U. L. Gooch

Gooch's grandson, Kerry Gooch, served as Executive Director of the Kansas Democratic Party from 2015 to 2017.

In May, 2014, he was elected Sergeant at Arms of the Jayhawk Chapter (Kansas) of the Black Pilots Association.

A Kansas Senate Resolution, honoring him in 2013, notes that:

The 2013 Kansas Senate Resolution honoring him reported that:

In 2013, as he approached age 90, the Kansas Senate issued Senate Resolution No.1770: A Resolution congratulating and commending Senator Ulysses Lee "Rip" Gooch, and Gooch, with friends and supporters, organized a 90th birthday party for him that drew hundreds to a local theater.

In 2012, he was presented with the 2012 Trailblazers Award from the Kansas African American Museum in Wichita.

In 2008, Gooch was the subject of a documentary film, From the Bottom.

In 2006, with journalist Glen Sharp (New York Times, Newsweek), Gooch self-published his autobiography: Black Horizons: One Aviator's Experience in the Post-Tuskeegee Era,

In 2003, citing frustrations with the lack of progress in the shortest Kansas legislative session in decades, Gooch retired from the Kansas Senate, a few months from turning 80 years of age, as the oldest serving Kansas senator. He was succeeded by State Representative Donald Betts (D-Wichita).

In 2001, Gooch was inducted into the National Black Aviation Hall of Fame.

In 1993, Gooch was the recipient of the annual Kansas Governor's Aviation Honor Award. The citation noted his involvement "on the Kansas Department of Transportation's Aviation Advisory Committee [and as] a member of the Aviation Museum Task Force, Wichita Airport Authority, Negro Airmen International, Tuskegee Airmen and Black Army Aviators." It further cited his role in providing flight training opportunity to young people:

Gooch was elected to the Kansas Senate in 1992 as a Democrat, serving from 1993 until 2004, representing the 29th Kansas Senate District—an inner-city area in central-northeast Wichita.

One of the few African Americans elected to the Wichita City Council, he served from 1989 to 1992, including two one-year terms as Vice Mayor.

Gooch served on the Kansas Commission on Civil Rights from 1971 to 1974, as an appointee of Democratic Governor Robert Docking. His tenure coincided with the sharply increased enforcement activism of the KCCR.

However, despite earning his wings, Gooch couldn't find full-time aviation work because he was black. In 1951, Gooch moved to Wichita, Kansas—a major aviation industrial center known as the "Air Capital City"—where he began to work for Boeing Airplane Company. After battling racism at Boeing while working as a Boeing inspector in the 1950s, he decided to start his own flight business, one of the first black-owned modern FBOs (general aviation fixed-base operations) in the U.S., which provided a stepping stone for a number of other black pilots.

In the late 1950s, at Wichita's Rawdon Airport, Gooch became owner/operator of its FBO, Aero Services, Inc. It provided flight training, charter flying, aircraft rental and storage. Aero Services also became the Mooney Aircraft regional distributorship for Kansas and parts of Missouri (ironically right across the street from the factory of Mooney's chief rival Beech Aircraft). Gooch, with partner Dan La Master, extensively modernized Rawdon Field during 1962–1966. Gooch's enterprise, by 1972, had grown to operate an extensive government-contract air taxi operation, using a fleet of twin-engined Beech 18 transports and other aircraft, moving classified information between U.S. military bases in 17 states. Another section of the business overhauled military helicopter parts.

Gooch subsequently began taking flight lessons on the GI Bill, earning his private pilot's license in 1947, and continued with advanced flight training at a private flying service. About this time, he met and married Augusta Fields (their marriage would last until her death 48 years later). While studying veterinary medicine at Tennessee State University (then Tennessee A & I University), Gooch continued his flight training, eventually becoming a commercial pilot and flight instructor. He became a part-time stunt flyer with the legendary airshow impresario Bill Sweet.

Ulysses Lee Gooch (September 13, 1923 – November 24, 2021), often known as Rip Gooch, was an American pilot, aviation entrepreneur, and politician in Kansas. Gooch was a member of the Kansas Commission on Civil Rights, 1971–74; member of the Wichita City Council, 1989–93; and a Kansas state senator (D-Wichita, 29th District – central-northeast Wichita) from 1993 until retiring in January 2004 as the state's oldest serving senator, at 80. Gooch was one of the first inductees to the Black Aviation Hall of Fame.

Gooch was born in Ripley, Tennessee, the son of rural Tennessee sharecroppers and the grandson of emancipated slaves, Gooch was orphaned at age four and fended for himself growing up in the 1920s and 1930s under the shadow of Jim Crow. Working in fields while watching airplanes fly overhead, he dreamed of escaping to a better life. While in high school, in 1943, during World War II, Gooch joined the Army, and was eventually shipped to the Philippines as a sergeant supervising a construction operation; he was discharged after the war in 1946. He graduated from his hometown's Lauderdale High School while in the military.