Story ID: 337
NBAA Show Memories: Wilson Leach
By: AIN Staff
Caption: Wilson Leach recalls a stirring, courageous speech Ray Siegfried gave during the 2003 NBAA convention in Orlando.
Word Count: 657
Wilson Leach, AIN managing director

Other than the two NBAA Conventions that were cancelled/postponed—September 2001 due to 9/11, and the Katrina postponement of 2005—two other NBAA Conventions immediately come to mind.

The most relevant and important to me was the 2003 NBAA convention in Orlando, Florida. It was when NBAA held its awards dinner on the third night of the convention, and the guest of honor was Ray Siegfried, founder of Nordam. Ray had been diagnosed with ALS/Lou Gehrig’s disease in early 2000, and even though he was clearly affected by this debilitating disease, he ran Nordam right up to his death on Oct. 6, 2005. 

As the guest speaker at the 2003 convention—effectively fully paralyzed and bound to a wheelchair—Ray spoke eloquently for 30 minutes using the then-new technology called Eyegaze, where he could speak through a computerized system using eye commands. Ray gave such an articulate, direct, heartfelt, poignant, unbelievable talk to everyone in the audience that it is impossible to put into words.

Included at my table were Russ Meyer, Ed Bolen, and several others. Every one of us was completely spellbound by the remarkable strength and character Ray displayed that evening. At the end of Ray’s talk—of course, to a standing, applauding ovation—there was not one dry eye in the house. No one at our table could say a word—Ray left us all speechless.

Another memorable NBAA event was in Dallas in 1997. As is always the case, I cannot sleep the night before the opening day’s issue comes out, and always ask our distribution team to slide a first-off edition of NBAA Convention News under my door. This is like 4 a.m. in the morning.

Early that Tuesday morning, I am thumbing through the issue and come to an article on Bombardier, where there is a picture of Trevor Young, the lead executive on the Global Express development team. However, the entire caption was written to describe a picture of the famous founder and then-current CEO of Bombardier, Laurent Beaudoin. In other words, we mistakenly put the wrong picture with the caption and article. Disaster loomed…

I had learned through many years of first-hand experience that when you have an error of this magnitude, best to confront it head-on and alert the people in question. I was much younger then and said what the hell—being an hour later on the east coast, I was able to contact the security guard at Bombardier in Montreal. How I did the next thing I don’t know, but somehow was able to wrangle from him the hotel Mr. Beaudoin was staying at in Dallas.

So I called Mr. Beaudoin at his hotel, and happen to catch him while he was shaving, getting ready to go to the convention. I explained the situation as best I could but had no idea what his reaction was because he was just grunting as I was talking—again, he was shaving and clearly wasn’t happy.

So, of course, my first mission on that opening day of the convention was to go right to the Bombardier booth and offer a mea culpa. Laurent and his cohorts, including Trevor Young, were all laughing at the page of NBAA Convention News that had been placed upon an easel, so everyone within Bombardier could get a good laugh out of it. Someone had even written their own caption: "Congratulations to Trevor Young—the new CEO of Bombardier." 

To this day I still marvel at how such a negative situation somehow turned positive. Yes, there was a little bit of foresight on my part, just a little; but the real takeaway was how an industry leader like Laurent Beaudoin kept an ego in check and had a good laugh. I’ve never forgotten this experience and never will.