Laura Pangallo Fryar and Morgan Samuels
Laura Pangallo Fryar and Morgan Samuels
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Show notes
Don’t be fooled by the sweet cover of this picture book by U.S. Army AH-64 Apache combat helicopter pilots, Laura Pangallo Fryar (author) and Morgan Samuels (illustrator). In this interview we geek out on helicopter flying, military careers, “delivering justice” for U.S. ground forces, active duty parenthood, and creative pursuits—and also about their inspiring picture book, Be Something Epic.
Laura is a career Army Officer who went through ROTC and, by way of Korea, Germany, Human Resources Command, back to Korea as a Brigade S3 where she had her first child, and NORTHCOM, is currently in her final tour of duty as a Professor of Military Science for Auburn University’s Army ROTC program with a cadre of over 180 cadets. Morgan’s career followed a similar path until, through the natural progression for a commissioned officer, she wasn’t flying as she wanted and decided to leave the Army. She flew scenic tours at Mount Rushmore, oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, and eventually transitioned to fixed wing with the help of the veteran non-profit organization RTAG to ultimately become a 737 pilot for a major airline.
In Be Something Epic, we imagine growing up to be an astronaut, a teacher, a dentist, a first responder, or a defender of freedom, and we reflect on what character traits and behaviors we can work on now that will prepare us to be something EPIC.
The blurb:
“Be Something Epic” demonstrates the rewards of setting goals, chasing dreams, and fostering a healthy work ethic early in life. The little girl in the story daydreams of all the different things she might be when she grows up, inviting young readers to do the same.
FROM THE AUTHOR: “BE SOMETHING EPIC” was born from my desire, as a mother, to teach my daughter that the choices she makes now can enable her to be anything she wants to be in the future. The illustrator, MORGAN SAMUELS, and I were U.S. Army Apache pilots and Platoon Leaders together and are both very passionate about inspiring and empowering future generations. We hope you enjoy this book and look forward to more to come!
Transcript:
Hello and welcome. I’m Liz Booker, Literary Aviatrix, and today I’m so excited to talk to two guests, both of whom are former Army Apache helicopter pilots, and they are the author and illustrator of a fun new picture book, Be Something Epic.
Liz Booker
Laura Pangallo -Friar and Morgan Samuels, welcome.
Morgan Samuels
Thank you.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
Thanks for having us.
Liz Booker
my gosh, I’m so excited to talk with you and about this book and about your careers. So excited to talk to a couple of fellow helicopter pilots. This is so fun. So why don’t we start off with introducing the book? I have a copy of it, but it’s packed in my suitcase in my car because I’m in the midst of girls in aviation days and I take the books and I put them all out and I talk about women in aviation history at these events. So yours is packed away in my car. So tell us all about it.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
Yeah, so it’s Be Something Epic, written by me, illustrated by Morgan, and the illustrations are actually of my daughter, which is really cool. And it is a book that I decided to write a couple years ago and started taking notes on my phone because I wanted to read my daughter something who she was about two at the time. I wanted to read her something that I thought was meaningful and could… could start the wheels turning in her brain about like, what do I actually want to be? And what can I be doing kind of now as a two -year -old?
Because everything matters and gets you on the right path. What can I be doing now to set me on the right path? And so Be Something Epic just kind of was written on my phone. then one day I knew I wanted to make it happen. And I knew Morgan has a crazy talent for watercolor. So I just shot her a note and said, hey, Morgan.
I know we come from a crazy background, but what do think about writing a children’s book with me? And after we were done laughing and sending each other pictures that we could use on the back of the cover from our years together that would probably not be appropriate for children’s book, we decided to just go for it and we did, and we did it.
Liz Booker
That’s so cool and I can’t wait to hear so much more about how you know each other and all of that. Would you read the book to us? That would be fun. Maybe people can get a sense of it.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
Perfect, all right, so here we go.
“When I grow up, I wanna be something epic. Maybe I’ll be an astronaut exploring never before seen places, doing handstands on the moon, and talking to Martians. Hmm, if I’m gonna be an astronaut, I’ll have to pay attention in school. Maybe I’ll be a teacher reading my favorite books to the class, teaching fun games, and helping people learn. Hmm, if I’m gonna be a teacher, I’ll have to be very patient and kind.
Maybe I’ll be a dentist, brushing teeth until they sparkle, handing out yummy toothpaste, and making people smile. Hmm, if I’m gonna be a dentist, I’ll have to brush my teeth a lot, and mama says I need to get rid of my pacifier. Maybe I’ll rescue those in need, fighting fires, getting people to the doctor fast, or driving my police car with the flashing lights and sirens on. Hmm, if I’m going to rescue those in need, I’ll have to practice being a good helper.
Maybe I’ll be a defender of freedom, flying a helicopter, fast jet or plane. I could drive a big tank and paint my face with tiger stripes. Hmm, if I’m gonna be a defender of freedom, I’ll have to be very brave. I’m not sure what I wanna be yet, but if I pay attention in school and patient and kind, brush my teeth, take my pacifier out, practice helping and am brave, I can be anything I want.
And I wanna be something epic.”
Liz Booker
I love it. I’m just, yay. What a great book. You you’ve got so many sort of, you have a mixture of things that we can be when we grow up. I love that. They’re all very different, but some of them we don’t see girls being encouraged to do as often. And so I love that mixture that shows things that, you know, if a small person or even an adult comes from an environment where maybe they’re not exposed to women in those other fields that are predominantly male. It’s not such a huge leap because they can kind of ease into it with maybe they’ve seen a dentist who is a woman before.
And so I just absolutely love it so much. I want to hear all about how you got there. first, I’m so excited to talk about helicopters and how you guys met and all of that stuff. So I would love to hear first and foremost, because I know that you’re both Apache helicopter pilots, correct? And that you worked together and that’s how you know each other. So let’s start with what led you to aviation into the army. So Laura, how about you go first?
Morgan Samuels
Yes, ma ‘am.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
Okay, I went to college at the University of Alabama, Roll Tide, and was convinced that I was gonna be a cop or in the FBI. Like I just wanted kind of law enforcement as my life path. And so I was in criminal justice and psychology halfway through college, summer before my junior year started and I was out on a run and there was a rock climbing wall that was set up on the quad. And I was like, I got nothing to do. Kind of bored on this run. So let me do that. So I did this rock wall and it was hosted by ROTC.
And when I got done, you know, winning my little competition with whoever was to my right and left, they were like, Hey, have you ever thought of ROTC? Nope. Don’t even really know what it is. And then just had kind of a conversation and was like, you know what, maybe that sounds kind of cool. And so I, I joke, it was divine intervention that got me through the door of ROTC and then there I was two years left and they’re like, well, what do you want to do in the army? Well, I never really thought about being in the army. What do you got? And so I read all the options and I was like, huh, well, I’m kind of on this path randomly. What was I never going to do? So aviation kind of asked like, what do have to do to do that? They’re like, well, you just take an extra test. So I went to the bookstore, got aviation, know, flight aptitude test for dummies, sifted through that a little bit, took the test and there I was, an Army aviator, two years later, going to Fort Rucker.
And I mean, I am not kidding you when I say I didn’t even know the advanced platforms that the Army had when I got there. And we had, when we were in primary, we were learning to fly on the TH67. They had like an aviation day where they lined up all like the advanced airframes. You can go out there, you know, get a corn dog and see all the aircraft and I…
It walked past like the Blackhawk. I was like, that’s cool. It walked past the Chinook and was like, dang, like stood there for a while walking in and out. I was like, that’s cool. And then the Apache was the last one. And I mean, it was, was definitely love at first sight. And I was like, I don’t know what it is, but I have to fly it. then 20 years later, here I am.
Liz Booker
That’s so great. my gosh. How about you, Morgan?
Morgan Samuels
Mine’s a little different. First off, hi. So I always wanted to be in the army when I was a little girl. It was something I always wanted to do. Growing up in San Francisco, I wasn’t really surrounded by a lot of people that I knew in the military. My grandfather had fought in World War II, but it was something I was always fascinated with. And when I was in high school, I always wanted to, and I knew I wanted to be a pilot in the, I wanted to be a fighter pilot that was kind of like the dream, know, Top Gun and everything.
And then when I was in high school, there was a movie came out with Meg Ryan where she was a helicopter pilot in the military. It Courage Under Fire. It was something I’d never thought of before, know, flying helicopters and flying helicopters for the military. And so I kind of decided that that’s what I wanted to do. But my parents who always support me, I was looking at an enlisting and they said, you if you want to go in the military, let’s, you know, get you to college first. And so I ended up starting off in Santa Barbara for a year and I went and did a couple of study abroad. I was living abroad in Germany at the time of nine 11. And I kind of at that point realized that I was ready to go back and join the military, but I hadn’t finished college yet.
So I went back to the States, I signed up for an ROTC program at the University of San Francisco. And I went through and finished my ROTC and I took the aptitude test as well, studied for that with the goal of becoming a pilot. And I was probably the happiest day of my life is when they read my name, where I was going, you know, and then I got aviation and I did a little dance and went to flight school wanting to be a Blackhawk pilot.
And then kind of like Laura, know, they show you all the different aircraft, they show videos. And the biggest video that pumps you up is the Apache video. know, nobody really cares about, you know, bringing people and mail and whatnot. was the Apache video that really kind of hit. And I was like, that’s what I want to do. That seems pretty sweet. So that was kind of my road. And then Laura and I met, I think like the first day or maybe like a month into flight school.
Liz Booker
is that right? my gosh, that’s amazing. So you guys went through flight school together. How many women were in your cadre?
Laura Pangallo Fryar
I don’t remember any in cadre. There was a handful of us. would say in that, you know, the 2005, that’s our year group at flight school at that time. I’d say there’s probably at least 10 of us going through in different classes, different platforms.
Morgan Samuels
No. But I do remember looking up just the statistics of female Apache pilots when we started off. And I think there was in the entire US Army 54 when we went through, or somewhere around there. There really weren’t a lot of us, but.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
Yeah. No. And then our first assignment together, I would say we didn’t, we didn’t like solidify our friendship in flight school because I quickly found out that because I randomly fell into this and never thought about it, that I was way out of my league. And so I spent most of my time in flight school, like in the library studying, trying to survive. But we both got assigned to Korea to the second combat aviation brigade as our first assignment. And I would say there we are now lifelong friends for sure.
Morgan Samuels
Yes. And we lucked out because we had Korea together and then we both were stationed in Germany together.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
Yep. We had our company come in at the same time, same place. We’ve known each other for gosh. Long time.
Liz Booker
That is so cool. That is so cool. I mean, if you lined all the army helicopters up for me, I would pick the Apache. So tell me what’s special or for anybody who doesn’t know, tell us some of the cool, fun facts about an Apache.
Laura Pangallo Fryar (10:49.58)
So it’s the Army’s premier attack platform, really only attack platform if we’re talking aerial. And so I would say, like not to throw hate, I would say every aircraft is awesome in the Army. So your Blackhawk is your air assault, right? They’re gonna get the people to the place to deliver justice. The Chinook, same thing, more people, heavier equipment, they’re gonna get it there. But then the Apache is always there. We’re always overhead.
I mean, my mission is to support the ground force commander and I can’t even articulate how passionate I am about delivering justice for the ground force commander. But it’s got rockets, it’s got missiles, it’s got 30 millimeter. I always joke that I want to be in the platform that can shoot back. But it’s advanced, it demands respect, I would say, to be a pilot of the Apache. can’t just jump in there and think it’s going to be easy.
There a lot of things you have to know. It’s very accurate. And it’s just, I don’t know, I just have a lot of pride. And as I kind of end my Army career here in the next year, like I’ll be driving down the road. And if I see an Apache, like it just invokes something in me to be a part of that community and that platform.
Liz Booker
Morgan, what do you have?
Morgan Samuels
Well, and you know, to kind of play off that as well, you know, I spoke to a lot of former military that were on the ground and, you know, they might be in a sticky situation and the second they see the Apache coming in, they know that they’re going to be okay. And I think that’s just a really wonderful feeling to know that you’re making a difference in a battle and that you are there to protect and serve and that they’re looking to you. And I think that’s just something that you don’t get in another platform. mean, Medevac is also another wonderful thing that the Blackhawk does, but, you know, bringing justice, as Laura said, it’s just, there’s nothing like that. And to know that your presence is going to make a difference to those that are on the ground.
Liz Booker
Yeah. It sounds very similar to a conversation I had with a Kiowa Warrior helicopter pilot as well. So how do you feel about that and what’s your relationship with the?
Laura Pangallo Fryar
I love that platform and we used to do called a pink teams on deployments where the Kiowa would be down low doing recon for us and then we would be attack up higher. I love that platform. mean, there’s something to be said about flying low and fast enough with your M4 out the door. It’s just pretty bad ass honestly. Yeah, doors off. Yeah, I love that combo. The pink teams were an awesome capability.
Morgan Samuels
It’s sad they don’t have that platform anymore.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
And then, the army went in a different direction and now we have kind of UAS as our recon out in front of us. But I miss the Kiowa Warrior platform. Like the Kiowa Apache combo was pretty lethal. I think when you get into like air defense stuff, that’s kind of how it got written out of the script. Just couldn’t really, didn’t have the systems to defend and to upgrade it. guess, you know, it wasn’t cost effective. So they went another route, but it was pretty lethal to have Kiowas and Apaches together out there.
Liz Booker
That’s interesting. And I’m going to ask some dumb questions, I’m sure. so are all helicopters in the Army considered part of the CAV?
Laura Pangallo Fryar
No, no, that’s just honestly that’s a attack reconnaissance squadrons are now the cav units and it’s just the unit designation but they have all the history and lineage right so they wear their Stetsons and their Spurs
Liz Booker
And an Apache is not cavalry?
Morgan Samuels
Not always. There are some, but not always.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
There are ARCAV units. Yeah. So they’ll have, they’ll have one cavalry squadron, which is like the recon squadron, and they’ll have the UAS platforms with them. And then they’ll have your attack battalion, which is just kind of Apache pure. So your, your ARS, your attack recon squadrons bring the reconnaissance to the army in the form of UAS now.
Liz Booker
Okay. And so what were what kind of missions were you on in Korea as much as you’re allowed to tell me?
Laura Pangallo Fryar
You are going to love our mission in Korea. So our mission in Korea was to interdict North Korean soft vessels off the coast.
Liz Booker
My job.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
Yeah. The most terrified I have ever been in the aircraft is we would fly at night under the infrared and you couldn’t be higher than a hundred feet off the deck. We would go out there and we would interdict and then we would come back. But man, being a hundred feet off the ocean floor with the shore not in sight, any aircraft noise, just, what am gonna do? But yeah, that’s what our mission was, which was pretty cool. So we did that. I think we were over there for two years the first time. I went back a couple years later, but yeah, that was our primary mission was over water attack on the Korean coast.
Morgan Samuels
We were there two years.
Liz Booker
It’s so funny. I’ve told this story a few times on my podcast, but so a third of the Coast Guard’s pilots come from other services and most of the helicopter pilots come from the Army. And so I flew with lots of former helicopter pilots and I had this one sort of duty day rotation with all these flights with a brand new army like retread. He had just joined the Coast Guard. He had just gone through the aircraft training and we were assigned a mission to go up into the mountains north of San Francisco on a salmon spawning survey.
And so we’re flying in a valley, right? To get up this river and look down. And I gave him the controls and I’m like, yo man, like what are you doing? We’re too close to the mountain. Like get away, get away. Like I’m terrified it’s gonna come out, reach out and bite me. And then the next day we’re doing our normal hoist training over the water and it was daytime. During the day, to deploy the rescue swimmer without using the cable, we have to get the aircraft under 15 feet above the water. And this guy is like white -knuckled, holding onto his seat. He was like, is this normal? And I’m like, yeah, man, this is what we do.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
Woo.
Morgan Samuels
Well, it’s funny because I mean, and one of the things that we did in Korea that Laura mentioned is, you know, doing stuff over water, but it wasn’t something on a normal basis that we did in the army. We flew low, we flew nap of the earth, we flew low level, you know, we weren’t over the water. And so it was terrifying. You know, they put you through a dunker and they give you your little Heeds bottle and they’re like, you know, may the odds forever be in your favor. And they send you out.
Liz Booker
Right. Right. You’re good to go.
Laura Pangallo Fryar (
Yeah, I love it.
Morgan Samuels
What now? Where are my references? You know, we’re used to having, you know, our maps out, our terrain, and using that to guide and to navigate. And now you’re just in the middle of the ocean and there’s nothing but this vast, just water, sky, and nothing else. And it’s humbling. It really is humbling out there.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
Nothing. I remember reading, you know, memorizing the ditching over water EPs, like in flight school, and you memorize them, right? And you’re like, whatever. You just know it. You just write it down. You know, always in the back of your mind. And you get out over there and you actually like think about what those words are saying. You’re like, you want me to, I’m not, no, that’s not how that’s going. You want me to what? Hover a safe distance away? No, not happening. We’re trying to get back to shore on this thing.
Morgan Samuels
Yeah. Rote Memorizing. You want me to do what? Let the one pilot get out and then fly a safe distance away and then let it down? Like what?
Liz Booker
That’s so funny. Like hearing you guys talk about this, you know, I chair flew that every time I got in the aircraft at night. Like chair flew that egress. I didn’t really do it as much during the day. Maybe I got complacent, but every single time I got in the plane at night, I just had like a three second play in my head of how all that was gonna look.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
Yeah.
Morgan Samuels
Well, it’s funny because when we were in the Apache, it’s a twin engine aircraft. So you lose an engine, you still have another one to kind of get you to a safe spot. And when I got out of the Army, one of my first jobs, I actually flew to the oil rigs and I was flying 407, single engine, single pilot, 200 nautical miles offshore, landing on platforms. And I’m like laughing to myself, like how was I so afraid in the Apache when I had you know, two engines, two pilots, I had a HEEDS bottle. I mean, in the Gulf of Mexico, they didn’t even give us a HEEDS bottle. You had floats on your skids, you had a vest, and it was like, good luck. Thanks.
Liz Booker
My gosh. No thank you. I’m not. That’s not.
Morgan Samuels
Yeah, no, I did that for a year. It was terrifying. Yeah.
Liz Booker
It sounds like it.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
Yeah. I mean, aviation is dangerous anyways, and you add water to it. And that’s your, that’s your day, every day for you.
Morgan Samuels
Yeah.
Liz Booker
Just add water. See, for me, it’s just add power lines. It’s like, no, thank you. I just want to get away from everything.
Morgan Samuels
Yes, don’t fly in Korea. Those things pop up, you know, all over.
Liz Booker
Okay. So that was Korea. And then what about Germany? What did you guys do there?
Laura Pangallo Fryar
That was our company commands. So I did two company commands there. I did a maintenance company command. So I went to the test pilot course before I went out there and then took the maintenance company command. So that command is responsible for the maintenance and upkeeping of the 24 Apaches that are in the battalion.
Liz Booker
Back it up, back it up. I want to hear about test pilot training. Tell me, tell me.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
yeah. So I was in the captain’s career course, which is like the military education you go to when you make captains so that you can be qualified to go take a company command. and then the human resources command comes out and says, Hey, here’s all the places you can go where you want to go. And I said, I want to go to Germany and they’re like, sweet, you can go to Germany, but you have to be a test pilot to go there. Cause the commander needs a Delta company commander. I was like, man, if I’m honest, like the captain’s career course is a bunch of captains and a bunch of bars. So I wasn’t like in the right mindset for like studying.
But I wanted to go to Germany, so that was my only option. So I dug deep again and ended up in the test pilot course, finished that, was, you know, pretty awesome to be able to do as not an easy course. And I would not say that I was systems oriented when I started that course. So that was, that was pretty good. And actually Morgan, she was in the Captain’s crew course, like a class behind me. So she was there. We celebrated, we went out to a bar and celebrated me graduating that thing. Yeah.
Morgan Samuels
We did. We did.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
So then, went over to Germany, took that command, the unit, I met them. They were already deployed. were in Balad. met them there. We jumped into Mazul, finished out my company command there, brought everybody back and then took Charlie Company, which is a line company. So that was, you know, the employment essentially of eight Apaches did that, deployed to Afghanistan with that company and then close down that command in Afghanistan in Shirana and then PCS 2, Human Resources Command at Fort Knox.
Liz Booker
Wow. Okay, and you Morgan?
Morgan Samuels
Not as exciting. We were in the career course around the same time and then I got hurt while we were there. So my, I tore my ACL fracture, my tibia and fibula.
So I was kind of extended in Alabama for an additional few months while I recovered from that surgery and then met Laura back in Germany when they were coming back from Iraq. So I did miss that deployment. I worked in operations at the brigade level for a little while during my recovery. And then I took command down at the same base that she was at in Ellis Heim. I did take an HHC command.
And then just did my flying there. And then I deployed a little bit after them. We were in two different battalions. So her battalion deployed, and then I went to a different job, and then I deployed to Afghanistan with that. So we kind of missed each other in Afghanistan, but came back. She was still, you were still, believe, in Germany when I got back from my deployment. And then I started my paperwork to get out at that point. And so I only did 10 years.
Liz Booker
Well, I want to hear more about that from Laura, but so Morgan, when you joined, was it your goal only to do a short stint or?
Morgan Samuels
No, my goal was to make a career out of military. It was my dream, but I wasn’t flying as much as I would have liked as an officer. After my command, I went to a staff job. So I really wanted to keep flying. I did actually try twice to drop my warrant officer packet just so I could leave the officer side and get some more flying in.
Liz Booker
Is that a thing?
Morgan Samuels
You can. It was back then, they were so short on warrant officers that they were allowing it and then it started to slow down and kind of around the times that I was putting my packet in, they just didn’t have the officers. And so when it got denied, I decided to put in my paperwork just to get out because I wanted to continue flying on the civilian side.
Liz Booker
Would you get paid as a warrant then? So you would take a pay cut, a rank cut just to get
Morgan Samuels
Yeah, I’m a quality of life person though. Not a pay person. So I wanted the quality of life more than you know anything else.
Liz Booker
You should have called me in the coast guard. We would have kept you flying for a few more years at least.
Morgan Samuels
I should have I should have. Right, right. You know what though it worked out. I’m still flying on the civilian side. So I fly for the airlines.
Liz Booker
Okay, so you’re you are a fixed wing convert—traitor. Sorry.
Morgan Samuels
Yes, so I, after I got out, I am, I am, I am a traitor. I will admit it. I will be the first to admit it. It was a very hard decision to make. When I got out, I went back to flight school, because I hadn’t flown in a while. And so I did my civilian CFI double I, my flight instructor. And then I went and flew in the Gulf of Mexico for a little while. And then I got on with this amazing organization called RTAG.
It’s a…you know, aviation charity that helps, it started off helping military helicopter pilots transition to the airlines. And, and so I, I’m actually about to go work a convention for them coming up in October, fabulous organization if anyone wants to stay in aviation past their military career. But I, you know, got with them and at that time they were hiring for the regionals. So I went over and I did all my airplane.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
Well, you did tours at Mount Rushmore. Yeah. She’s got the most fun story.
Morgan Samuels
Did tours at Mount Rushmore for a summer. Yeah. then. Yeah, it was was it was really neat is beautiful flying out there, but I was only there for about two and a half months, but it was really beautiful. And then I did the Gulf and then I did my fixed wing training. That was a hard choice to make. But you know, on the civilian side, there’s just a lot more opportunities for airplane pilots than there are for helicopter pilots. And so I did that. I flew cargo for a while. For an ACMI for Amazon and then I’m not sure I’m allowed to say, I’m at a major airline now, 737. Yeah.
Liz Booker
That’s cool. That’s so cool. Well, you’re the first person I’ve talked to. I’ve heard of RTAG after I retired and you’re the first person I’ve talked to who took advantage of that organization. thanks for giving the plug for that. That’s really cool.
Morgan Samuels
Yes, and I can definitely, it really is a wonderful organization. They’re not just helping military pilots now, they’re also doing, helping out civilian pilots as well that wanted, but it does do a lot for transition, not even just helicopter pilots, they’re helping out, you know, just regular soldiers that decide they want to go into aviation.
Liz Booker
Cool, very good to know. That’s cool. And so Laura, you stuck it out. You’re still in. Tell us about that journey.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
So finished up in Korea or Germany, went to HRC. It’s like assigning aviation captains. did like as an assignment officer. Hated or loved depending on who you talk to.
Liz Booker
You’re the detailer? Yeah, I was one too, so, in the coast card. Yep, I lost a quarter of my friends every year.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, you know the drill. Then I got kicked back out. I went and taught the Captain’s Career Course for a year. And then I went to the Majors’ military education course. And then I went back to Korea as a field grade officer. But when I say like, I’m such a, I love attack aviation, like I’m super geek. I’m a doctor nerd. I love employing attack helicopters. So I had a great time there. And that’s kind of where my journey as an author began because I was the
battalion operations officer, an executive officer, and then was chosen to be the brigade operations officer, which is like a dream. Now I get to employ like every aircraft the Army has. And I love Korea because you’re forward deployed. So the things that you’re not really doing, CONUS, you’re getting to do there because you got to be ready. So I was having a great time, went and got a flight physical like you do because you’re a good aviator. And I’m on my way back to the office and my flight doctor calls me and is like, Laura, you’re pregnant.
Liz Booker
Surprise!
Laura Pangallo Fryar
So not ideal, right? Brigade S3 pregnant, and I was just convinced that there wasn’t anything that I couldn’t do pregnant, so, you know, I got in ride around in Humvees, Kevlar’s, you know, my gear not, not fastened cause I’m huge. I joke that like my daughter ate more MREs than most lieutenants before she was even born.
Liz Booker
I have a similar story to that too.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
And so stubborn that I was getting ready for the second infantry division mil ball and my water broke and it was not ideal. And I actually took a army medevac helicopter ride to go have my daughter. Yeah. So I was not prepared at all to be a mom. I will say that. Like I didn’t read the books. Like I was still doing attack aviation things because I was so convinced that that’s what my life path was.
And I do tell people that when I heard her cry, like I had a functional shift in my person, like change of mission kind of thing. But so there I was, right? Still the brigade three, I spent an absurd amount of money on a Korean nanny so that I could work from five in the morning until midnight to close it out. But it was kind of during my journey as a mom, you know, I’ve never…
I don’t have any nieces and nephews. Like I’ve never really read kids books. So, you know, that’s kind of how it started was I’m getting these books to read here. I’m like, what is this garbage? Like, what is, what am I reading? Like, is there no book out there to like empower tiny humans? And I probably have like way too high expectations of what like my two year old could achieve…
Morgan Samuels
No.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
But I just didn’t find what I was looking for. And that kind of sparked the interest. I actually, the first book I read that kind of like shot me into this and I’m blanking on the author was, I Like Myself. And it’s a rhyming book about liking yourself just the way you are and not caring what other people say. And I was like, this, this is what I’m saying. This is a good message. I like this message. And it kind of sparked me to, so I was just writing books on my phone and just all kind of came together. Honestly, I just wanted to do it. Me and Morgan are, I mean, we’re not authors.
Liz Booker
Well, you are now.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
I would say we come from a crazy background. Yeah, so we kind of just, I mean, we tried to do it all kinds of different ways. I think probably every author will tell you like, I have regrets and now I did it. And if I would have known more, I would have done it differently. So we, you know, we struggled through our hybrid publishing journey together, but it’s out now. And we want to make it, we want to make it bigger, right? We want to do be something epic aviation and just all the different ways that you can be an aviator and what careers you can have.
Morgan Samuels
Yeah.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
My husband is a retired Air Force officer and now a cattle rancher. So I want to do like be something epic, know, agriculture or farming, all the things. So we want to keep it going, but the journey definitely started for me being like the most unlikely of mothers and just kind of reading children’s book for the first time thinking like, well, we can do better for our kids.
Morgan Samuels
Mm -hmm.
Morgan Samuels
Okay.
Liz Booker
That’s so great. you wrapped up that tour, you were a mom, then, and so like, where are you in your career journey now?
Laura Pangallo Fryar
Yep. So I finished up my time in Korea. Then I went to Northcom in Colorado Springs, Peterson Air Force Base to get my joint credit. And then I competed for battalion command, got picked up, simultaneously got picked up to be a professor of military science at Auburn University. And so I deferred my battalion command to go to Auburn just to kind of try that out, which is kind of funny, right? When I, when I got the news Auburn, I spit my coffee out on my screen because I started at Alabama.
So I deferred command to go there for a year. And when I got there, honestly, I just found the job to be so rewarding. you know, the cadets there, I mean, they just motivate me every day. They’re, not jaded. They’re just hungry to be in the army. and you know, they love the army as much as I love the army. And I found that to be enough, if that makes sense.
Liz Booker
yeah, absolutely.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
And I have now I have about to be a, daughter is about to turn six in October and my now son is about to turn four in October. So it just seemed like for me, the right choice was to decline command and ride it out in ROTC. So I’m currently the professor of military science at Auburn University. And this is my third academic year that I’m in and I will retire December of 2025. know, depending on the day you hear me
Liz Booker
As an O5?
Laura Pangallo Fryar
Yep.
Liz Booker
You go girl. That’s awesome. Good for you.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
Thanks! So I’m either super excited about it or if you catch me another day I’m crying in my car because I already miss it. Yeah. Yeah. But that’s where I’m at.
Liz Booker
Yeah, yeah, it’s okay. You’re gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay. I promise.
Morgan Samuels
It’s a transition.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
That’s so great. What a great story. And so much about, you know, having children on active duty at times when you weren’t planning to. And even—so I have three children, one of them was planned. And even when it was planned, it was still a challenge. You know, I was flying operationally when I had her, like, I get it and I think that will resonate with a lot of people to be honest with you.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
Yeah, it’s definitely a, I don’t know, it’s just you gotta navigate and everybody’s so unique in what resources they have, if they have family close, I mean, just the cost of childcare is definitely more than you make in some instances. Yeah, yeah.
Liz Booker
Yeah, I spent more than I was making for quite a while. Yeah, for sure. And so you talked about having the inception of this idea. And so talk about how you decided to team up on this, what that conversation looked like.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
So Morgan, she kind of downplayed her journey. She’s like the fearless person in this relationship, honestly. Like I stayed the grind. Like I was never gonna get out of the army. And Morgan was like, you know what? I think I’m gonna do something else. Which I think is terrifying, especially at the 10 year mark. So then she’s flying helicopter tours at Mount Rushmore. She’s flying to the oil rig. She was actually gonna join the Australian military at one point. I mean, she’s just…
She also speaks multiple languages, like she’s fluent in German. She’s just an incredible talent. But on this journey, at one point she was traveling the United States in a van and she was selling art. She decided, I want to be an artist. So she was doing watercolor, amazing watercolors. And like she would draw the aircraft and paint it. And it was like too standard on the aircraft. So I’d actually commissioned her to do some paintings for me that I have hanging in my house of horses and you she.
All kinds of stuff. So I knew that she had this talent. We always stay in touch. And so I had finished the words and kind of, you know, as every army officer will put it into PowerPoint to make it real. And then I just called her up and was like, Morgan, do you think you could, you want to like do this with me? Do you want to draw these pictures? And she was like, yeah, send me. I said, I want it to be Patton. That’s another thing. My daughter’s name is General Patton because she was supposed to be born on Patton’s birthday, but she wasn’t, so I named her Patton.
So I just started sending her pictures of Patton and she would put them into watercolors and I started adding them to the PowerPoint. Before you knew it, we had a full PowerPoint deck and it looked awesome. And yeah, so we just, I don’t know, I tried to do as much research as I could. I would CC her when I was pitching all the queries, because we were gonna be in Penguin books, I was sure of it.
Morgan Samuels
Hahaha.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
And then after about a year of that, you know, just not hearing anything or, know, the cookie cutter like, thanks, but no, thanks, we started just kind of doing interviews with hybrid publishers. We went with Dorrance, which I don’t know that I would recommend to anybody that I liked.
Morgan Samuels
But maybe people we don’t like.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
but that’s who we went with. Yeah. yeah. And we did it and we finally got our copies last year.
And it has been so well received. I don’t think we actually had a plan for marketing. So we’re just kind of like flying blind and figuring out as we go, but we meet awesome people like yourself and friends of friends of friends are pushing it out places. And, you know, we’re in aviation museums now and we’ve more than made back our investment, which I think goal. Yeah, that was the goal.
Liz Booker
that’s brilliant. Well, you didn’t see me like I was seething here when you were talking about the traditional companies rejecting you. Like it just infuriates me, especially with a book like this that has broad appeal. I get it if like not everybody’s crusade is specifically about aviation, even though ours is, but then, come on a book like yours, it’s much broader than that. like, what are they doing? Because like, what are they publishing?
Morgan Samuels
One of the issues that we weren’t really prepared for is that we thought we had this amazing product and it’s really i think overwhelming at first you not even knowing where to begin i mean there’s there’s such a process to publishing a book and you know neither of us i mean laura mentioned it never ever done this before. You know she came to me with this amazing idea I loved the book the first time I read it and knew I was gonna be a part of it because she’s talented, one of the most amazing women I’ve ever met in my life.
And so she comes out with this fabulous book and I could just see it in my head. And I really thought, you know, it would be a lot easier to promote it and to find a company that would be willing to take a chance. you know, there’s so many different types of companies out there and there’s a lot of saturation, I guess, in the market that it’s just hard to get noticed.
And everything is a learning experience. And I think for us, this was a learning experience. We didn’t know anything about publishing. We didn’t really know how to get out there. Laura did a lot of wonderful research. I was always gone, always working. So she did a lot of the research for us, in that sense.
Not even just like traditional companies, just companies in general and like how you even go about trying to promote something and get in contact with these different agencies because there’s not really a guideline out there of how to navigate the process. And Laura was wonderful. She did a lot of great research, but for us not really knowing what to do or where to look, it was really hard. And Laura had mentioned, you know, we don’t have like a big Instagram following, you know, we’re not out there. So nobody knows who we are. That was really surprising how difficult it is even just to get in contact with anybody, nevermind, call you back.
Liz Booker
Yeah, well, just for anyone who’s listening who doesn’t know this, that’s kind of what I’m all about is providing the resources to other women in aviation who want to tell their stories in whatever way that they want to tell them to kind of give them stories like yours and like the other authors. So we have the I have the writers room on the literary aviatrix website where I have a huge collection of interviews just talking about writing and publishing.
And recently did a panel interview with I think six published children’s authors who went different routes, traditional, hybrid, and self -publishing. So let’s talk a little bit more about that specifically. So Laura, you kind of alluded to you found this hybrid publisher. You know luck with the traditional publishers, and I’ve already said my piece about that, about how irritating that is. But.
Hybrid publishing is a great option. You say, sounds like you didn’t have a great experience with yours. What did you guys learn? What advice do you have?
Laura Pangallo Fryar
No, we narrowed it down to two. One was out of the UK and they were about half the cost of Dorrance who we went with. I just, I think the biggest thing that I would want to say for people pursuing hybrid is talking to the company. I felt like we were falsely led to believe that like we had this product and they were going to help us like turn it into the book design teams.
You know, just, just really good with formatting and they were just going to make it this awesome product. And honestly, what we really got was they put my PowerPoint slide into a book. and, and nothing else with like, to me, crude font, just, it wasn’t the touch that I was looking for. I felt like I did it all for them. and then was kind of hamstrung with the number of pages, it led to a couple of like not so pleasant email exchanges of how I didn’t want my 10 page book to have 30 pages, 20 of them blank because that was the cookie cutter book they wanted to do. Then we, you know, I got my cover, I got my first book and there was typos that were new, like instead of when she grows up, it was when she groups up in the back and I’m like, my gosh, just not so changes.
Morgan Samuels
And then with the illustrations, and the illustrations too, so they asked for, know, for me to send photos of the illustrations. So I took them outside so they’d have some like lighting, you know, because my house is pretty dark. And I took them on my iPhone and then I sent them, they asked for the original artwork. So I sent them the books of artwork and they used the cell phone, iPhone photos that I took, which, because that was easier to just cut and paste into the book.
You know, and I was like, if I would have known that you’re going to use the photos that I’m sending you, because if you’re asking for the original artwork, I’m thinking you’re going to take professional photos, you’re going to vector them, you’re going to make them, you know, fit the page. I mean, you could see potentially shadows, you know, if there was a shadow in my photo, because I wasn’t taking the picture for it to be the picture of the book. And if I knew that,
then I would have used a better camera. I would have sent them in to be vectored. I would have had them done where they erased the background. And you can see the watercolor paper in the background. so stuff like that, that to me, after I worked so hard on those paintings, was very frustrating, especially after sending them the original artwork. If you’re gonna take it, I’m thinking you’re gonna take it and do something with them. So.
Liz Booker
Absolutely.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
Yeah, then when we got, so a hundred copies was the deal with our publisher, which is pretty good, right? We could sell these hundred copies and that was gonna make us back half of our money if we sold those. We needed to sell 200 copies to break even, but we got the first hundred copies. 50 went to Morgan, 50 to me, and the pages were not cut. They were glued together. You couldn’t even turn the pages. They would tear if you tried to pull them apart.
Morgan Samuels
and they would tear.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
So just kind of frustrating. And now if I haven’t, I try to do a lot of events. I try to go to museums and schools and do book readings just to kind of get the word out there. And we’re talking two months. I actually had to 911 Morgan and was like, can you overnight me? I need nine more books. I just sold 20 and I only have 11 and I ordered them two months ago and they’re still not here kind of drama. So I would say, you know, especially after looking at the Helo girls and the product. It’s amazing. She loves her publisher. I’m talking to her publisher now.
Liz Booker
Good, okay, I was gonna ask you what the way forward on this is. That’s great.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
Yes, think I’m always gonna, honestly, I have about 12 other books written that I’ve done nothing with that I wanna keep going with. One is also Aviation Helicopter Mom, where I kind of like hover into my daughter’s mind to help her make good choices. So I wanna move forward and when I retire, I’ll have the time that I need to dedicate to it, but we will be using a different publisher for sure.
Liz Booker
I love it. Very interesting. Well, thank you guys for sharing that story. It’s important for all of us to learn from our mistakes.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
Yeah, if I would have watched this podcast before doing it, I would have, you know, gone a different route for sure.
Liz Booker (06:24.118)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And we want to make sure that our ladies, you know, we have so many great ideas out there and so many great books now. I mean, yours just adds to a collection. I just wrote my submission for the Women in Aviation International’s Aviation for Women magazine. I write their column, the Authors Connect column. And I did a huge list of great picture books that came out basically in the last year that, gosh, I wish these existed when my daughter was young. I was looking for these books. so yours just is a huge, wonderful contribution. And I know you’re going to contribute so much more with your future books as well. I cannot wait. I cannot wait. And Morgan, what are you going to do with this art besides illustrating picture books? Tell us a little bit more about that.
Morgan Samuels
Yeah, so, you know, I never really did artwork in my life before. I was, so when I got out of the army, it was with the intention they had at the time, this thing called the Overseas Lateral Transfer Scheme, where they were taking US Army helicopter pilots and you can go get dual citizenship and fly for the Australian Defense Force.
And so I had gone through the whole process, flew to Australia, did the interview, got the job. But the process took about a year after you get the job, because you have to go through immigration. And so during that time, I went back to the States. I was staying with my parents. And I was kind of bored. was traveling and having some fun. I did some overseas trips, hiked the Inca Trail. I had a great time.
Most of the time I was just kind of sitting around and I didn’t really have a lot to do. So my mom and I went to one of those paint and wine classes and we had this like fabulous time. And so we went to Michael’s and we bought canvases and paint and all this stuff. And we went outside and we tried painting on our own and it was a disaster. Like if I could show you the picture that I painted, I mean, it was the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen in your life. And I threw it away because I was so humiliated by it.
And so what I did is I started looking at artwork and just copying it and trying to see what they did. you know, so I’d find a picture I like and I would look at it I try to recreate it. And I was doing that a lot. And then I started getting my own ideas. And then I started to kind of venture off, maybe do a little bit of what I could see and then, you know, add my own little touch to it. And it kind of all turned into
me starting to create more original work. And I was having a great time. And right before I was supposed to move to Australia, things weren’t working out. was going to go fly the Tiger, which was their version of, you know, attack platform in the Australian Defense Force. And they deemed it combat ineffective and they were going to scrap the program. And I didn’t really know what that meant for me. And so I pulled my application about a month before I was supposed to leave and
Then I went into the spiral of, my gosh, now what am I supposed to do? So I didn’t know what I was gonna do. So I was like, well, I’m just gonna go on an adventure and just see where it takes me. So I ended up buying a van and I took out the middle seats. put like a Otterbox, not Otterbox grill the boxes in there. I made a bed in the back and I just hit the road and I was gonna go visit some national parks.
I put a bunch of my artwork on t -shirts and mugs and I filled my car up with, know, giclees of some of the artwork I had done and t -shirts and all this stuff. And I hit the road and I started driving around the country looking for art shows, visiting national parks. I had no money. I was eating a lot of top ramen. I was traveling with a dog that I rescued. Her name was Amelia. And just kind of living the van life, trying to figure out what I wanted to do when I was painting. And
And that’s kind of like how it all started. I was, you know, doing, playing around with oils at that time, playing around with watercolors, playing around with, you know, acrylics, just kind of trying to find the medium that I really enjoyed doing the most, kicked out oils way too long. I’m very impatient. So, and that’s kind of how the whole artwork, you know, part of my life started. And it was while I was living in the van, I came across, I was in the Grand Canyon and I saw helicopters flying and, wow, I miss this so much. And I realized that I wanted to fly again.
So that’s kind of how I found my way back to aviation. But then I’ve just kind of kept painting. I actually have a painting I’ve got to go pick up. This one is a copy. I found this gorgeous photo of a horse when I was in Park City and I wanted it, but it was like $20 ,000. And I was like, I’m just going to paint it. So I painted it. So that’s actually what I do now. I just kind of do it as a hobby.
I was trying to make it in as an artist and it’s a very hard profession to make it in. So now it’s just a hobby and that was kind of around when Laura reached out to me and asked if I was willing to do a book with her and it was a great opportunity.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
I’ve been seeing her, like I have her skeleton, like head skull in the Apache helmet with the monocle that we took out of. So I had that on a tank top. She drew like an elephant for my daughter. And then I commissioned her to do a horse picture for me. And I was like, this is going to be perfect. Like this is amazing.
Morgan Samuels
I need to redo that. I’m better now.
Liz Booker
I have so much to say. Okay, first and foremost, the whole idea, like I just got a text from one of my buddies who I flew operationally with at my first tour and he took a break from aviation for a while and now he’s flying tours in the Grand Canyon to just get like some proficiency back because he’s looking at maybe doing some life flight stuff and I’m kind of like, am I jealous of that? I might be a little bit, I’m not sure. I don’t plan to get paid to fly anytime ever again but there is something about it that’s that is appealing.
The very sort of linear long term planner in me is terrified by you, Morgan. But the artistic side of me is very inspired by you. I actually dabble. Although I have a million ideas for things that I want to see on canvas. And I have made some effort here and there to develop those skills. I do prefer oil because I am patient. It’s a little more forgiving too.
But I also wanted to say, yeah, so you’re a huge inspiration for like all of those risks that you took. You really are. You kind of like, I’m living vicariously through you just listening to you talk about it. So I love it. You had the courage that I don’t have and you didn’t end up like, know, tying yourself down in the same ways that I ended up tying myself down.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
She’s an incredible human.
And you know, you see, I feel like we, you know, we grew up in the army together. So I just assumed like she had the same skill sets that I possess, right? Cause we’re doing the same thing. So when she got off the beaten path, one terrifying and I’m the same way I’m a planner. Like you’re not going to catch me like doing something rogue. Yeah. And she just, and she took it to just levels you would never even possibly believe that she could do. And she’s so talented. I mean, I remember being in Germany.
And I took German in college, you know, sling a little Deutsch, I mean, you go somewhere, she’s like fluent and you’re like, I had no, like one, I’ve been with you for the last six years and I’ve never heard you speak German, so you’re not practicing. And here you are speaking fluently and she’s…
Liz Booker
Why is, why do you know German Morgan? Tell us.
Morgan Samuels
Funny story when I was When I was 17 I was my high school basketball team went to New Zealand and Fiji for a summer to play basketball and on the flight back There was a German soccer team and I can sleep on a plane now, but back then I could not sleep on an airplane. So I’m on this you know, 30 hour flight and I am bored out of my mind. And so there was one of the soccer players, we just started talking and we became pen pals. And for the next few years, we were pen pals. And then I was going to school in Santa Barbara, wasn’t really a fan of Santa Barbara itself and kind of looking for something else and I found a study abroad in England and I was like, what a great idea.
So I moved to England, a, six months in Cambridge studying like history, European history, British history, loved it. I love history. And then I wasn’t ready to move back to the States. So I found, I swapped schools to a school in San Francisco and that was going on a trip to Italy the following semester.
So then I went to Florence and I learned Italian and I studied art history in Florence and loved it. Wasn’t ready to move back to the States. So I dropped out of school completely. I called Christoph, who was the German soccer player. And I said, I want to come to Germany. I’ve always wanted to learn German, find me a school. So they found me a language school in this town called Marburg. And I was only going to go for about four months. And then I just loved Germany and I stayed for about two years, not always studying German. was 21, I was having a really good time. I had to retake some levels of German. It was like an eight month course that took me two years. But I had a really good time. it was when I was there, I was in Germany when 9 -11 happened. And so that kind of like pushed me back to going back to the States. so that’s kind of how I ended up with German.
Liz Booker
Man, you two, I feel so privileged to have gotten to meet you. It’s so exciting. know Kodey Bogart is the reason that we connected, right? Because you guys were up at Fort Novosel, Fort Novosel, formerly Mother Rucker, together promoting your books. And so this just is so special, so excited to know you.
So you did mention that maybe you guys aren’t out there as much on social media, but where are you if we want to follow you in your book and future books? Where can we find you guys?
Laura Pangallo Fryar
So I think we’re both just individuals on Facebook and Instagram, just, you know, Laura Fryer and Morgan Samuels, and we post all the things we do there. I am going to get better as I have more time and we’ll have websites and do all the things. But as of right now, we’re just, you know, two humans who happened to wrote a book. So you can find us on social media, just our personal pages.
Morgan Samuels
Liz Booker
Okay. And did I send you guys an invite to VertiCon?
Laura Pangallo Fryar
No?
Liz Booker
I’m sorry, I meant to. So I will be hosting an author event at Verticon formerly HeliExpo in early March of next year. And I also coordinate the Authors Connect booth at Women in Aviation International.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
So I did apply for that, which I actually think I’m in the field, but Morgan, we can maybe send Morgan in my place.
Liz Booker
Absolutely. Either one of you, both of you would be awesome. I cannot wait to meet you guys in person, have a beverage together, see some of these pictures that weren’t appropriate for and some of the stories that weren’t appropriate for prime time. I can’t wait. It’s such a pleasure to get to know you. Congratulations on this book. I know it’s going to inspire some young people. For all of the self -criticism that you gave and the concerns about the publishing. The copy that I got is beautiful and I’m proud to display it at my Girls in Aviation events. And so I’m really excited to just see everybody get this book and for things to take off for you guys.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
Morgan Samuels
Thank you.
Morgan Samuels
We appreciate you. Thank you so much. This was fun. My first podcast. Yeah, maybe next time I’ll be a tad more eloquent in my voice of words.
Laura Pangallo Fryar
Awesome. Thank you so much, Liz, for having us. This was so much fun.
