Bank vice-president by day, damage assessment pilot on the side

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  • Civil Air Patrol Lt. Col. John May is a wing assistant emergency services officer.
    Civil Air Patrol Lt. Col. John May is a wing assistant emergency services officer.
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By day, Kissimmee resident John May is an assistant vice president for a Bank of America branch. 

But what many might not know is that on the side, he fires up an airplane and serves the Florida Civil Air Patrol as a mission pilot assessing disaster zones.

May, 65, devotes between 10 to 40 volunteer hours a month as Lt. Col. John May, a Civil Air Patrol wing assistant emergency services officer.

“They provide some pretty cool equipment for us to fly, it’s a service to the community you can’t match any place else.”

May got his pilot’s license when he was just 19 years old. 

“I think it’s the freedom,” he said about flying. “You’re in a three-dimensional world when you’re flying an airplane. If you’re out in your car, you have to stick with the highway. In an airplane, if you see something to your right or your left that you want to look at, you’re not bound by a strip of asphalt. And it’s a lot faster than a car.”

May has helped assess disaster zones such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He also did missions over the destruction of Hurricane Sally, a 2004 Atlantic hurricane that hit Alabama. He also was assigned to fly over Hurricane Sandy, the deadliest and most destructive, as well as the strongest hurricane of the 2012 hurricane season. The storm inflicted nearly $70 billion in damage and killed 233 people across eight countries from the Caribbean to Canada.

And Hurricane Matthew, which caused widespread devastation in the southeastern United States in 2007.
“All of the hurricanes stand out,” May said, as far as visual damage.

He’s also done search and rescue missions for the U.S. Air Force, looking for aircrafts that were reported missing. That averages about 40 times a year, he said.

“They’re (Air Force) not going to send an F-16 out, that’s not cost effective,” May said. “That’s what we are there for.”

He’s also flown missing person missions.

May said he considered being a career as a pilot, but it wasn’t a real viable option at the time, so he followed his father into the mortgage business.

“It was natural to me,” he said.
But he got back into flying while attending an air show with his son. The Civil air Patrol had a booth at the event and both he and his son signed up. His son later decided that the patrol wasn’t for him, but May stayed with it and worked his way up. He even ran the emergency services program for the patrol while he lived in Charlotte, N.C.

Bank of America supports his patrol efforts, as the company sets a goal of 2 million volunteering hours.

“The bank takes that very seriously,” May said.

He also gets two hours a week of paid time to do community service.

“The bank is very encouraging for us to go out and do volunteer work,” May said.

As far as his flying missions, some people are quite surprised when they learn what he does for the Civil Air Patrol.

“They wouldn’t think someone who works for a bank would be looking for missing airplanes,” May said. “They’re pretty excited about it, they think it’s a pretty cool thing to do.”