Aaron Stokes ♦ 1979–2026
He was younger than me. Aaron Stokes was 47 when he died in a plane crash on February 13, 2026. The shock was real, and like those who knew and loved him, we haven’t been able to stop thinking about him.
A small plane crashed in Colorado that day, killing all four people on board: Aaron, his 21-year-old son Samuel, his 21-year-old nephew Wyatt, and 37-year-old Austin Huskey, third-generation CEO of Huskey Building Supply. Multiple outlets, including WSMV-TV, WTVF, and People, reported on the tragedy and the impact these men had on their communities. The New York Times reported the aircraft was registered to ALS Aviation, a limited liability company in Franklin, Tennessee.
But statistics don’t tell the story of a man.
Aaron was the founder of EuroFix, AmeriFix, and Shop Fix Academy, businesses that reshaped how independent auto repair shops operate and grow. Through coaching and systems, he impacted thousands of shop owners across the country. In an interview on Franchise Secrets, he shared how he once faced $5.5 million in debt, a crushing setback that would have buried most people, and rebuilt from the ground up into a $65 million enterprise.
That kind of comeback says something about grit, about faith, about resilience when everything is on the line.
In the coaching world, Aaron was someone people respected, looked up to, and learned from. But the tributes that flooded in after his passing didn’t focus first on revenue numbers or scale. They focused on how he loved, how he showed up, how he made others believe bigger.
I didn’t know Aaron well. We crossed paths a couple of times, enough to sense the kind of man he was, enough to respect what he was building. But the people who truly knew him paint a picture of someone who treated his business like a ministry, a man who never separated his faith from the way he led.
By every account, a world-class human being.