Photo Credit: Kendra Stanley-Mills
Muskegon Chronicle
Vince Dostert, 87, center, poses for a portrait at Executive Air with his two sons Steve Dostert, left, and Dave Dostert,. The three were at Executive Air, the company Vince Dostert founded in 1959.
Vince Dostert caught the aviation bug early in life.
Some might even argue that flying is a genetic predisposition in the Dostert family, one the 87-year-old Muskegon aviator has successfully passed on to the next three generations.
“I don’t know of anyone else who has this kind of legacy,” says Rex Vanderlinde, president of Executive Air Transport Inc. in Muskegon — a business Dostert founded in 1959 and sold in 1971.
“I know a lot of second-generation pilots, but no one who’s kept going and going like the Dosterts,” said Vanderlinde, who began working for the company in 1979 and purchased it in 2000.
For the record, there’s Vince Dostert, 87, a retired commercial pilot and a U.S. Army Air Corps World War II veteran. He was training to fly a Curtiss-Wright C-46 Commando, a transport aircraft, preparing to invade Japan when the war ended.
Then there are his two sons. Steve Dostert, who “never reveals” his age or address, served in the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam in 1968-69, and is a retired commercial pilot. David Dostert, 54, who soloed when he was 16 years old, was crew chief for Air Force F-4C Phantom Jets in the early 1970s.
“You just don’t see that,” Vanderlinde repeats. “So many Air Force veterans in the same family.”
Even today, a member of Vince Dostert’s extended family serves in the Air Force. His step-granddaughter, Nichole Stafford, 24, is a senior airman. She has served one tour of duty in Afghanistan already, with a second one looming in her future.
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