About the Author

On the runway before launch, 2017, Regional contest in Wurtsboro, NY (photo by Bozena Michalowski)

Chip Bearden learned how to fly in 1965, before he was legally old enough to drink, drive a car, vote, or have sex. Since the 1970s, he’s been a nationally ranked sailplane racing pilot, amassing an impressive 3,000 flight hours while navigating through challenges, successes, setbacks, and even tragedies. On solid ground, he’s a seasoned marathon runner, boasting multiple finishes at the prestigious Boston Marathon.

Guided by his father, who served as his flight instructor, coach, and flying partner, Chip steadily ascended the ranks, before the arc of his competitive career was irrevocably altered by a horrific crash. As an adult deeply immersed in the exhilarating world of soaring, Chip continued to balance his passion for sailplane racing and marathoning with the demands of a career and his own family.

Now retired, in his professional life he enjoyed a successful career with large companies as well as entrepreneurial efforts, the past 20 years of which were as a technology consultant. His widely respected writing has appeared online and in print, including in The New York Times. Over the years, as his struggle to overcome adversity and pursue his ambitions took him on unlikely, dramatic, and sometimes hazardous twists, friends marveled at his experiences and encouraged him to share his remarkable journey, saying, “you oughta write a book.”

Goodbye, Papa Golf is that book. In it, he aims to delve beyond sensational tales of “There I was, facing death at 10,000 feet!” and explore why pilots—and marathon runners, mountain climbers, auto racers, and others—are driven to flirt with danger in the pursuit of impossible goals, not always despite the risks, but because of them.