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Owen Lee Gossett passed away on February 21, 2026, at age 87 in Central Point, Oregon, at Rogue Regional Medical Center. Lee was born January 18,1939, in Simla, Colorado, and grew up in Central Point, Oregon, where he graduated from Crater HS in 1958. He attended Shasta Junior College and Southern Oregon University and was an E-4 mechanic in the Army.
He lived an extraordinarily adventurous life. As a teenager in 1957, he worked as a smokejumper, parachuting into remote forest fires across Oregon, California, and Alaska. He joined Air America (a CIA-affiliated airline) in Laos during the early 1960s as a cargo handler, taking on high-risk work in a conflict zone and also worked as a pilot for Continental Air Service. He embraced the danger with the mindset of a young, single, and “invincible” man. Later, he had such diverse jobs as crop duster, ski plane pilot, lead plane pilot, air tanker pilot, and pilot for the Intelligence Community.
Even though he retired in 2004, he still enjoyed flying to the Idaho wilderness in the summer months from his home in Central Point, Oregon. Lee is also the author of Smokejumper to Global Pilot, a True Odyssey and was inducted into the Oregon Aviation Hall of Honor in 2011.