Bill was Editor-in-Chief of Business & Commercial Aviation from 2000 to 2020. During his stewardship, the monthly magazine received scores of awards for editorial excellence.
He is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement in Journalism Award from the National Business Aviation Association; the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Aerospace Media Awards; the Aviation Journalism Award from the National Air Transportation Association; and an Aerospace Journalist of the Year Award for Business Aviation.
Previously, Bill served as Managing Editor of Aviation Week Television. He was the top editor for both Flying and Professional Pilot magazines, as well as a member of the senior editorial staff at Reader's Digest. He also managed communications for FlightSafety International.
Bill has authored or co-authored three aviation books, was an essayist for National Public Radio, wrote aviation documentaries for The Discovery Channel and has written for numerous publications including The New York Times, Smithsonian Air & Space, Popular Mechanics and The Associated Press, among others.
An active aviator, Bill holds a Commercial Pilot license, along with multiengine, instrument, seaplane and glider ratings.
A BIT OF MIDDLE SCHOOL humor. A burglar who has been casing a home for weeks waits until the owner leaves for work, goes to a side window, jimmies it open and enters. He's walking stealthily through the living room, eyeing the artwork and antiques, when a voice shatters the quiet, announcing, ``Jesus is watching!'' The thief nearly jumps out of his skin. His heart begins to race and he turns his head this way and that, looking for the speaker. He sees nothing.
IT IS PERFECTLY NATURAL for pilots to invest an instructor with their trust. After all, it's the instructor who demonstrates the right way to fly and helps bring the pilot to a higher level of understanding and competency. However, that trust should never be given automatically or without limitation because instructors do err, sometimes disastrously. A businessman pilot took some instrument instruction in a single-engine airplane through an FBO at Marshfield, Wis., Municipal Airport (MFI).
Upon learning that Shevers was both an Eagle Scout and a newly minted Purdue engineer, Cincinnati Milling Machine Co. hired him on the spot. What the company did not know was that the young grad, a private pilot, was far more interested in airplanes than tool and die. Booted within six months, he began working as a flight instructor and soon peddling aviation gimcracks on the side. Today, ``Sporty's'' employs 200 shipping 12,000 different products. 1 How did you come up with the name `Sportsman's Market'?
