OK, so reading Blair's last newsletter, and the lyrics "and I never fucking graduated high school" I decided to google this guy.

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb..../GeorgeVT.html

"George Van Tassel had a special fascination with airplanes, which led him to obtain his pilot's license while still a teenager. He dropped out of school after 10th grade and took a job at Cleveland Municipal Airport. He hung around northeast Ohio until 1930, and then left for California, where his uncle Glen Paine gave him a job at his Santa Monica garage."