Reading auto body shop owner who once flew a single-engine plane solo to Italy and back is remembered as a Renaissance man

Jan. 8—Ralph Elia was nothing if not determined.

Raised in post-World War II Italy, he completed his schooling at age 11 and went to work for a local mechanic as an apprentice. Two years later he had his own garage specializing in auto body repair and set his sights on the next goal — emigrating to America.

It took a few years to get the necessary documentation for the move, but he persisted. In 1956, he came to this country in the midst of its post-World War II boom.

He faced numerous obstacles — he didn't speak English, for one — but as he did throughout his life, Elia, who died June 4 at age 85, scaled them through perseverance and hard work. His journeyman certificate — still displayed proudly on the wall of his northeast Reading shop —was like a foot in the door for employment.

After he was in this country a few years, he married the former Barbara Adams, and they started a family.

In 1960, Elia was ready to stake his claim in the American dream. He started Ralph Elia's Auto Body at 1740 Kutztown Road, then bought a home behind the shop where he and Barbara raised their three children: Joann, Francis and Charles.

The business flourished on his reputation for quality work.

Whatever the man set his mind to — learning to fly an airplane and eventually acquiring his own aircraft, for example — he accomplished no matter how improbable it may have seemed.

"When we were young my dad was still going to school, at night, still working on English," his youngest son, Charles "Chet" Elia, 57, said recently at Ralph Elia's Auto Body, which continues to operate at the same northeast Reading spot more than 60 years later. "Of course, his line of thinking there was that if you want the money you need to be able to speak the language."

Passion for aviation

Chet said his father was a true Renaissance man. One of his life's passions was aviation, the seed for which was planted soon after the war ended and he climbed aboard a ruined German fighter plane, one of the aircraft he had seen flying during the war, and removed the clock from the instrument panel.

"My dad's first experience with aviation was as a little boy in post-World War II Italy," Chet said. "There was a Luftwaffe airfield — what was left of one — near the little town he grew up in. Seeing the remains of the aircraft there interested him. That's where his aviation bug got planted in him."

That bug germinated into raw ambition in his mid-30s.

He started taking flying lessons at Reading Regional Airport in Bern Township.

"And it just took off from there," said Francis, 59.

In just five years he achieved every rating a private and commercial pilot could get with the exception of the jet aircraft rating.

"He didn't get the jet rating at that time, but he could do anything (with a small plane)," Francis said. "He just kept taking it to the next level."

The flight

His most audacious decision was yet to come.

He made up his mind to make a solo flight from Reading to Rome and back in his own single-engine aircraft to visit family members and relatives in Italy.

Already instrument-rated and qualified as a flight instructor, he began preparing his plane, a Bonanza A36 powered by a 286-horsepower fuel-injected engine, for the journey.

As reported in a 1978 article that chronicled Elia's feat, the preparation for the journey, much like his immigration to the U.S., took years of careful planning.

He took out the four rear seats and installed two 60-gallon auxiliary fuel tanks in that space. He also removed the seat next to the pilot's seat. In its place was a large manifold with valves that he needed to be able to see to know when one of the tanks was running out of fuel.

He studied the charts, plotted his course, gathered weather data and made all the necessary preflight preparations.

"It took him a couple of years to get all those things approved to make that trip, which, when we were little, we didn't really know," said Chet, who was 11 at the time.

On June 14, 1978, he was ready.

Although his aircraft was considered the Cadillac of single-engine planes, it lacked the safety features of a twin-engine plane better equipped to fly over seas.

"As far as we were concerned, he knew how to fly, he was really good at flying a plane and the plane would get him there," Francis said. "That's probably the extent of what I thought as a 13-year-old."

Their father trusted his machine. Still, he had moments of trepidation, especially when he could see nothing but water ahead of or behind his plane.

The 1978 article begins with a quote from Elia that is open to interpretation: "I was about a thousand miles out over the Atlantic Ocean when I said to myself, 'What are you doing here?'"

Looking back, Francis said, his father was a bit like Evel Knievel, the motorcycle daredevil of the same age whose famous stunts included jumping over 13 buses at Wembley Stadium in 1975 and leaping over a shark-filled tank in Chicago in 1976.

Flying a small plane over the North Atlantic, even in the summertime, is fraught with danger.

"He had problems with the ice on the way over and the plane was barely staying up," Francis said. "He battled with Mother Nature."

As described in the article, the 40-year-old Elia took off from the Reading airstrip bound for Canada, where his plane was inspected and his proficiency as a pilot verified before he was allowed to proceed.

Next stop was Goose Bay, Labrador, then on to Iceland, then to Manchester, England, before making the final leg of the trip to Rome.

The outbound trip took 26 hours.

He was back in Reading on July 2 after a return flight that took him to Shannon, Ireland, Goose Bay and Wilkes-Barre, where he had to clear customs.

Because he was bucking prevailing winds, the return trip took more than 30 hours.

Elia's trans-Atlantic excursion may not have set any aviation records, but it was bold and awe-inspiring for its time, even if it didn't make national news, according to Chet.

A half-century earlier, pioneer aviators were constantly pushing the limits of aircraft in what became known as the Golden Age of Flight. On May 20, 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first pilot to make a nonstop solo trans-Atlantic flight when he flew from New York to Paris.

Chet, a pilot himself who flew military aircraft while in the Army, recalled the look of astonishment members of his unit had when he mentioned that his dad once flew a single-engine aircraft across the Atlantic.

Self-navigating across the Atlantic in a single-engine plane would be bold even today, when pilots have the advantage of GPS and advanced navigation systems. What made Elia's mission so intrepid was the slim margin of error.

"If you don't see Iceland in 17 hours, you're not making it," Chet said. "If you missed it, you missed it. There's a lot of time distance (calculation) headache, so it was very Lindberghesque."

Two months after his return, the newspaper published the article under the headline, "Elia makes solo Atlantic hop." The article was accompanied by a photo by Eagle photographer Ronald Romanski of the triumphant pilot, at the controls of his plane, bearing a smile as wide as the Mediterranean.

"I guess it wasn't really fair to my wife and children to go off like this," Elia was quoted as saying. "But I'm the kind of person who does what he makes his mind up to do."

Asked by the reporter if he would do the trip again, he smiled and said, "Not in a single-engine airplane."

Post-flight years

Elia died just shy of the 45-year anniversary of his aviation feat.

He eventually traded the Bonanza for a twin-engine plane, a Beechcraft Baron. He served on the advisory board for the Reading airport for about a decade. Chet said his father left the board because he didn't like some of its decisions and felt the board lacked a bold vision for the airport.

According to Elia's family, in the 1970s and '80s, what is now Lehigh Valley International Airport was smaller in scale and breadth of services than the Reading airport. By the end of the century, the roles were reversed: Reading lost its passenger service while the Allentown airport grew to become a feeder airline for the major hubs.

Elia continued to fly his Beechcraft until he was about 70.

"Always said there's a time in life for everything," Francis said, "and he felt that 70 was the time to give that up and he sold the plane."

General aviation after the 9/11 terrorist attacks became almost prohibitively expensive, Chet added.

"The cost of insurance for the general aviation market quintupled in two years' time, and my dad used this plane pretty much to fly to North Myrtle Beach and back a few times a year," Chet said.

Elia enjoyed playing Italian cards, making homemade suppressata (a cured-meat treat) and wine, and golf, according to his obituary. He had eight holes-in-one to his name.

In addition to his Barbara, his first wife, and their children — Joann, Francis and Charles — Elia is survived by his wife of 34 years, Josephine (Colisimo) Elia and their son, Vincent, along with two sisters and a brother. There are also seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Elia's three sons carry on the business that still bears his name.