Harold Jenkins Passed Away

[Ron Spiker]

Sorry to pass on this news, but Harold passed away this evening. From what I understand at this point, he had just finished testing out a Brantly and had a heart attack and died.

Has any other single person done more for Brantly than Harold?

As anyone has further information, please let us know.

Ron

[fixnfly]

This is a big loss for the Brantly community . We not only lose a fellow Brantly pilot & friend but we also lose the knowledge he had .My condolances to his family.

[Steve Chenoweth]

Ron,

Thanks for letting us know, sad as it is. So many of us were helped by Harold. Beneath that sometimes gruff exterior was a kind and humorous man who will be missed.

Steve

[Ron Spiker]

Guys, the funeral for Harold will be this Wednesday, Feb 1st, at 1:30 pm at Becker Funeral Home in Lawton, OK. Unless someone else would like to take care of it, I will have a flower arrangement sent to the funeral from the Brantly Forum. For those who are interested in going in on it and having your name included on a card, please PM, email, or call me to let me know. I'll place the order sometime on Monday.

Cards can be sent to the family at this address.
PO Box 310
Cement, OK 73017

[Ron Spiker]

Here is a link to the obituary.
http://www.beckerfuneral.com/memsol.cgi?user_id=561900

[scrapper]

i never met him but a huge loss.

cof

[bryancobb]

Sad to hear about Mr. Harold,

I met him once. He drove to my house in Georgia, with 2 Canopies on the back of his truck, for some other owners. He came to bring me some parts for Dave Matthews' ship, which I was doing an annual on. He was very kind and soft-spoken gentleman. I don't think there's a single Brantly flying that he hasn't worked on or at least supplied parts for. He will be greatly missed. There's no-one I know of who can provide his level of Brantly knowledge, based on real experience.

I remember his statement to the media a few years ago, when a youthful rookie reporter stuck a microphone in his face after he had rolled over in a Brantly, and asked...Well Mr. Jenkins, what caused this accident? Did you have some kind of mechanical malfunction? Who caused the accident?
He promptly replied…”No, I caused it. I didn’t have any sort of malfunction. It was my fault.”

I never knew, but I just read his obituary. He had ten sisters and three brothers!

My thoughts go out to his family and close friends.

[9121u]

WELL said every one. I bought my first brantly off Harold in 99. what a great guy and use to speak to him at least once a month.just to see whats going on.yes he was a lay ed back kinda man..bought some parts off him over the years. and got a lot of good info from him.he is probably the only brantly mech that could take a pair of skids and turn them into a flying brantly.....a very good man and smart.the brantly family took a very big loss here..so sad to lose him and he was a good friend of mine.going to be hard for some one to walk in his shoes far as knowledge goes.I no i will miss him a lot.may god rest his soul.....tom...2191u

[Steve Chenoweth]

I got a note from Harold's daughter and she gave me permission to post it to the forum:

I am Harold Jenkins Daughter Tammy or TJ as he called me. He was teaching my husband and me all about Brantly helicopters. He had wanted us to take over for him. We were transferred to Cincinnati area because my husband is an A&P with Comair. Dad got married and we could not get home much. We saw very little of Dad over the last few years. He was always traveling or working. His new wife Sandra did not know how to get in touch with me so I did not find out about it until my mail was being returned and I started having family there in Oklahoma look into it. I just recently found out that he had passed away. No one had told me. I am so sad by his passing. My husband Will and I were planning a trip in October to come in and see the family. Comair is closing its doors the last day of September and we were trying to decide where to go and what to do. We thought about coming back to Oklahoma, but we don't know now since Dad is gone. And we really don't want to stay here. We had always thought that we would come back to work with Dad.

I really want to say that Dad loved working on the helicopters. He would talk and talk about the business and the repairs and teach me to rivet and to take things apart and label and bag, etc. He really taught me husband a lot and they always talked flying because both were pilots also.

Thank you all for saying such nice things about Dad and I do hope that I get to come by Brantly and meet the people that meant so much to him.

Tammy J. Massey
tammyjmassey@gmail.com

[seneca2e]

Thanks for posting this Steve. Harold's loss was so huge to the Brantly community. He obviously loved what he was doing.

[StarKiller]

We moved to Mineral Wells after Christmas 1956. Daddy went to work for Southern Airways at Camp Wolters. His friend, Rex Fennel, had urged him to come. He was trained to be a mechanic on the Hiller, the pilots also taught him to fly them. That is where he met Harold Jenkins, who was already working there.

A few months after we moved to Frederick for Daddy to work for Brantly, Harold came by to visit, I think he was on his way to the Army, then. They told him I was 3 and he asked me when I was going to be 4. I said, "On my next birthday, silly!" My parents must have told me that story 100 times.