Toby Dunlap, United Airlines pilot, remembered fondly

When La Conner pioneer Isaac Dunlap came west by mule train nearly 160 years ago, he could not have imagined a descendant crossing the country in jetliner cockpits nearly a century later.

Nor could he have envisioned his great-grandson, longtime United Airlines pilot Clair “Toby” Dunlap, being joined by presidential candidate John F. Kennedy in the cockpit of a private plane en route from Salt Lake City to a 1960 campaign appearance in southern Oregon.

Yet, even in the eyes of his contemporaries, the veteran commercial airline captain lived a magical life.

According to a recent Scott Hanson account in the Seattle Times, Dunlap took his first airplane ride as a five-year-old and would be involved in aviation his entire life.

And aircraft will be present when a graveside service for Dunlap is held at the family plot at Pleasant Ridge Cemetery east of town.

“We’re going to do a missing man formation,” one of Dunlap’s daughters, Kathy Aho, an ICU nurse at University of Washington Medical Center, told Hanson. “One of his buddies is going to fly his plane.”

Dunlap died March 31, at age 89, from complications of the coronavirus. Up until a year prior to his passing, Dunlap had continued to teach people to fly – sharing with them the dream he had nurtured from childhood.

Dunlap bought his first plane at 16, just six years after surviving a freak gunshot wound.

When Dunlap was 10, he lived in Yakutat, Alaska, where his dad, Leland Dunlap, was a commissioner. One day young Dunlap was playing dodgeball with guards stationed at the local Air Force base’s temporary jail. One of the prisoners grabbed a guard’s gun, pulled the trigger, and the bullet hit the 10-year-old, ripping through his chest and ribs.

“It didn’t hit anything major,” said Aho, “but he had to be airlifted back to Yakutat (and then to Juneau).”

After that, the sky was truly the limit for Dunlap, a nephew of the late Percy “Bud” and Philena Dunlap, the latter of whom was a revered La Conner Elementary School teacher, and whose home overlooked Skagit Bay.

“He was the son of my great-uncle Lee Dunlap,” La Conner native Don Huddleston told the Weekly News. “He was my great-uncle’s son, thus a cousin.”

Huddleston’s older brother Bob has youthful recollections of Dunlap.

“I have some dim memories of cousin Toby,” Bob Huddleston said in a social media post. “I remember he and uncle Lee flew a floatplane and tied it up at the dock at the Hope Island Inn. It was a pretty impressive sight for a little kid.”

Dunlap, while in his late 20s, was himself impressed by the charismatic Kennedy.

“He (JFK) sat with the crew,” said Aho, “and talked with them throughout the flight.”

She said her dad found the future president to be a “people person.”

The same was often said of Dunlap, a father of four.

“We always felt very blessed that he was the best possible father because he was so good and made his kids such a high priority,” Aho said.

Though Toby Dunlap lived much of his life in Burien and Edmonds, La Conner – where the Dunlaps have been an integral part of the community since 1877 – remained his cherished ancestral family home.

So it was that after he passed away, Dunlap’s family reached out to relatives here and Pleasant Ridge Cemetery Commissioner Curt Buher about a local burial.

“Curt was contacted by Toby’s daughter,” said Cemetery District secretary Lori Buher, “about burying him in the Dunlap family plot. Curt confirmed family approval.”

Dunlap leaves a legacy that extends well beyond his storied career in aviation, Aho stressed.

“He was handsome, he was humble, he was bright and he was the best neighbor you could have,” she said.