A Murfreesboro man with over 20 years of experience in education has made his longtime dream a high-flying reality: Tim Lake is now a pilot.
Lake, 48, worked as an assistant principal of La Vergne High School for three years and at Stewarts Creek High School in Smyrna for four years. Before working as a principal, Lake also served as a teacher at Central Middle School in Murfreesboro and in the Metro Nashville School System. However, Lake, who has wanted to be a pilot since before high school, put his dream on hold in favor of practicality.
“It’s always been something that I thought I would love doing,” Lake said. “When I was younger, I couldn’t afford it. . . . That entire lifestyle, in my view, was for the rich and famous.”
Lake heard in high school that one could enter the world of aviation through the military but was told at the time that he wouldn’t be able to be a military pilot due to not having 20/20 uncorrected vision. Lake then went on to college and pursued a job in education.
However, the desire to fly struck Lake once again as a principal, and he began training to become a pilot while working at Stewarts Creek in March 2016. The pilot who instructed Lake was offering flight training in order to gain enough flight hours to qualify for an airline job. At the time, Lake was 46 and his instructor was 47.
“I thought that was hilarious, honestly, because I thought, ‘Why would they want an old guy like you?’” Lake said.
However, at the time, Lake wasn’t aware that pilots had been retiring at a staggering rate, opening the door for many ambitious pilots-to-be, including those middle-aged and older.
“It’s really come to either, ‘we’ve gotta get pilots hired quickly’ or ‘we’ve gotta park airplanes and cancel flights,’” Lake said.
According to Lake, the starting salaries for airline pilots have quadrupled within the last decade or so.
Even after researching the financial viability of being a pilot, Lake was unsure.
“All conventional wisdom would say, ‘Stay where you are. This is just a pipe dream.’ I jokingly call it my ‘mid-life crisis’ now,” Lake said.
Still, he continued on and gained his private pilot’s license in November 2016.
“Toward the end of December of 2016, the wheels kept turning, that conversation with my instructor kept going through my head and I got to a point where I was really enjoying the people I was working for less and less every day,” Lake said.
Finally, Lake decided—with the support of his family—that he would pursue aviation as a career instead of a hobby.
“My wife was definitely on board and my biggest cheerleader through all of this,” Lake said. “I thought the idea sounded absolutely crazy, and I thought that she would tell me I’d lost my mind, but she didn’t do that at all.”
In June 2017, Lake got his commercial certificate, and about a week after that, he officially quit his job. Lake received his certified flight instructor certificate that summer and began working at local flight school Murfreesboro Aviation, teaching aspiring pilots until December 2018 when he was finally hired by a regional airline called Republic Airline.
While Lake was working as a certified flight instructor, he flew about 100 hours a month to gain the flight hours necessary to be hired by an airline.
“That’s a tough number to get to, and I did have to work six days a week, long hours, to get to that point,” Lake said. “But, I thought, ‘This opportunity is here right now. It may not be here tomorrow.’”
Murfreesboro Aviation General Manager Blake Tumbleson said that it was clear how hard Lake worked to achieve his dream while serving as flight instructor.
“On days when it’s raining, the weather’s bad, you can’t fly,” Tumbleson said. “Well, the rule is [if you can’t fly] you should be in the classroom with the student. You can guarantee if it was raining, Tim would be here. Maybe nobody else would be here. Maybe none of the other instructors would be here, but Tim was here.”
Lake is starting out in the right-hand seat of the aircraft he flies, with the captain in the left seat. He will be eligible for upgrade to captain in about two years and then will become viable to become a first officer at a major airline in another couple of years.
When asked what is so enticing about flying, Lake said it’s partly an appreciation for human ingenuity.
“There’s the aspect of it where you’re sort of defying physics a little bit; at least you feel like you are,” Lake said. “We’re not meant to fly. We’re not birds. But, we can get into a machine we’ve created, and we can accomplish that. We can defy gravity through the use of these machines. I just like that we’re capable of that, and I like that sense of accomplishment.”
For more information on pilot training in Murfreesboro, visit murfreesboroaviation.com or call 615-494-1900.
