Good Job, Airplane!: Strongsville Author Looks at Life in a New Way

Brian Gale and his family -- wife Kelly and son Logan -- were on a plane to Disney World a few years ago.

They'd upgraded to business class, to the unspoken "harumphs" of the other passengers, executives less than thrilled to be flying with an excited 2-year-old.

The flight went fine, though, and the plane touched down.

"All of a sudden, you hear this little voice: 'Good job, airplane!'" Gale recalls.

Everyone laughed; Logan had won them over. More important, he'd given Dad an epiphany of sorts.

"I saw that attitude -- that wonder of how things happen," Gale says. "That became the impetus of looking at life through Logan's eyes."

From Loss and Pain  . . .

Those three words would become Gale's mantra, and eventually the title of his book. 

Good Job, Airplane! Life, Loss and Business through the Eyes of My Son was published in the fall as a way to share the life-affirming message of hope Gale and his family learned after a devastating loss.

Kelly was seven months pregnant with their daughter, Peyton, in February 2008 when she felt something was wrong. The baby wasn't moving.

They rushed to the hospital to hear the worst news they could imagine: Peyton had died in the womb.

The next morning, with Kelly still in the hospital and Brian red-eyed from a sleepless night, Logan, awoke and immediately sensed something was wrong.

Brian explained that Peyton had died. 

Logan processed the news and decided how to help.

"Daddy, let's play dinosaurs," he said. 

It was exactly what Gale needed. His son wasn't trying to give him advice or solve the problem -- just lead him to something they did for fun. 

Gale recalls "a moment of clarity."

Yes, he had a huge loss and a mountain of grief to climb over, but he also had this boy, right here, right now.

"I decided I'm not going to complain about things," he says. "We've only got this short window of time."

 . . . Comes New Hope

With Kelly agreeing that they wanted something positive to come from Peyton's death, they focused their attention on Logan, who is now 7 and a student at Sts. Joseph and John School, and try to see life through his eyes.

Sure, they were busy with careers -- Gale owns I.D. Images, a label manufacturer in Brunswick -- but they realized their first priority should be to share their son's wonder at the world. 

"The big message is: Don't lose that opportunity," Gale says.

He has brought that philosophy to his company, becoming the kind of boss who lets employees work around their kids' schedules and who allows one woman who rescues dogs bring recovering pups into the office. 

Would he have adopted that outlook and written a book without suffering a personal loss? Probably not.

"The tragedy put things in perspective. Our revenues are down? Well, big deal," Gale says. "It really helped me focus on what's important in life."

The book, available on Amazon.com, has drawn good reviews. "Brian takes readers on a powerful journey of how to transform tragedy into triumph by seeing the wrold through the eyes of our children," writes Dustin S. Klein, co-author of Stella's Way and The Benevolent Dictator.

Gale, a 1992 St. Ignatius High School graduate who grew up in Strongsville, left to attend Harvard University and wound up living in Boston and Chicago before moving back to his hometown in 2003, still says "Good job, airplane" to himself on every flight.

He stops to think about the miracle of flying thousands of miles in a few hours -- something only a child would typically notice.

"Really, 99 percent of the time, things go right," he says. "Be awed by what occurs, and be grateful for it."