Exploring the Wild Blue Yonder Keeps Pilot Emil Pagliari Young at Heart

Time to Fly

Howard Robinson

Most people who settle in the beach towns of Northwest Florida after a successful career are content to fish, soak up the sun or take up bird-watching. Not Emil Pagliari.

In addition to owning and running a full-service waterfront restaurant and the adjoining marina, Pagliari is active in organizing community volunteer efforts and, at the age of 76, flies weekly missions for the Civil Air Patrol.

Flying is a long-time passion for the septuagenarian. “I flew my first solo in 1957. It was an Aronica Champ airplane with a 40-horse engine. You had to start it by hand,” he adds with a laugh.  

The Cessna 172s and 182s he flies today for Civil Air Patrol are a bit more sophisticated, but he still has the same love for sitting in the cockpit. He takes his personal aircraft, a Beechcraft Bonanza, for monthly spins and spectacular views of the Gulf. For 10 years he’s flown for Civil Air Patrol’s Jackson Guard, monitoring the controlled burns for the vast Eglin complex and standing on call for emergencies. Pagliari and the other pilots keep an eye on how high the flames reach, how dense the smoke is and which direction it is headed, and keep tabs on how close it is to public roads. 

Civil Air Patrol, an auxiliary of the United States Air Force, also responds to hurricanes and other disasters, natural or accidental. In 2010, for instance, Pagliari flew observation missions after the BP oil spill, spotting the first signs of oil just south of Pensacola.

He’s happy to tell of other stories with less serious consequences, such as the time he tracked an Emergency Locator Transmitter on a supposedly capsized boat. Tracking these location devices is another function of CAP. These locator devices send out signals to satellites in order to pinpoint the location of boaters in trouble as quickly as possible. Fortunately, that particular incident turned out to be an accidental deployment of the device, so the air crew called in the ground crew to turn off the transmitter.

As a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association, once a month Pagliari takes aboard a group of kids called the Young Eagles, inspiring a new generation. In conjunction with CAP’s cadet program, the kids, ranging in age from 12 through 21, are exposed to Pagliari’s passion for flying, as well as the thrills of aviation.  

Today Pagliari is on the ground at the marina’s office on Santa Rosa Sound in Fort Walton Beach, finishing preparations for a charity golf tournament organized by the Sons of Italy to raise scholarship money for local high school seniors. This annual event has grown steadily since inception, with 26 teams participating this year. Pagliari is a trustee for the local Sons of Italy chapter and helps recruit corporate and individual teams for this event, as well as for other events that raise money for special-needs citizens. 

The Original Waterfront Crab Shack Restaurant and Marina is only the most recent endeavor in Pagliari’s career path, which includes 34 years with General Electric sandwiched between stints in the Air Force and Navy. Oddly, he didn’t fly for the Air Force — which he left in 1960 — but did for the Navy 19 years later. 

“I was working for GE in Daytona Beach in 1979. I was flying people around on sightseeing tours over my lunch hour to earn hours for my commercial pilot rating, and a Commander from the Navy Reserve asked if I would be interested in flying for the Navy. I said yes, joined up and flew for 17 years with VP 62 out of Jacksonville searching for submarines.” He retired from the Navy in 1996 at age 60.

During his career with GE, he witnessed first-hand one of the most famous disasters in history. In 1967, Pagliari was working for GE as the configuration manager on Pad No. 34 in Cape Canaveral, the pad that Apollo/Saturn 204 mission (which we know today as Apollo 1, the first piloted attempt to reach the moon) was scheduled to launch from. Pagliari says he was fortunate enough to meet crew members Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee before tragedy struck. During a test launch at Pad 34, a cabin fire killed all three crew members in NASA’s first disaster.

His career with General Electric sent him around the globe several times, including nine years overseas, with stints in Greenland and Turkey. That’s a lot of miles from Pennsylvania, where he grew up and learned to play the accordion.

“My dad wanted me to learn when I was high school. I didn’t want to at first, but after I started playing, I liked it. My brother learned guitar, and we competed in talent shows at the local movie theaters. But we never won.” 

Even so, he developed a love for the instrument and now he owns four, including an Italian-made Sebastianelli, something of a treasure among accordions. He occasionally brings one to the restaurant for an impromptu performance.

The restaurant business was not a planned career move. In 1997, newly retired from the Navy and finding himself bored, a buddy jokingly said he needed help pumping gas at the marina. Pagliari offered to help, but his buddy said he couldn’t pay him his usual salary.

“Whatever it is, I’ll take it!” he told him. Meantime, the lease on the restaurant was coming to an end, and the owner was looking to sell. He approached Pagliari.

At first, Pagliari, declined, telling him to “Go take a long walk on a short pier. But then he told me I couldn’t do it, so of course I told him, ‘Yes, I can!’”

But it wasn’t only the restaurant — the owner insisted on selling the marina along with it. So Pagliari called in some help from a nephew and a business partner in South Florida, and a new career was born.

These days you can find him renting boat slips and tending to restaurant customers with equal competence, unless he’s in the air. 

“I’ll keep flying as long as I keep passing my flight physical. I love to fly.”

So far he’s passed all of them with flying colors.