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90-Year-Old Veteran Gets Flight Of A Lifetime

A former pilot and veteran got one last chance to fly a plane today after stepping out of the cockpit 30 years ago.

Gary native Nick Kusak enlisted in the Navy immediately after graduating high school in 1942, became a pilot in the Marines and after four years of service, went to Purdue University to get his degree in aviation aeronautics engineering.

Kusak says he knew ever since he was 12 years old that he wanted to fly planes.

"I went to Purdue for engineering, and after I thought this is boring, I got to get off the ground," he says. "I'd wanted to see what it looked like looking down instead of looking up."

He did just that. For the next 30 years, Kusak was a commercial airline pilot for United Airlines. He retired in 1982, and hadn't touched the controls of a plane for over 30 years after.

He's 90 years old, and one of his last dreams was to get in the cockpit once again and fly a plane. The community Kusak lives in, Stonebridge Health Campus in Bedford, helped organize the flight through their "Live a Dream" program.

His niece, Heidi Brown, surprised Kusak and brought him to the Bedford airport to meet the pilots who would take him in the air. She says he's always been a stable part in her life, and this is one way she could give something back to him.

"He's one of those people that never loses his cool," Brown says. "There have been so many things in our lifetime, and he's the one who always stays calm and collected."

As Kusak flew the plane, his wife of almost 70 years, Kathryn, watched from below. She was in the Women's Army Corps before they met.

It's a dream come true neither she nor her husband will soon forget.

"It got me thinking again about how I started," he says. "I did what I wanted to do. I was lucky because I knew what I wanted to do. I'll be thinking about this lots of times and back home I'll be telling Kathryn all about what happened. She'll have to listen to me all the time."

Watch GoPro footage of Nick's flight:

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