For 50 years, Billy K. Bryant flew without incident.
He flew for himself, taking joy in experimenting with new techniques. He flew for family, taking annual trips to the Georgia-Florida football game. And he flew for others, taking sick or burned children across the Southeast to get much-needed health care.
On Sunday, the 81-year-old Dacula man died doing what he loved.
“I’m sure he was having a blast,” son Russell Bryant said Monday.
Around 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Billy Bryant’s Beechcraft BE24 crashed onto the fairway of the third hole at The Georgia Club, a Barrow County golf community where he was a member. The plane skidded into the trees — avoiding golfers and surrounding homes — but Bryant was killed.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the cause.
Just last month, Bryant was given the Federal Aviation Administration’s Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award, a prestigious recognition honoring pilots “who have demonstrated professionalism, skill and aviation expertise by maintaining safe operations for 50 or more years.”
Russell Bryant, a Lawrenceville attorney, said his father was a good pilot but a better man.
Billy Bryant was born and raised in Blakely, a tiny town in southwest Georgia peanut country. He was the captain of his high school football, basketball and track teams. Somehow, the University of Michigan caught wind of his athletic prowess and recruited him as a pole vaulter.
He and Glenda — his wife of 62 years — married early and moved to DeKalb County for their children’s formative years. He made a name for himself in the commercial contracting business.
“He could ride down any road, anywhere around Atlanta and probably around Georgia, and every couple minutes you’d hear him say ‘I built that building,’ ‘I built that building,’” Russell Bryant said. “[H}is mark is all over Atlanta.”
Billy and Glenda Bryant moved to Dacula about 20 years ago, where he became a doting, playful grandfather. For the last decade or so, Bryant had volunteered for Angel Flight — an organization based at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport that arranges free air transportation for people who need to travel to receive lifesaving medical treatment but lack the means.
His passengers were often small children.
“His compassion and dedication to helping patients was beyond generous,” Angel Flight Chairman Emeritus Bert Light said in an emailed statement.
The cause of Bryant’s crash remains unclear, but his son said he often spent airtime practicing different IFR — or instrument flight rules — techniques. He was known to frequent the Barrow County Airport, which is about two miles from the crash site.
He was in perfect health.
“I’m sorry more people didn’t get to meet him,” Russell Bryant said.
