Date: Fri 25-Oct-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: KAAREN

Quick Words:

Soaring-glider-DeMarco

Full Text:

w/photo: Find Peace And Relaxation... Like A Hawk

B Y K AAREN V ALENTA

During the week, Newtown resident Linda C. DeMarco has an intense, often

stressful, job as an oncologist, seeing cancer patients at her office in New

Milford and treating them in both New Milford Hospital and Danbury Hospital.

On weekends, to relax, she's a glider pilot.

It may not be the average person's idea of a way to spend a relaxing weekend,

but it works for Dr DeMarco, who recently set a state soaring record.

Sailplanes, or gliders as they are more commonly known, are towed by another

aircraft to approximately 3,000 feet where they are released and kept aloft by

rising columns of air called thermals. Thermals, created by the sun's rays

heating the earth, are the same columns of air that help hawks and eagles

soar.

For her cross-country record, Dr DeMarco flew from thermal to thermal for

approximately five hours on July 28, covering 78.7 miles and establishing a

new Feminine Connnecticut State Soaring record, according to Wallace J. Moran,

the official Connecticut state soaring record keeper.

Dr DeMarco flew her Grob Astir, N2LE, sailplane from Candlelight Farms Airport

in New Milford to Great Barrington, Mass. While attempting to return to New

Milford, she was forced to land at a farm near Morris.

"I went down on a pretty farm, in a cornfield," Dr DeMarco said. "I was only

13 miles from the airport but it was late in the day, the temperature was

down, there wasn't enough thermal activity to keep (the glider) up. I just

couldn't make it back."

Still, the flight was good enough to set records in three categories: free

distance, straight distance and straight distance to a goal, according to Mr

Moran.

Dr DeMarco is president of the Nutmeg Soaring Assocation, a soaring club

established to enjoy and promote the sport of soaring. The club was formed in

1956 when four members purchased a sailplane. Today the club owns four

sailplanes, two planes, and has more than 100 members, many of whom - like Dr

DeMarco and her husband, Louis Grondal, a Belgian tool and die maker who works

in Danbury - have their own planes.

"I started flying in 1990 while I was living in Chappaqua, N.Y., and coming up

here on weekends," Dr DeMarco said. "Louis has been interested in flying for

years. He was into remote controlled planes and was, in the 1960s, world

champion of the U-controlled class."

Dr DeMarco likes soaring because control of the plane is entirely up to the

pilot. There is no motor to provide the lift to keep you up.

"You have to rely on yourself and your skills," she said. "You don't have to

have confidence in the ability of the plane. I have to concentrate completely

on what I am doing and not think about anything else."

It gets her mind off her medical practice, however, if only for a short time.

"It's a different kind of stress," she says, laughing.

Dr DeMarco likes her work, particularly helping women who have breast cancer.

"I'm a good cheerleader," she said. "A lot of my patients are young women with

families. We have a lot of good, positive outcomes."

Dr DeMarco is chairman of the Breast Cancer Control Committee of the American

Cancer Society's Western Connecticut Unit and an active member of its board.

She did her oncology training at North Shore University Hospital on Long

Island, where she was asked to stay afterwards in a full-time teaching

position. Two and a half years ago, when she learned that New Milford Hospital

was looking for an oncologist, she moved to Newtown.

Still, it is difficult to find as much time as she'd like to fly. For one

thing, the weather has to be perfect, with lots of thermal activity.

On one Sunday she flew to the Hudson River and back with a group of other

sailplanes piloted by her husband, by Martha Wright (senior sanitarian for the

Newtown Health District), Martha's husband, James W. Wright, and other pilots.

"Just learning how to get away from the airport is the most difficult part of

soaring," Linda DeMarco said. "Breaking away is scarey. I finally learned how

to do it this year.

"You have to constantly be thinking ahead," she said. "You have to create a

new home base as you go."

Leaving the security of the thermals around the airport is difficult any time

but impossible when Dr DeMarco has patients who are hospitalized.

"I have to be able to get down and answer a telephone call (from the hospital)

within 20 minutes," she said.

"So far this year there have been only two such days - the day I set the

record and the Sunday we flew to the Hudson River."

In October 1995, Dr DeMarco set a New Hampshire Feminine record for absolute

altitude of 25,800 feet and gain of height, 19,150-feet, at Gorham, N.H. This

year's record, and its finale in the corn field, drew a comment in the Nutmeg

Soaring Association's Nutmeg News :

"It's alleged," the report said, "that the event provided the farmer with a

delightful climax to an otherwise dull afternoon, fully compensating for the

loss of a flew flattened stalks."