Richard “Dick” Van Gemert, one of the most prominent, respected and accomplished leaders in business aviation and a dear friend to many including this reporter, flew west on June 16. He was 88.
After graduating from the University of Michigan with a BS in Engineering, Van Gemert joined the U.S. Navy. There he earned his Wings of Gold and was assigned to pilot the Martin P5M, a patrol and antisubmarine aircraft and among the last of the service’s flying boats. His skillful piloting earned him an aviation award for excellence, but one mission ended abruptly and almost tragically, as he so memorably recounted in “Midnight Sun,” a first-person feature in BCA’s November 2009 issue.
Upon leaving the Navy, he joined the Xerox Corp. flight department at Westchester County Airport in New York as a line pilot in 1966. At Xerox he advanced steadily--becoming chief pilot, then manager of flight operations, manager of travel services, and finally, director of the company’s General Services division.
Notably, it was Van Gemert who championed the idea of establishing a shuttle service linking headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut, with Xerox’s manufacturing and research center in Rochester, New York. Once he convinced senior management of the time- and travel cost-savings that would result, the service launched in 1973 and proved popular immediately. At its height, the shuttles--a second was launched in Europe--carried 15,000 employees annually in dedicated Canadair CL600 Challengers. The operation was deemed so innovative, it received positive feature coverage in the New York Times.
Upon retiring from Xerox in 1991, Van Gemert joined Kimberly-Clark Corp., heading K-C Transportation Services. When that was sold six years later, he founded New World Jet Corp., which provided Part 135 certificate management services to business jet operators, serving as its president for the next decade. He then moved on to Jet Aviation as a senior executive until finally retiring in 2009. His final industry position was as a board member of Solairus Aviation.
During his half-century in business aviation, Van Gemert was a key figure in shaping industry policies, setting operational priorities and promoting safety. Accordingly, he was a board member of both the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) and the National Air Transportation Association (NATA), governor of the International Flight Safety Foundation, and leader within the Westchester Pilots Association, among other roles. In 2009, he was presented with both NBAA’s Doswell Award and NATA’s Ong Memorial Awards.
As long-time readers know, Van Gemert was often cited in articles published by BCA, not only for his expertise on operational and safety matters, but for his broad understanding of business aviation trends, threats and goals.
NATA President and CEO Curt Castagna credited Van Gemert with “lifting the industry to ever-higher standards of safety and success,” a sentiment surely endorsed by all who knew him. He will be sorely missed.
He is survived by his widow, Tina, children, Michael, Holly, Carolyn and Brad, 13 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. Services are planned for July 12 and 13 in Fairfield County, Connecticut.
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