~ IN MEMORY ~
Military veteran, WA/DL Capt. & Brig. Gen. Lawrence A. ‘Bud’
Sittig
December 18, 1946 ~ May 22, 2021
Notification with the passing of retired Western/Delta pilot
Brigadier General and Chief of Staff Lawrence Andrew ‘Bud’ Sittig, age 74. Captain Sittig joined Western Airlines
09-07-1976 and retired with Delta Air Lines in 2004 as noted below. He is survived by his wife Fran, his
daughters and his grandchildren, and his mother Tressie and his sister.
Obituary information is available online at the funeral home
website
https://www.horancares.com/obituary/Lawrence-Sittig
Also, an online tribute is available at https://www.tributearchive.com/obituaries/21300694/Lawrence-A-Sittig/Aurora/Colorado/Horan-McConaty
Read more of his career information at https://supersabresociety.com/biography/sittig-lawrence-a/
Read more about the June 2011 loss of the vintage plane The Memphis Belle
For those who may wish to contact the family, I see a
current whitepages address listing as
6161 S Netherland Way, Centennial CO 80016.
Please see obituary and biography below or go online at
above mentioned links.
Thank you,
~ Carol for the PCN
Obituary : Lawrence A. "Bud" Sittig was born
December 18, 1946 in Sioux Falls, SD to Tressie and Harold Sittig.
Bud was well known for his love of family, friends, flying
and his faith. His passion for aviation
created the arc for his life, and it was the foundation to a life of
leadership, adventure, determination, integrity, and mentorship. But it was his
kindness, his warm smile, his tolerant and compassionate nature that endeared
him to people around the world.
Bud's love of aviation began as a young boy flying with his
father on the family farm in South Dakota. He married his high school
sweetheart, Fran, in 1967 and started his young family. Through his early flying adventures Bud
completed a Bachelor of Science degree from South Dakota State University in
Agricultural Business.
Bud served his country with a thirty-one-year career with
the Air National Guard in three units:
South Dakota Air Guard flying the F100; the Arizona Air Guard flying the
F100 and A7; and the Colorado Air Guard flying the A7 and F16. Bud completed
his Air Guard career as a Brigadier General and Chief of Staff of the Colorado
Air National Guard.
In parallel with his military career, he flourished in a
commercial airline career beginning with Western Airlines in 1976 and Delta in
1987. With Delta, Bud embraced leadership positions as Chief Pilot and Director
of Flight Safety. His Guard and airline career instilled the love of country
and a love for travel in his family.
In 2004 Bud retired from Delta Airlines and moved into the
business side of aviation. He joined the founding team of Skybus Airlines, a
start-up national airline in Columbus, Ohio, and later established Flight
Guidance, LLC.
Bud regularly flew his 1959 Beechcraft Bonanza and
crisscrossed the country with Fran as his faithful co-pilot. He was a passionate Beechcraft owner, taught
fellow Bonanza pilots the art of formation flying and loved flying into OshKosh
in July. One of the things Bud was most proud of was teaching his two grandsons
to fly and watching them solo on their 16th birthdays.
Bud's lifetime commitment to aviation was broad and deep as
his career spanned civilian, military, and commercial aviation. For nearly 60
years Bud's love for flying has taken him through the sky in over 125 types of
aircraft accruing more than 20,000 hours of flight time.
Bud overcame Mantle Cell Lymphoma in 2016. This spring he
fought a grueling and unwinnable 7-week battle against COVID-19 and passed away
on May 22, 2021 surrounded by his family.
Bud is survived by his wife Fran; his three daughters -
Laurie (Kirk), Sarah (Joel), and Katie (Chad); five grandchildren - George,
Andrew, Angelina, Maya and Ivy; his sister Sharon Lubeck and his mother Tressie
Sittig. He is preceded in death by his father, Harold Sittig.
A Memorial will be held at Our Saviors Lutheran Church in
Sioux Falls, SD on Tuesday June 15th at 11:00 AM. Burial with Military Honors
will be at Hills of Rest Cemetery, Sioux Falls.
A Colorado Air
National Guard Memorial Service for Brig. Gen. Lawrence A. “Bud” Sittig, Ret.
will be held at Wings Over the Rockies in Denver, CO on Friday June 18, 2021.
Doors open at 9:00 AM and the memorial service begins at 10:00 AM.
In lieu of flowers,
memorial donations are welcome at the organizations that Bud was passionate
about supporting:
Lighthawk (https://www.lighthawk.org/donatenav/sittig-memorial-fund/)
South Dakota
Aviation Hall of Fame (https://sdpilots.com/hall_of_fame.php#Contacts)
National Aviation
Hall of Fame (https://www.nationalaviation.org/donate-now/)
Lord of the Hills
Lutheran Church (https://www.lordofthehills.org)
Wings Over the
Rockies (https://wingsmuseum.org/give/)
Services…………….
MEMORIAL SERVICE
Tuesday, June 15, 2021 at 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM
Our Saviors Lutheran Church
909 W 33rd St
Sioux Falls, SD 57105
CELEBRATION OF LIFE
Friday, June 18, 2021 at 10:00 AM to 11:30 PM
Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum
7711 E Academy Blvd
Denver, CO 80230
………………………………………..
https://supersabresociety.com/biography/sittig-lawrence-a/
Biography
From an interview “After Flight with Captain Bud” by Ivan
Gabaldon for National Geographic, May 14, 2015
“I’ve been flying for over 50 years. I started flying as a
teenager, grew up in General Aviation –that is flying small planes– and then
during my college years got all of my gradings, commercial pilot gradings, and
became a flight instructor. Then after college, I entered the military, I was
trained in the United States Air Force and flew jet fighters, a passion which
continued for some 31 years in the Air National Guard of the United States Air
Force. Also, I was hired into the airline industry and flew as a Captain with
Delta Airlines for about 30 years, retiring just a few years ago. Now I’m back
to General Aviation, flying smaller airplanes. I own my own airplane, a
Beechcraft Bonanza, but I do a lot of flying with Lighthawk(1).
… I started in small airplanes, Cessnas, Beechcrafts and
Pipers, and then when I went into the Air Force, of course, the airplanes
became much more sophisticated, high-speed jet fighters, you move from little
airplanes to traveling super-sonic, faster than the speed of sound, with very
sophisticated weapons delivery systems. And then I joined the airline industry,
flying large transport-category airplanes with 290 people on board, a lot of
responsibility for those people. I flew those airplanes all over the world for
Delta, in Europe and the Middle East, North Africa, all over South America and
into the Orient, and of course all over the US to every major city in America.
Then I retired from Delta, and I retired from the Air Force -the International
Guard- and now I’ve come back to the smaller airplanes that I began in, some
fifty years ago. But I’ve always been of the mind that my favorite airplane is
the airplane I’m flying that day. It doesn’t matter what it is, I have a
passion for flying. I love to fly and I love to share the experience of flight
with other people.”
Bud retired from the USAF with the rank of General. He
remarked to Ivan , “I think we are who we are, no matter what role we play in
life. In the military one learns to become a leader, and as you increase in
rank it’s increasingly important to be good to your people. To be an effective
leader you must be sensitive to your people. So when you move from the
military, which is very hierarchical and very regimented, nevertheless those
basic human skills transfer, and when you get out into the civilian world again
it’s all about your relationship with people, communicating effectively with
people and understanding where they’re coming from. And it’s very important,
with our partners that we fly with in Lighthawk, that we take time to help them
understand the experience of flying in a small airplane, because many of our
partners have never flown in a small airplane and for many of them it’s a bit
threatening, it’s unknown. So it’s important to take some time to make them feel
comfortable and hopefully transfer your own comfort level with the experience
to them, so they can feel more comfortable. Today, for example, was unique,
we’re flying over jungles, we’re flying on the coastline, and then we’re flying
well out over the ocean, so there’s a lot of exposure with a single engine
airplane… you know what happens if you have an engine failure over the ocean.
So today we took special precautions and more personal flotation devices so
that if you went down on the water you had a flotation device, we have an
onboard raft, and you have to take a few minutes to tell people about what to
expect. Hopefully, that will never happen but we have to be prepared.”
Bud Sittig also flies with the Liberty Foundation in a B-17.
“The Flying Fortress, the B-17, is a WWII bomber that was used extensively,
flown out of England, in support of the allied initiatives against the Nazis in
WWII. There are only eight Flying Fortresses still flying and I fly with the
Liberty Foundation, that’s libertyfoundation.org and you can read extensively
about the mission. We fly the airplane on a tour program throughout the summer
months to major cities all around the US, to help people remember or understand
better those that served as crew members aboard the B-17. Many thousands of
young combat members in WWII died in the B-17, huge loss of life. When one B-17
went down 10 people lost their lives. So really our mission is to help preserve
the memory and it’s dedicated to those warriors that flew and served aboard
those airplanes. As I said there are only eight still flying in the world. The
airplane that I’m flying is called the Memphis Belle(2), there’s a famous movie
of the Memphis Belle filmed in 1989 that tells the story of that aircraft,
which had the first ten-member crew that survived twenty-five missions because
the statistical probability of surviving 25 missions was almost zero. For two
years nobody survived 25 missions until in 1943 the Memphis Belle crew
completed 25 missions, then they took the airplane back to the United States
and went on tour. They were celebrities of sorts, war heroes, but they went on
tour to help sell savings bonds to support the war effort.”
Lawrence (Bud) Sittig serves as President and Chief
Operating Officer of Carlsbad-Palomar Airlines, Inc. Mr. Sittig has over 40
years experience in the aviation industry. He began his career as Air National
Guard and retired with the rank of Brigadier General from the Colorado Air
National Guard and joined Delta Airlines as a Line Pilot. He served as
Executive Administrator for the Air Line Pilots Association and General Manager
of Flight Operations and concluded his work at Delta as Director of Flight
Safety. In 2004, he was hired as Vice President of Operations for Skybus. He
was actively involved in the FAA certification process, raising $166 million in
equity, and managed the day-to-day operations of the airline. In 2008, he
founded Flight Guidance LLC. He serves as Director of Carlsbad-Palomar
Airlines, Inc. (source: Bloomberg.com)
(1) Lighthawk: LightHawk is a unique non-profit that grants
flights to conservation groups through a network of volunteer pilots. Nearly
everyday LightHawk donates educational, scientific and photography flights
covering the U.S., Mexico, Central America and parts of Canada. LightHawk
volunteer pilots, aircraft, and resources help to tip the balance toward
sustainability for every major environmental issue within our targeted areas of
focus. – Ivan Gabaldon
(2) The Memphis Belle was lost after crashing on takeoff
from Aurora Municipal Airport in Aurora, IL on June 15, 2011. All 7 people
onboard escaped unharmed.
…………………………………
The wreckage of a World War II bomber lies in a
cornfield southwest of Aurora, Ill., after the plane crashed and burned shortly
after takeoff Monday. All seven people aboard escaped unharmed before fire
consumed the B-17 Flying Fortress. The accident happened right after the plane
took off from Aurora Municipal Airport, about 35 miles west of Chicago, and the
pilot reported an emergency, said a Federal Aviation Administration
spokeswoman. A witness said the engine on the bomber's left wing was on fire.
The B-17 was registered to the Liberty Foundation in Miami.
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