Rip Gooch Memorial
Ulysses Lee Gooch, better known as ‘Rip’, was born in Tennessee and served following World War II. ‘Rip’ learned to fly and was certified by the man responsible for training all Tuskegee pilots.
Gooch moved to Wichita in the 1950s and started his own aviation business, providing flight training and charter flying. He was elected to the Wichita City Council in 1989. He was elected to the Kansas Senate in 1992 and served until 2004. Gooch was 98.
He is a member of the Kansas Aviation Hall of Fame, is part of the inaugural class of the Black Aviation Hall of Fame in Memphis, and logged around 20,000 hours of flight time over his more than half-century long aviation career.
