On a sunny Saturday morning at North Lakes Park, Laird “Lad” Doctor is hoping the wind slows down a bit. He wants to fly his radio-controlled plane without any problems.

Doctor’s friends Danny Volgamore and Gary Saba of the North Texas Aeromodelers club help him get ready. Saba sets the plane on the runway and adjusts Doctor’s wheelchair to ensure that his transmitter is at eye level. Volgamore holds a trainer transmitter — also called a buddy box — connected to Doctor’s transmitter to help his friend take flight.

Minutes later, Doctor’s red and white plane takes off. With its 78-inch wingspan, the plane flies beautifully — moving slowly, like a bird taking its time. While Doctor moves the transmitter with his mouth to maneuver the plane, Saba rotates Doctor’s wheelchair, allowing his friend to see the plane during takeoff and landing.

“He is flying,” Volgamore said happily. “He is doing it all by himself.”

After 20 minutes of flying, Doctor brings his plane back to the runway. The landing is rough, and Doctor appears disappointed. He is hard on himself and wishes he had made a smoother landing.

“The first one was a bit bouncy; that one was a little rough,” Saba said about the second flight of the day. “The gears were pushed down; it’s nothing I can’t repair … but he is doing better.”

For the past 2 1/2 years, Doctor, 66, has been learning to fly a radio-controlled plane to continue indulging his passion — being in the sky.

In 1999, Doctor, then the director and chief pilot for the Cavanaugh Flight Museum in Addison, was injured in an accident while flying in a World War II-vintage airplane at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s Fly-In Convention — known as EEA AirVenture — in Wisconsin. The accident left Doctor paralyzed from the neck down, with limited movement in his neck due to significant damage to his spinal cord.

Doctor said he has known of quadriplegics with other types of muscular or neurological problems who have flown radio-controlled planes, but his experience is different.

“To my knowledge, the articles I had read, they have been about people who had some control of their hands and arms, which allowed them to manipulate the controls in some way, but I can’t do that at all — only by mouth can I move the items and control the parts,” he said.

To bring his dream to fruition, he added a mounting device to his chair with help from friends like Volgamore, which allows him to operate the transmitter.

Doctor — a pilot since 1967 and a Vietnam veteran — has learned a lot about airplanes, and his technical knowledge has helped him continue his passion.

“I have not been solo yet, but that is probably a couple of weeks away if the winds cooperate,” he said.

Life as a quadriplegic

Doctor said learning to cope with his condition has not been easy.

“My psychiatrist said that I could not exist without medication for depression and anxiety,” said Doctor, who visits his therapist every other week.

On the days he is not out flying, he is at his home in Cross Roads under 24-hour care from nurses.

Every 30 minutes, Doctor’s position is shifted in his 400-pound wheelchair. “It is to take the pressure off his back and to make him more comfortable,” said Nikki Wilcox, one of his nurses.

Doctor’s friends, his psychologist and his daughter, Katie, call him an inspiration.

DRC/Gary Payne

View larger More photos Photo store

“I am not surprised that he is trying to do something like that,” Katie Doctor, 37, said of her father’s flying sessions. “He has always been someone who keeps doing something. ... It is an opportunity for him to interact with other people, which is always good.”

Katie Doctor said many of her father’s friends — mostly those he knew from his aviation days — disappeared from his life after the accident.

“It is a difficult thing to deal with — not everyone is comfortable,” she said. “It is unfortunate. He had some very good friends; some have maintained the friendships, and 10 times as many people have disappeared.”

Saba said the reason Doctor continues living is because he keeps what is left of him — his mind — active.He said many quadriplegics die within seven years after their accidents.

Randall Cox, Doctor’s psychologist for the past five years, said his patient is amazingly strong.

“He always sort of manages to impress me,” Cox said. “And he continues to do so every time I see him.”

Doctor said he is hungry for personal interaction because he is so often left to just his thoughts.

“I am just so lonely because I have no one to share my life with,” he said about being single. He was married twice and still keeps in touch with his first wife.

“I’m realistic, and I understand that I am not on the list of the top 10 eligible bachelors,” he said with a smile.

Last month, Doctor lost Max, his brown Chesapeake Bay retriever. Doctor, a former scuba diver who was in great physical shape before the accident, had trained the dog to respond to a whistle that he could blow using a solenoid with an air switch.

“Of all the dogs that I had,” Doctor said while pausing a bit, “he was the only one we buried on the [home] property. That was something I wanted to do.”

“The training of his dog was something else he lost,” Cox said.

Other projects

Aside from learning how to fly again, Doctor connects himself to the world by working on special projects.

He speaks about his flying days when asked, which was how he met Saba and Volgamore three years ago.

His other projects include getting a competitive shooting license and developing a body suit that would allow him to control his body temperature, since he is not comfortable at temperatures below 73 degrees.

Additionally, he wants to write a manual for physicians and caregivers on how to take care of quadriplegics.

“I’m amazed how little the caregiving industry knows on how to deal with a quadriplegic,” Doctor said. “Then again, the average nurse may only be involved with one or two quads; it’s not common.”

His final project is a bit more personal. Doctor said he spends most of his days in constant prayer and attends Bible studies about three times a week.

He said he has just learned to accept the things that he cannot control, and that took help from God.

“My body was thrown into sections of the airplane, bounced around … from what I was told,” Doctor recalled from what he learned about his 1999 accident. “Why I did not break all my arms and legs, or catch on fire, that’s just a miracle.”

KARINA RAMIREZ can be reached at 940-566-6878. Her e-mail address is kramirez@dentonrc.com .