Used part vital to plane broker.

• Position: Bill Gardner, owner of Meridian Aerospace Group

Bill Gardner, a pilot and ex-Piedmont Airlines executive who started Meridian Aerospace Group Ltd. in December 1989 to broker used jetliners, can take a licking and keep on ticking.

Gardner was 41 and head of Piedmont Airlines' commuter service in 1984 when he learned that he had viral cardiomyopathy, an incurable heart disease. Doctors had no idea how the otherwise healthy 6-foot 200-pounder contracted the disease. In 1988 when USAir bought Piedmont, Gardner's job was eliminated. After a year with a London airplane broker, he returned to Winston-Salem to start his own globe-trotting business, matching buyers and sellers, lessors and lessees from all over the world.

Gardner and six employees work out of a small Winston-Salem office, but the price they get for airplanes is sizable, averaging $2 million each. Since his first sale -- a Boeing 737 to Air Namibia in Africa -- four years ago, 70% of Gardner's deals have been with foreign companies. This year, for instance, he sold two Delta Air Lines DC-9s to a new airline in Nigeria. Gardner's commission is 4% to 6% of the sales price.

His life expectancy came into question last August when his heart began to race, going from 74 beats a minute to 250. Rushed to North Carolina Baptist Hospitals in Winston-Salem, he spent a week recuperating. "I became a sudden-death candidate very quickly."

In November, while doctors at...