by Anura Guruge
on April 29, 2022
I am SORRY to inform you that ‘Max Folsom’ passed away on Tuesday, September 19, 2023.
Click images to ENLARGE.
Last year’s post, i.e., 2021.
I saw this FLOAT DC-3 at the Greenville, Maine (i.e., Moosehead Lake), airport last year & as luck would have it also got to meet & chat with the owner of it, the legendary Max Folsom. Suffice to say my post from last year garnered considerable attention.
I had told Max I would be back to see him & check on the progress on the plane. He had hoped to have it in the air/water by September 2021, but, that, alas, did not transpire. I had checked with a couple of folks in Greenville & knew that the plane had not moved.
I was, again, up north, beyond Bangor, this week — checking out Baxter State Park & Katahdin. I was close enough that I wasn’t going to come back home without making the ‘slight’ detour to Moosehead Lake to check on Max & the plane.
I did that on Wednesday. It was raining, quite hard, up there. Went to the airport. Nobody working on the DC-3. That wasn’t surprising. It really was bucketing down. There were two ‘young’ dudes outside of a hanger. I inquired about Max. Much to my surprise & delight they said: “he is over there. In that hanger. That is his truck outside.”
BINGO. I could not have struck luckier. I knocked on the door of the hanger …
I met with Max. He is having some health issues that has delayed his plans for the DC-3. He is 77. He is going to be fine. He hopes to have it flying this year, 2022.
I will keep an eye on it. I hope to go up again in a few months. So, stay tuned.
DC-3 & I go back a longtime. When I was growing up in Ceylon in the 1950s ‘Air Ceylon’, our national airline, had 3 DC-3s. That was our entire fleet at that time. We did a fair amount of flying, within Ceylon & to neighbouring India. All of that was on these DC-3s. They flew at below 10,000′. So, you could see people & cars, very clearly below you. They WEIGHED you before they assigned you a seat! They had to balance the load. We once sat in a DC-3 while it was CRANK STARTED by 3 mechanics working a HUGE crank! Those were the days. I have only flown in DC-3s in Ceylon, 1956 — 1967. I have see DC-3 since then, but have never been in one.
