ITHACA -- Gordon Arquit couldn't ignore his love for flying.
He had been a pilot for more than 50 years, his son, Kevin, said Sunday. The Cayuga Heights resident spent years flying his private airplane back and forth from his job in New Jersey to Ithaca, where he owned a home.
"In his retirement, he became very active in the Civil Air Patrol," Kevin Arquit said.
A major in the patrol, which is a U.S. Air Force Auxiliary group, Gordon Arquit went on search and rescue missions in the Adirondack Mountains.
But it was Tompkins County Sheriff's deputies that were brought to search the remains of Gordon Arquit's ultralight aircraft last Thursday evening. The gyrocopter went down at a private airstrip on Route 79 in Enfield.
"He lived to fly," Kevin Arquit said. "He went doing what he loved doing."
Gordon Arquit, 79, died of heart failure while running his gyrocopter up and down the runway, Kevin Arquit said of a coroner's report.
The funeral will be held in North Lawrence, N.Y. A memorial service by the Veterans of Foreign Wars office in Ithaca will be held at a date yet to be determined.
Arquit's work in the Navy during World War II was unknown to his son until recent years, Kevin Arquit said. His job was to send signals to German torpedoes and send them off course.
"My dad never talked about any of this with me," Kevin Arquit said. "He'd start giving me these books on World War II and spies. I finally asked him why."
Gordon Arquit told him: "That's what I did during the war."
After the war, Gordon Arquit returned to school and earned a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Cornell University in 1952. He stayed in Ithaca as a postdoctoral student until 1956 to work with 1936 Nobel Prize winner Peter J. W. Debye, a professor in Cornell's chemistry department.
Then for the next 30 years, Gordon Arquit worked as a chemist and later executive vice president for British Oxygen Corp. in New Jersey.
After retirement, he turned to his love for flying and music to fill his time.
"Where most people would be throwing in the towel, he was just getting going," said Johnny Russo, leader of the Johnny Russo East Hill Classic Jazz Band. "I met him about 20 years ago as he was retiring. I was playing someplace and he's quite a music fan and introduced himself."
Gordon Arquit asked Russo to recommend a banjo teacher. The two remained friends and Arquit joined the band on occasion to play for special events, Russo said.
Russo also went flying with Arquit, while he owned a small plane kept at the Tompkins County Regional Airport.
"The time he took my son and I up it was quite a thrill," Russo said.
The musician added that Arquit liked to take children for rides.
"When he was little he wanted to fly and he went out to the airport and these pilots would always be taking off but no one offered to give him a ride," Russo said. "So, he often took kids up for rides."
But after having bypass surgery, Arquit could not renew his pilot's license and sold his plane, Russo said.
He discovered gyrocopters --which can be flown without a license -- and found a new way to return to the skies.
Kevin Arquit said his father bought the gyrocopter earlier this year and had been going to the Enfield airstrip every day, when the weather was nice. He had also been taken flying lessons in Burlington, Vt.
Gordon Arquit is survived by his wife, Nora, his son, Kevin, his daughters Candace Martel and Christine Arquit, eight grandchildren and several other family members and friends.
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A pity that a guy that nice had to pass away.
