Flying With Carl Miller

There are those who believe man is not meant to fly. If we were, they say, we would have been born with wings. But that is not a philosophy Carl Miller subscribes to.

Since that historic day on Dec. 17, 1903, when Orville and Wilbur Wright piloted their new-fangled flying machine 120 feet for a mere 12 seconds at Kitty Hawk, N.C., man’s fascination with flying has never stopped taking flight.  And Carl, the president of Vero Beach-based DHI Advertising & Design, is no different.

Carl’s passion for aviation has been around as long as he can remember. Not long after most of his peers were earning their driver’s licenses, Carl had already acquired his pilot’s license, which he admits “was a little more than 25 years ago.”
“It’s a passion I was born with,” he says. “For my fifth birthday, I told my parents that all I wanted was an airplane ride.”

His parents granted him that birthday wish and since then his love for airplanes has kept soaring. He owns and flies two Piper airplanes: a 1941 Piper Cub and a 1964 Twin Comanche. He lives near I-95 in a community that has its own airstrip. And one of his agency’s biggest clients is—you guessed it—Piper Aircraft.

“Learning to fly is not as difficult as most people think,” says Carl. Financial obligations aside, he says, “The joy far outweighs the cost.”

Read the entire article in the January 2008 issue