Charting Capt. Jepp: book celebrates life and times of barnstorming innovator.

• Author: Caley, Nora
• Position: Capt. Elrey Jeppesen

Terry Barnhart's quest to write about the life and times of Capt. Elrey Jeppesen didn't get off to a flying start, but 27 years later the project is complete.

"Capt. Jepp and the Little Black Book," by Barnhart and Flint Witlock, tells the story of a barnstorming airmail carrier whose navigation charts spawned a global company and made him one of the most notable figures in modern aviation.

Barnhart says he became interested in writing the book after he received his pilot's license in 1980. He contacted "Capt. Jepp," and the two met for lunch.

"We started talking about my doing a book, and he said if he chose an author it wouldn't be me," Barnhart says. "He said it with a certain gleam in his eye."

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Jeppesen flew in the 1930s for Boeing Air Transport, which soon became part of the newly formed United Airlines. But it was what he did on the ground between flights that would cement his place in aviation history--and save the lives of countless pilots.

He mapped every route he flew, writing details about water towers, telephone polls, even phone numbers of farmers who provided weather reports. He kept the notes in his little black book, and sold copies of it beginning in 1934.

Those notes and that book were the start of an aviation charting and mapping company that today is based in Centennial and has 47 offices throughout the world, including the newest one in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The company employs 3,000 people worldwide, including 1,300 in Colorado. Almost 1 million customers use the company's paper maps and electronic products.

Jeppesen died in 1996, following his wife, Nadine, by a few months. He was 92.

In January 2007, the company that still bears his name celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founder's birth. Employees were treated to cake and to a copy of "Capt. Jepp and the Little Black Book," (Savage Press).

Co-author Whitlock is a historian who has written several books. His first, "Soldiers On Skis," about the 10th Mountain Division ski troops in World War II, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in history in 1992. Barnhart has owned advertising agencies in Denver.

The book covers the early days of aviation, including the onset of airmail service in 1917 and Jeppeson's role as a mail-carrying barnstormer. Erik Lindbergh writes in the book's forward that he used Jeppesen navigation products in 2002 to retrace his grandfather's historic...