Estes Park resident Tom Maher is one of the original participants in the Rotary Club of Estes Park’s annual May community Duck Race fundraiser. Since 1989 he’s been outfitted in his waders, standing in the middle of Fall River, catching the floating ducks and calling out winners, a task that never fails to get a special hug from the race’s mascot, now known as Lucky Duck. Credit: Courtesy/Rotary Club of Estes Park

TWA Pilot Tom Maher noticed something unusual when he arrived at Heathrow Airport in London. It was 1965. Throngs of young women were crowded into the airport parking lot, looking toward the tarmac.

“What’s going on around here?” Maher asked.

“You’re taking the Beatles to New York today,” local airport staff told him.

Maher was about four months into his 31-year TWA career when he met the Beatles.  He had just resigned his Air Force commission to be closer to home and his three young daughters.

The Beatles were in first class and Maher had an in-flight visit with them.

“The two things I remember specifically were that they watched the movie with sunglasses on and they played with the kiddy games.” The kiddy games were puzzles and sticker books normally given to children.

The flight attendants retrieved the Beatles’ silverware, which they later distributed among the flight crew. As part of his Beatles adventure, he received a photo of band members exiting the plane. All four musicians autographed the photo that he later gave to Thorsness’ teenaged daughter, Dawn, who was part of the Beatlemania crowd. She still has the picture.

That group of celebrities who caught the attention of a young generation was only one of many famous personalities he met and ferried about the world during his second piloting career. He said two stand out in his mind: “highly intelligent” Jill St. John, and Julia Child.

“I had probably the most (flying) hours of anybody” flying TWA at that time, he surmised. That’s because prior to becoming a commercial pilot, Maher was an Air Force test pilot with about 1500 hours in the cockpit. When he retired, he had about 27,000 hours.

Tom never knew who might climb aboard one of his international flights from the cockpit during his 31 years piloting a TWA jet. Here he is shown with just one of the many mementos of special occasions he was awarded – a framed plaque noting the day the Beatles were welcomed aboard a plane he piloted from London’s Heathrow Airport enroute to one of their concerts in the U.S.A. Credit: Courtesy/Tom Maher

As test pilot, he flew the F-105 Thunderchief and the F-100 Super Sabre, which was the first plane capable of supersonic speed.

“Six weeks before I was due to get out, I had to eject from the [Thunder] chief jet,” he said. Ejecting was his only choice, as the plane was on fire. “It was a multi-million-dollar aircraft. People weren’t impressed, but it came out all right,” he recalled.

Shortly after Maher resigned his Air Force commission, his old unit was deployed to the Vietnam War. His best friend and commander, Major Leo Thorsness, was shot down and spent nearly six years in prison at the Hanoi Hilton, a prisoner of war (POW) camp. The future Sen. John McCain was his cellmate.

Thorsness, who also made it back to the U.S. from the infamous prison camp, was one of the first two Air Force airmen to receive the Medal of Honor.

Maher had wanted to re-enlist, but pilots coming back from the war discouraged him.

“They won’t let us fight to win,” the returning pilots told him. They said the war was political and that Maher’s contribution would “run up statistics” those friends told him. Several of Maher’s pilot compatriots were shot down and/or died in the war. Maher says that Congress and the President weren’t paying attention to the POWs. That led him to work with lobbyists to make POW freedom a presidential priority.

Maher thoroughly enjoyed his life as a commercial pilot. His family moved to Estes Park in 1967.  For 29 years, he commuted from Estes Park to New York City, where his flights originated.

Since becoming fully retired from flying–TWA followed national safety standards and demanded Maher step away from the captain’s chair when he turned 60–Maher has been fully entrenched in Estes Park’s community life.

He never misses a chance to stand knee-deep in Fall River catching ducks as they flow down the river during the annual May Duck Race or hand out pumpkins to elementary students in the tradition started by the late Ron Brodie, a local grocer and fellow Rotarian. Other than Wayne Newsom, he’s been a member of the Rotary Club of Estes Park longer than any other living Rotarian in Estes Park.

Still, he misses the thrill of flying fighter jets.

“Flying fighters is like (being) the poet of literature…they get to do loops and all kinds of…maneuvers and formation flying. Flying airlines, that’s the newspaper work.”

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