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Avon Park Hangar Holds Aviation History

Jasmina Meyer, Highlands Today

Don Soldini speaks about the history of his 1942 DC-3 during an interview at the Avon Park Executive Airport on Thursday. Soldini purchased the plane at an auction about a year after it was hijacked outside of Havana, Cuba and diverted to Key West.

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By GARY PINNELL

Highlands Today

Published: December 19, 2008

Don Soldini is a different breed of cat.

Today, he's like the older Elvis, a chubby millionaire who unhesitatingly anoints himself "one of the largest landowners in Highlands County," involved in Avon Park Estates, Lake Placid Development and Leisure Lakes Development.

His real estate development corporation is international, headquartered in Panama City, Panama. He has another office in Pompano Beach. And he drives a Rolls Royce, but he has trouble putting down the top for a photo.

Soldini called because he bought a hijacked plane four years ago that he wants to give back.

"To the Cuban people," he says, his voice imploring for understanding. "It belongs to them."

And why is he so interested in the Cubans that he'd want to buy a 1942 DC-3, a 65-foot-long bird with a 95-foot wingspan, which has been hangared in pieces at Avon Park Executive Airport for six years, at a cost of $1,200 a month?

Two reasons, says Soldini, one of those people who answers questions in a scattergun fashion, facts here, logic there, so that's it's difficult to discern if he's really gotten to the point.

One is its historical value. Soldini said he's researched the tail number registry, and found it was assembled by Douglas Aircraft in the U.S. and transferred to the Royal Air Force in India. Lord Admiral Louis Mountbatten used it during World War II in the Burma campaign. It was used in the Berlin Airlift, then sold to the French Air Force to fight in Indochina; then to Canada for a cargo plane; then sold to Cuba as an inter-island airliner, where it was hijacked and brought to the U.S., where Soldini eventually bought it.

This is all according to Soldini. It's interesting enough that he formed his own production company, Lame Duck. He's already flown a film crew to Europe, so the documentary - "Diary of a Warbird" - will be done in March. By the way, the same plane, when configured for the military for cargo and troop transport, is called a C-47 Dakota.

The second reason is that Soldini is one of several hundred American boys who, back in the 1950s, when being a revolutionary was such a romantic notion, went to Cuba and fought with Fidel and Raul Castro, and Che Guevara. Did Lt. Soldini actually know them?

"Of course," he said Thursday afternoon in Avon Park. "I knew all those guys. There were only 300 of us.

"But you gotta understand," said Soldini, a half-Italian from Brooklyn who dresses in a '50s style beige Cuban Guaybera shirt and a Panama hat. "I'm a capitalist today."

Yes. That was clear from the moment he pulled up in the silver Rolls, with a white Ford Explorer for an escort.

Back then, he was a freedom fighter? "Yes," he said, not quibbling with the description.

And today? How does he feel about Castro? "I have big philosophical differences with Fidel," said Soldini. "He knows that. I declined a scholarship and went to school in Mexico."

Soldini still feels solidarity with the Cuban people, and thinks other nations - read the United States - should keep its hands off the island so it can retain its sovereignty.

"Absolutely," Soldini insisted. "They fought two long wars."

Google Donald Soldini and Cuba, and there are stories from the Miami Herald about the yanqui fidelistas, the Yankees who fought for Fidel in the revolution. And there's another, "I Fought For Fidel," on AmericanHeritage.com, by Neill Macaulay, another fidelista who sought advice from Soldini, who was on medical leave from Raul's forces.

"Oh," Soldini remembered, as Thursday's interview was breaking up. "I've got to promote my book." From the trunk of the luxury car, he pulled a two-inch thick memoir in a black comb binding.

Back to the plane: Soldini says he's poured a quarter-million dollars into this old warbird. Today, he talked with a mechanic who needs to spray it periodically with oil to keep the aluminum skin from corroding. It's in Avon Park because it's less expensive than Key West, Soldini says.

That's where it wound up in March 2003 when it was hijacked, along with 31 passengers, from the Isle of Youth. Eleven miles from Cuba, the six-member crew commandeered the plane, using knives and an aircraft hatchet. It sat at Key West until June 2004, when it was sold at auction to a Colorado pilot.

Soldini acquired it, and says he called the Bush state department and asked if there would be any problem returning it to Cuba. No.

"They lied," Soldini said. "Usually, when a plane or a boat is hijacked, they return it. Not this time."

In 2005, Hurricane Dennis blew it 1,700 feet down the ramp at Key West airport, according to a Sept. 5, 2005 article in Wings 'n' Things Aviation. Soldini says a mile. Anyway, he paid a company to load it on three semis, and trucked to a safer location inside a hangar at Avon Park Executive Airport.

His hope: that Barak Obama's administration will allow the plane with a Cuban registry to be returned to the island. There, it will seek its final resting place in a museum.

"I've got to do something, one way or another," Soldini said. So, if it's not returned to Cuba?

"It will go to a museum here," he said.

Highlands Today reporter Gary Pinnell can be reached 863-386-5828 or at gpinnell@highlandstoday.com

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