At age 17, Long took his first flying lesson. The one lesson was all he needed: he flew so much that in September 1989, he broke the world record for flying, having logged 53,290 hours since May 1933.
And he kept going after that: his job was to inspect power lines, so “most of that was under 200 feet, in a Piper Cub,” said his brother, Danny. But making record books wasn’t any kind of goal. “Ed never wanted any kind of accolades,” Danny said. “That was not his purpose. He just loved to fly.” Long died July 18 in Alabama at age 83.