'Not Flying Alone' by Capt. Ray Lemmon book review

Not Flying Alone is an autobiography that tells the life story of retired airline pilot Capt. Ray Lemmon. Capt. Lemmon’s story covers 85 years of life (so far) and 33 years as an airline pilot of Capital Airlines and later United Airlines. Readers get to see the pivotal years of commercial airline development in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s through Lemmon’s eye.

The autobiography is written in an orderly, chronological way that reads like a logbook. Lemmon’s voice sounds like your grandfather telling you life story, similar to “When I was your age. .” However, Lemmon’s story would start off more like, “When I was flying DC-10s or B-727’s.”

In addition to his flying experience, he spent much of his spare time refurbishing and collecting planes. Later in life, he moved on to collecting cars, a few RV and even a boat. With his career choice, Lemmon and his wife Margaret, spent most of their live moving around the country. Through the Lemmon’s constant relocation and travels (be it by plane or car), the reader gets accounts of the best vacation and sight-seeing across the United States.

Lemmon does a good job of explaining flying, mechanical, and engineering terminology, for those of us whose plane experience is limited to being a passenger. The pictures included helped the reader visualize Lemmon’s refurbishing projects, the planes he flew, the cars he drove, places he lived and visited. However, the photo descriptions were often long winded, and unnecessary, since the main text said the exact same thing.

Lemmon leaves little to the reader’s imagination since the author often gave obvious foreshadowing for future events. It often ruined the surprise and suspense for the reader. Although, Lemmon did successfully pull the reader into his personal life. As the reader, you grieve along with Lemmon when his lifelong partner and wife, Margaret, died towards the end of the book.