The Associated Press

Mr. Charles

SOMERSET, Ohio - Ralph Charles, who built planes for Orville Wright and was one of the nation's oldest pilots, has died at age 103.

Charles died on Sunday at the Somerset Center from pneumonia.

He last flew in the summer of 2001 and appeared on NBC's Today show and the Late Show with David Letterman when he flew a plane on his 100th birthday in 1999.

Charles was a barnstormer in the 1920s, co-piloted passenger airplanes for Trans World Airlines in the 1930s and was a civilian test pilot for the Navy during World War II. He also built planes for Wright in 1919 and operated a space shuttle simulator after NASA invited him to a launch in recent years.

He quit flying after the war at the insistence of his wife, Leona, and settled in Columbus, where he had an automotive repair shop until the couple retired to Perry County in 1965.

But he never lost his passion and took up flying again in 1995 after her death.

"Imagine not driving a car for 50 years, only worse," Charles said in a 1999 interview. "Sometimes when I would mow, I would imagine my tractor was a plane and I was rising up into the sky."

Burial was Thursday in Columbus.