Retire from here? No way

Under three layers of clothing and with a bone-chilling wind whipping across the tarmac, Chuck Deyo greeted each new arrival to the Ohio State University Airport with a smile that belied the miserable weather.

        It is days like this, when temperatures dip into the single digits — or lower — that people begin to wonder why the 75-year-old Deyo would continue to work. It is just a part-time gig: As marshaller, he welcomes new arrivals, acts as a pilot’s concierge and then helps direct planes into and out of the hangars between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m.

The last month or so he has looked like, in his words, a bank robber, complete with facemask so he could brave the elements. Deyo had a 33-year career teaching science and coaching football, wrestling and softball at Northland High School, and he could easily stay retired — and warm — instead of waking before dawn to face some of the coldest weather Ohio has ever experienced.

            Planes, however, are in Deyo’s blood, and his exposure to them has always revolved around Ohio State. The university airport is where he earned his pilot’s license, its runways the launching point for his sojourns across North America — to the Florida Keys; Missouri and Washington, D.C.; up and down the East Coast and northern Canada and everywhere in between.

Ever since the day he was plunked into the pilot’s seat of a single-engine prop during a fifth-grade field trip, Deyo was obsessed with flying. And when he imagined himself behind the controls, it was in a military jet.

After graduating Columbus Central High School in 1957, Deyo considered a military career, but instead took Woody Hayes up on his offer to play defensive end at Ohio State. Deyo immediately joined the campus’ Army ROTC unit, and his two years at Ohio State were impressionable and happy ones.

            In those days, freshmen didn’t play, so Deyo had time to get into trouble. He remembers one night he went to see a girl and was out long after curfew. On his way back to his Ohio Stadium dorm, Deyo was delayed even more, forced to talk his way out of a speeding ticket in Grandview. As he was getting onto Old Highway 315, another car cut him off.

            “I pulled up beside him to let him know how I felt about that, and it was Woody,” Deyo said. “So I hurried back to school and jumped into bed. I felt for sure he was going to come into my room, grab me by the neck and shake the crap out of me, but he never did. He knew it was me, but I never got in trouble for it.”

            Deyo’s problems centered more on academics.

            “When I look back on it, I didn’t use my time very wisely,” he said. “I didn’t study and spent too much time on North High Street. I just was not a very good student.”

            He played in two games as a sophomore, against Indiana and Illinois, a year after the Buckeyes won the national championship.

            “You come out of that tunnel with 100,000 people in the stadium and it puts a chill down you,” Deyo said. “I didn’t get to play that much, but when I did it was a real exciting thing and it was nice to have been given the opportunity to be on the team for a couple years. We were pretty far ahead when I got in.”

            Deyo quit school because of his academic malaise, and when he tried to follow his heart and become a fighter pilot, he couldn’t pass the required eye exam. Three years later he decided finishing school might be a good idea, so he returned to his studies at Otterbein University.

“I think it was destiny for me to go through that because when I became a teacher and a coach, I could see kids heading in the same direction I was,” Deyo said. “I could tell them, ‘I’ve been there and done that. Try it this way.’ And I think I’ve been able to give good advice to young people after what I had experienced. That was always my goal, to guide them in the right direction.”

            After graduation, Deyo earned his pilot’s license at Ohio State, and for 10 years he flew in and out of the Buckeye airport before back issues grounded him.

            As a regular, Deyo got to know customer service manager Sue Riggs and the other employees at the airport, and Riggs convinced him to take the marshaller’s job.

            “It kind of all brought me back to the starting point,” Deyo said. “I retired in 1995, but work was part of my routine. I can’t stay home. If I wasn’t working part-time here, I would probably be somewhere else. I can’t do what I used to do, but I’m still pretty active and that’s important both mentally and physically.”

            The people who work with Deyo use words such as dependable, hard-working and affable to describe him.

            Michael Eppley, the airport’s general manager, said the world is a much better place because of all the students Deyo positively influenced in his classrooms. The same can be said about having Deyo be the face of the airport for every new arrival. His constant smile and humorous wit, Eppley said, make Deyo “a pleasure to talk to and work with.”

            The job, Deyo said, has been a needed constant. He went to the hospital Dec. 16 with what he thought was pneumonia but was diagnosed with stage-four cancer.

            “When the guy told me, I about went down on my knees,” Deyo said. “Things you thought were important aren’t so important anymore, and family becomes more important to you.”

            Doctors often will tell patients with terminal diseases how much time they have left if they can’t be cured. Deyo told his physician he didn’t want to know.

            “That’s another reason I’m still doing this job, because I don’t think about the cancer when I’m here. Doing what I normally do, it’s going to help me beat it,” Deyo said. “You’ve got to think you’re going to win. I’ve been a coach all my life, and you don’t coach to lose.”