and studies and his desire to get into the Corps. Sure enough, 249 of his Air Corps basic training class of 250 were shipped off to prepare for war, while Motyka languished at the depot, awaiting his assignment. Fate surfaced in the form of orders to report to Lincoln, Nebraska for mechanic training. Locked out of mechanic school by overcrowding, he was then shot off to Wisconsin to train as a radio operator. He finally spent the war as a radioman in the Aleutian Islands.

At war’s end, thanks to the benefits of the G.I. bill, Motyka was back at the Allen School, full time. By the end of 1946 he had both his pilot’s and A&E certificates. In less than a year, he was taken on by Chance Vought Aircraft Company, manufacturers of the F4U (Corsair), where he performed both as mechanic and test pilot. From Chance Vought he again took a career-enhancing step and went back to the Allen School of Aeronautics, this time, as an instructor. With his A&E and IA, he then moved to New England Helicopter at T.F. Green Airport in Providence. This time the firm provided the bounce as he became a roving international mechanic with work that took him to Bolivia and Panama before returning to Rhode Island College, again on the G.I. bill.

Carl Whitney Flying Service at Attleboro airport was Motyka’s next stop, and in 1957, he bought the maintenance division of the company and moved it to Mansfield, Massachusetts. That’s where his first (and only) experience of eviction took place, when his competitor landlord decided that he was becoming too successful and threw the entire operation out on the streets. "Best thing that ever happened to me," said Motyka.

During his time at Mansfield, Motyka had come to know Jim Fraser, a salesman for janitorial products and coincidentally chairman of the board of selectman of the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts. Fraser was a big promoter of aviation and when he learned of Motyka’s involuntary termination at Mansfield, persuaded him to move to Plymouth and set up shop.

In Plymouth was a little one-horse airport, built by the Navy and sold to the town, housing only nine aircraft when Motyka arrived, leaving wife Sylvia and three children in Mansfield. Just one asphalt runway of 2,500 feet and a dilapidated old Navy hangar where New England Aero Service set up shop. But even as he commuted for two years, Motyka started to build a reputation and a following that brought more business to Plymouth and to New England Aero. The quiet man, who would become a leader in the aviation community, began to gather the credits displayed on the wall of his shop office, which now include a Massachusetts Mechanic of the Year and the FAA Charles Taylor Award.

After 50 incredible years as an aviation mechanic, semi-retired but still in the hangar built for him in 1968, Motyka now looks out over an airport that is home to 160 general aviation aircraft, two Boston Med-Flight helicopters, and 15 private businesses employing more than 240 people and generating more than $4 million in local payrolls.

President of Kiwanis and The Old Colony Club, member of the board of the Aero Club of New England, chairman of the Plymouth Finance Committee, chairman of the Plymouth Public Safety Commission, member of the national board of the Quiet Birdmen, member of the Massachusetts Aviation Trades Association, president of the Plymouth Aero Club. And now, honored member of the Aero Club of New England. Not bad for a high school dropout.–By Bill Thurber