Aiming High

Michael Dougherty, Class of 1997

By: T.K. Griffith ’89

August, 2026

Just when you thought you could escape the friendly shadow cast by Hoban, you look up in the sky on a fall weekend and see the Goodyear Blimp hanging in the air. Maybe you’re in California, Florida or Ohio, but wouldn't you know it, a Hoban alumnus is piloting that airship. Michael Dougherty, a proud 1997 Archbishop Hoban graduate, serves as Chief Pilot and Operations Manager of Goodyear’s Airship team. Pretty amazing, right?

Those of us who love to study the history of flight may remember that the Wright Brothers from Dayton, Ohio, originally started their mechanical craft in a bicycle shop. Dougherty unknowingly followed suit when, as a 13-year-old at St. Francis de Sales parish school in Coventry, the Bisesi family enlisted his help in assembling new bikes and making repairs to old ones. For more than 15 years, he helped do it all, and he even ran the store for the family when they went on vacation. 

“Riding a bike with no hands and piloting the blimp have a lot in common,” Dougherty said. “It’s inherently a little unstable and a different ride every time. The machine becomes a part of the body, and both bikes and the airships have been great innovations in human movement.”

Just around the same time that he started at the bike shop, he fell in love with Hoban during his eighth-grade visit day when physics teacher Russ Bell dazzled the students with several mechanically oriented physics experiments. That, coupled with the Mum Day tradition and teachers like Rose Zaucha and Jan Von Spiegel, pushed young Michael to become a Knight.

Even though Brother Dennis kept him on the freshman baseball team, Dougherty gravitated toward the discipline and grind of cross country—where he immediately found his people. He would letter in cross country four times and track and field three times, and he would learn an awful lot about grit and will from Coach Jeff Incorvia and assistant Jeff Bisesi.

“It poured over into my academics as well,” Dougherty said. “I was often teetering between honors and college prep classes, but Mrs. Beiting and Rose Zaucha urged me to take the tougher classes, and it all would pay off. It was a special time at Hoban because many of my classmates had teachers as parents [Jacqueline Von Spiegel and Melissa Beiting]...so the teachers would really become a part of the fabric of our life.”

Fast forward several years and Michael switched from a mechanical engineering major at the University of Akron to an aeronautics and flight technology degree at Kent State University. Even after the lull in flight jobs caused by Sept 11, 2001, he earned a spot helping build a bridge program between Express Jet Airlines and KSU Flight, parlaying that into being a captain on the Embraer regional jet for Continental Airlines. And then, the Goodyear opportunity arose.

“Ironically, even during my education and training, I kept working sporadically at the bike shop but also had a landscaping business,” Dougherty said. “One of my lawn accounts was the Goodyear Hangar in Suffield, and I got to know the crew and staff very well out there. In fact, they had taken me on blimp flights a few times and taught me a lot about airships—so I kind of knew the job already.”

In March of 2007, he was hired by Goodyear, and Dougherty has been there ever since, serving today as Chief Pilot of Airship Operations. Like the ship itself, careers in aeronautics can be unstable. However, Dougherty has found pride in consistently steering a ship in an industry that many call precariously unsteady. 

“The airship teaches you something new every time, but we aren’t going totally by gut or intuition,” Dougherty said. “In fact, what I am most proud of is the industry standardization we have achieved in our operations manual and how we applied it to this machine. No matter if I am with the team in LA, Florida or Ohio, we all feel secure in the IS-BAO process [the certified standard] that we follow with similar hand signals and standardized operations.”

Landing the blimp is still a mix of art and science, though, and one must use concepts along with procedures to get the ship on the ground each and every time. Dougherty’s wife, Jennifer, a working artist who writes and specializes in 3D art, understands the artistry it takes. Never one to take credit for her own creations, she once wrote a thesis incorporating art history and visual culture’s impact on adolescence that was later used at Kent State University.  Together, they are the proud parents of three children, including a rising Hoban sophomore, Ashlyn. Although the ship hasn’t landed on his family’s time with Hoban, the Holy Cross values and traditions landed squarely in his heart. 

“It’s funny…we felt the exact same level of spirit and tradition at Hoban 30 years later that I felt on my eighth-grade visit,” Dougherty said. “In fact, my daughter Ashlyn felt it too…we knew there was something different here.”

Dougherty got back into running after COVID and hasn’t stopped since. In fact, he runs with the Hoban cross country team several times a week. Like flying the Blimp, running teaches him something new every time. Like his humble wife, Jennifer, he never takes much credit for the incredible standards he has created for his Goodyear team. Hoban taught him that it’s about the group, not the individual. It’s about lifting each other up. Aiming high…and soaring. Just like riding a bike…or operating a blimp.