Two Friends – One Goal

“He writes the book on how to get into the Air Force Academy,” says retired U.S. Navy pilot and Marco Island resident Mick Thorstenson about his friend Chuck McHenry, a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel who lives in Naples.

McHenry serves as Southwest Florida’s admissions liaison officer for the Air Force Academy and Air Force ROTC, helping young men and women navigate the admissions process at the academy and all service academies, including the Army’s West Point and the Naval Academy.

“Gulf Coast High School asked me how much scholarship money I’ve secured for area kids, and I think it was well over 10 million dollars, closer to 20 million,” he says.

McHenry’s success in the role earned him the Admissions Liaison Officer of the Nation Award in 2003, 2013, and 2017, making him the only three-time recipient of the prestigious award.

McHenry graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1976 and served active duty for 13 years, during which time he attended A-10 Fighter Weapons School, served as an instructor and evaluator pilot at the squadron and wing levels, and taught other pilots how to fly the A-10 in tactical combat environments.

Thorstenson met McHenry when Thorstenson’s daughter Christy was applying to the Air Force Academy in 2014. A student at Lely High School at the time, she had cleared all the gates in the application process and had come to McHenry for her formal admissions interview.

“She came in and told me she had 40 hours in the back seat of a T-28,” he says. “Some of these kids come in and don’t always know what they’re talking about, so I Googled a T-28 and said, ‘Christy, you mean this?’ And she said, ‘Um, yeah. I fly in the backseat with my dad when he goes to airshows.”

Thorstenson, who was a Navy pilot for 23 years both on active duty and as a reservist, an American Airlines pilot for 30 years, and a test pilot for Lockheed, has owned six former U.S. Navy T-28 B and C model aircraft. The aircraft that Thorstenson currently owns with McHenry is a 1951 North American T-28A, first used by the U.S. Air Force as a pilot trainer until 1954. After the plane was retired by the U.S. Air Force, it served with the French Air Force and the Haitian Air Force before coming back to the United States. It was then completely restored to award-winning quality, receiving national awards at both the Sun-N-Fun and Oshkosh airshows.

In his retirement, Thorstenson is a formation instructor and check pilot for the North American Trainer Association, instructing new pilot owners in their T-28 aircraft and ferrying T-28s all over the country. He also flies with the Trojan Horsemen and Trojan Thunder, six-ship airshow demonstration teams, and flies his own T-28 solo act at various shows across the country.

“I’m either the lead on the formation or the opposing solo, doing all the crazy aerobatic things,” he says.

Christy Thorstenson is now Christy VanderWeide. She graduated in 2019 from the Air Force Academy and recently married a fellow academy graduate, Daniel VanderWeide. They are both stationed at Vance AFB in Enid, Oklahoma, flying the Northrop T-38 Talon, a two-seat twin-engine supersonic jet trainer. They have been selected to fly the Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon and will begin transition training this summer.

Her sister Lindsay Thorstenson is a retired U.S. Marine Corps officer who completed a tour of duty in Afghanistan and is now an investment banker in Austin, Texas. They have two brothers: Nick, who owns and is a captain for Native Guided Fishing Charters in Marco Island and Goodland, and Patrick, who is a facilities manager for a water company in Colorado.

For his part, McHenry has an equally impressive family. All three of his daughters graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy and one of them, Schaeffer, is a decorated combat pilot.

Thorstenson has supported McHenry’s liaison work over the years by giving the selected military academy appointees from Southwest Florida a formation ride in either a T-28 or a T-6 during the North American Trainer Association formation clinics held here in the spring. The purpose is to encourage outstanding men and women to consider a career path of military aviation after graduation.

“With all the craziness going on in the world, it’s so much fun to see these young men and women get motivated to fly,” Thorstenson says. “Our program has been successful as we have many graduates select and successfully complete military pilot training.”

He also has high praise for the role that McHenry plays not just in the lives of those mentees but in their parents’ lives as well.

“For every kid that goes to the academies, that leaves two parents behind here,” Thorstenson says. “Chuck and his wife Charla host parents at their home, keep everybody informed, have quarterly meetings, and send Christmas boxes to the kids. He and his beautiful wife are working hard to keep the parents informed and in contact because sometimes the parents can be more scared than the kids.”