From flying to fly-fishing, Gary Harney’s life was a movable feast he was keen to share with friends and family.

“He was a worldwide traveler and met lots of interesting people,” Kathleen “Leeny” Hoyle said of her husband, a career pilot and avid outdoorsman who died on May 6, 2023.

“The knowledge Gary shared was invaluable as was his friendship,” wrote a fly-fishing friend from Florida in an online tribute.

“Blue skies and tailwinds, my friend,” wrote another. “It was always a pleasure to talk with you.”

Harney got his bachelor’s in history from Old Dominion University in 1975 but found his career in the skies, following the contrails of his father, who was also a professional pilot, according to Hoyle.

He flew cargo, charter and regional aircraft and for airlines such as Idaho’s Gem State and California’s Golden Gate from the late 1970s to early ‘80s. In 1982, he signed with Piedmont Airlines, which became part of American Airlines. Harney rose to senior captain and spent the last five years of his career flying transatlantic routes until his retirement in 2017.

Overseas flights enabled him to reconnect with his familial roots in Ireland, splurge on Powers whiskey and attend The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo in Scotland, Hoyle said.

Aerial firefighting was an early passion that Harney returned to after retirement. From the pilot seat of the lead air attack plane or a tanker, Harney dropped fire retardant on wildfires across the country, including California, Oregon and Alaska, Hoyle said. A grove of memorial trees is to be planted in the Sequoia National Forest in his name.

Since the early 1990s, Harney had lived in Cody, Wyoming, which gave him proximity to many wild places where he hunted elk and upland game birds and fly-fished. Friends called him “the Renaissance man,” Hoyle said. A voracious reader of Jim Harrison, Cormac McCarthy and Rick Bass, Harney resembled another of his favorite writers: Ernest Hemingway.

And as a devoted Deadhead, Harney rarely missed an opportunity to see his favorite band: The Grateful Dead. “He even framed the tickets from the last concert (in 1995 at Soldier Field in Chicago),” Hoyle said.

Music was a love they shared. The last concert they attended was an intimate, outdoor performance in Montana by a Virginia native, Bruce Hornsby, in August 2022 – a birthday gift from Hoyle to Harney.