author
Roy Franklin
A pioneering bush pilot turned memoirist, he wrote with the hard-earned authority of someone who helped build air service in Washington’s San Juan Islands from the ground up. His best-known book, Island Bush Pilot, brings that rugged aviation world to life through firsthand experience.
2 Audiobooks
Bound to get there : or, A boy who could not be downed
by Roy Franklin
Fighting for fortune : or, Making a place for himself
by Roy Franklin
About the author
Roy Franklin was an American aviator and memoirist best known for Island Bush Pilot: Founder of San Juan Airlines. Reliable sources about him focus mainly on his life in aviation: he was born in Ferndale, Washington, in 1924, trained as a Navy pilot during World War II, and later became a central figure in early commercial flying in the San Juan Islands.
After the war, he returned to the Pacific Northwest and helped build what became regular island air service out of rough fields and difficult weather. Accounts from HistoryLink and Air & Space describe him as a founder of scheduled flights in the region and credit him with developing the airport at Friday Harbor, where he spent decades flying passengers, freight, mail, and medical trips.
His writing appears to grow directly out of that life. Island Bush Pilot, published in 2006, is described as a memoir of those years creating and running island air service. For listeners drawn to true stories of grit, invention, and local history, his work offers a vivid window into a demanding corner of Northwest aviation.