Writing My Husband’s Memoir

I imagine all writers know it’s a big decision to write a book. 

There’s the time involved, the commitment to follow through, and wanting to get all the details right. It’s a daunting process.

After my husband Michael died in a tragic plane crash outside Denver in 2001, ending a remarkable and colorful life that took him to the top tier of the aviation industry, the idea of writing a book was hardly my first thought. 

Or second.

There was grief, of course, and all the challenges around the future of our blended family. I had two children from a first marriage. Michael and I had two children of our own. 

But after several years passed, more and more of my friends kept pushing me to tell the story of Michael’s incredible accomplishments. 

If not me, who would tell it? 

About three years ago, I decided to take the plunge. 

One thing I knew for sure was that I would need help. You might think that hiring a ghostwriter is some sort of shortcut. It’s true the ghostwriter does all the wordsmithing and composing, but it was no walk in the park for me. I interviewed a number of potential ghostwriters before settling on writer Linda Hull of Mark Graham Communications. 

Then, there was organizing the documents and details of Michael’s life, maintaining a fairly rigorous schedule of interviews about various events and challenges in our topsy-turvy and quite hectic lives, reviewing draft of chapters as they come in, and making hard decisions about the tone and shape of the memoir as it starts coming together. I may not be a writer, but I understood that each word carries weight and colors the overall portrait that would emerge.

That is, portraits.

The book was clearly about Michael. He came to this country (from Pakistan, by way of England) with nothing but a dream to fly and an unquenchable thirst for success. He flew crop dusters in Minnesota. He pulled himself up from single-engine prop planes to brand new, gleaming 747’s. He created business after business. He picked himself up from failures. He built companies full of dedicated employees and he was endlessly creative in his business savvy.

But the book would also be about me—it would be Michael through my lens, of course. I had to dig deep on a personal level and decide how much I wanted to share about our personal ups and downs, our challenges raising a blended family, and how much I would yield to his strong personality. Michael was bigger than life. He was fearless, energetic, and unflappable. Michael’s life was the definition of pulling yourself by your bootstraps. Impossibly, he made something out of nothing more than once. If he saw something he wanted, he went and got it.

I was fortunate to be caught in his whirlwind. For years, I directly supported his business ideas and worked alongside him. As our family grew, and as the size of his businesses expanded, this was no longer possible and often not necessary. But being around a pilot who absolutely loved to fly meant many fun weekend adventures to remote places. It was hard to beat.  

But we also had our fair share of challenges—raising children and deciding what values to impart. I knew this had to be part of the memoir. I couldn’t expect anyone to read my account and believe it if it glossed over these issues—or neglected them altogether. Too many friends would know I wasn’t telling the truth. And, of course, I wouldn’t be honest with myself, either.

It’s true that fifteen years had passed between the end of Michael’s life and when I started to write, but the themes of Michael’s life are timeless—determination, creativity, problem-solving, and hard work. Once the time was right, I felt better and better about telling his story as each chapter came together. 

His story—and mine.

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Category: On Writing