You might expect the same thing from all of your teachers; they come to school and teach. You may not realize that they have interesting lives outside of teaching. Mr. Creen, who is an Project Lead The Way teacher, here at LHS, is a fully licensed pilot.

“It took me about 60 hours due to the weather,” Creen said. “Legally, it takes 40 hours.”

Mr. Creen has been a pilot for 18 years and typically flies small, four seater planes. He’s also flown a decathlon plane for aerial shows. One interesting place he flew to was Lambert’s Cafe in Sikeston, famous for the throwed rolls.  

In aviation, everything is abbreviated.

“The best I can explain it is alphabet soup,” Creen said.

Only a few people around Liberty know that Mr. Creen is pilot.

Social studies and broadcast teacher, Mr. Weis, recently asked him to shoot a promo video for the first football game.

Last year, Mr. Weis was provided a Phantom 4 Drone from the Booster Club for the broadcast class. Mr. Weis learned that Mr. Creen had experience flying them.

“I was looking for a pilot for the drone,” Weis said. “Mr. Creen said he had a license and that immediately made my ears perked up.”

Mr. Weis plans to collaborate on future projects with Mr. Creen with Amethyst Pictures, which is Liberty’s new broadcast organization.

Not only Mr. Weis knows Mr. Creen is pilot, one of his former students, senior Ian Beardslee, also knows he’s a pilot.

“He brought up many times during the class where he had to fly passengers around,” Beardslee said. “There were times that the plane was over the limit due to the luggage.”

Mr. Creen plans to use the drone to teach his aerospace engineering class how to fly it for collaboration with the broadcast class.