CHAPEL HILL -- Interstate 40 commuters mired in a red sea of tail lights might find themselves dreaming of ways to transcend the tangle. What about a flying car, for example?
Picture a contraption with three wheels and a set of collapsible wings. That's what Tom Purcell designed in the early 1960s. He spent several years building the prototype in his Raleigh garage before shelving the concept as unworkable.
Thomas Hector Purcell Jr. died Oct. 13 of complications after surgery for bladder cancer. After 87 years, he never managed to launch an automobile skyward, but he did log numerous other aeronautical accomplishments.
Purcell held several patents, among them one for a flex-wing design that allows airplane wings to fold compactly for storage and transport. Just last year, he claimed another, for an airplane tail design.
A happy-go-lucky guy, Purcell had a childlike fascination with anything mechanical. With his whimsical designs, he might seem to merit a comparison with the absent-minded Doc Brown, the "Back to the Future" character who transforms a DeLorean into a time machine.
But Purcell wasn't goofy. He was focused, his designs as thoroughly researched as they were unusual. One aircraft he built incorporated a lawn chair as the pilot's seat.
"An airplane to me is what you get on at the airport and fly to California in, but his vision was very different from mine," said his daughter, Kathy Linthicum.
Aviation bug bit early
Purcell was born in 1920 in Hope Mills but grew up in Petersburg, Va. No one knows exactly why he fell so hard for airplanes, but his children, a son and a daughter, still have drawings of planes he made as a child.
While studying aeronautical engineering at N.C. State University, he met Barbara Stevens, a student at Meredith College.
When they wed, she knew she had married an aviation nut and was alternatively accepting, supportive and annoyed with his singular passion. Planes were not her thing, and she flew with him only once.
She respected his determination, though. Purcell was a problem-solver. Getting his planes aloft was just the first of many challenges he tackled. Once he saw they could fly, he set about improving their design, tweaking lift here, drag there. Making them fly better, smoother, higher.
Building planes was Purcell's hobby; his day job was making batteries for missiles and spacecraft. No one has checked lately, but it was Purcell's belief that a battery he designed still lies on the moon. It powered the Surveyor, the first unmanned spacecraft to make a soft moon landing.
To augment his salary, Purcell manufactured and sold build-your-own airplane kits and plans. He didn't strike it rich, but the money supported his design-build habit.
Purcell never haphazardly threw together a flying machine. The engineer in him demanded that he draft a detailed set of drawings from which to work. He would analyze and refine them before he ever touched a piece of fiberglass.
He worked in his attic or basement. "He had those two floors of the house, and my mother had the main house," Linthicum said.
Floatplanes
Purcell was fascinated by planes landing and taking off from a body of water. He built two such planes and kept them in a hangar at Lake Gaston, where he and his wife had a home.
He flew one just last year, at the age of 86. It was a lot of work for someone his age. He had to move it from the hangar, transport it to the water, unfold the wings in a manner similar to that flying automobile from years earlier.
It was one of Purcell's floatplanes that inspired author Clyde Edgerton's novel, "The Floatplane Notebooks." Edgerton spotted Purcell one day at Lake Wheeler south of Raleigh. Edgerton helped Purcell get the plane into the water and never forgot him, said Purcell's son, Archie Purcell.
In Edgerton's memoir, "Solo," the author recalls meeting Purcell and his plane. It resembled a small boat with folded wings and two propellers. There was an open cockpit, a small instrument panel and a throne for the captain of the craft -- a slight fellow with wispy, red hair, dressed in fishing waders and a blue football helmet.
"And there, in glory," Edgerton wrote, "sat the pilot's seat: a bolted-to-the-floor, yellow-and-green, aluminum lawn chair.
"Seeing that home-built floatplane was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It provided vivid and significant fodder for a novel in need of vivid and significant fodder."
Purcell was happy to oblige.
* * *
Tom Purcell is survived by his daughter, his son and two grandchildren.
