Since he was a child, William Nelson has dreamed of flight. His uncle would take him and his sister to watch airplanes land at Charlotte Douglas International Airport. From that moment onward, he wanted to be a pilot.

In high school, his flight instructor had a health issue that left Nelson grounded. He almost quit flight lessons altogether, but he stuck with it through his instructor’s recovery. He is now getting closer to earning his commercial pilot’s license.

Nelson is enrolled in the flight program at Elizabeth City State University, and he realizes that he would not have gotten this far without his flight instructors. They have changed his life, and Nelson hopes to become a flight instructor someday so that he can do the same for someone else.