News from Carolinas Aviation Museum

From the Carolinas Aviation Museum

THE CAM News. A Changing Newsletter for a museum on the move!

Volunteer Appreciation Dinner Celebrated on Friday March 21, 2014

Museum Director Wally Coppinger announces the Awards for the past year

Excerpts from the Director's address:

By telling the stories of the people who have shaped our aviation heritage, the Carolinas Aviation Museum inspires future generations to write aviation's next chapter. That is our mission. Our vision is to develop this museum as a "must see" destination for aviation enthusiasts and to be an inspiration for young minds interested in the possibilities of math, science and the humanities. We want to thank our volunteers for helping us build and support this mission and vision.

Volunteers have taken tests, shadowed others, learned tours, run education stations, helped develop new educational programming including the Boy Scout and Girl Scout camps. The library has continued to receive, catalog, and store donations as well as helped support new programming such as our recent Artifact Day.

The Southeast Hangar helped support the new acquisitions with the delivery of the CH-53 helicopter and the reassembly of the Bell 230 Helicopter. These are but a few of the ways the museum receives support from our volunteers. And impressively, what it amounts to is over 10,200 hours of service in 2013. We gratefully thank them all for everything they do in each area that they serve.

These awards were given to the volunteers who help fulfill our mission to inspire people with their stories.

Award Summary - View Award details or View Images

Dolph Overton Award: Richard Lautensleger

Tom Davis Award: Lance Braaten

Michael Clausen Award: John Mebane

Michael Clausen Award: Carl Klaiber

Jeff Skiles Award: Buddy Auer

Floyd S. Wilson Award: Geoff Huber

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Time Warner Cable sponsors Thursday Nights at the Museum!

That's right! Time Warner Cable, through their philanthropic initiative Connect a Million Minds is joining CAM in sponsoring a special evening the last Thursday of the month throughout the year. In addition to a grant, TWC will be helping us advertise the event by running PSA's. Thursday Nights at the Museum will be held the last Thursday of the month from 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM and feature:

Admission - only $4.00 per person,
Free admission for TWC CUSTOMERS and their immediate families - with copy of their bill
Free admission for TWC EMPLOYEES and their immediate families - with their TWC badge
Depending on volunteer availability, we will run special, hands on, Education Stations focusing on various aviation related subjects.

Thursday Nights at the Museum event begins this month (April). As always, check our website for up-to-date information.

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Family Workshop Day at the Museum

A new addition to museum activities is "Family Workshop Day" where kids and parents work together on aviation related crafts. They build various aircraft and fly them.

Each hands-on workshop is focused on an aviation topic such as "How Airplanes Fly" "Aircraft Design" and lots more. The workshop is included with general admission and no reservation needed. Workshops are held on the last Saturday of the month and run from 11:00 - 2:00.

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Up From the Ashes

Everyone loves the Cessna 150! It's a photo op for the kids (and adults), for others it's an education session on "How Airplanes Fly" and for some it's simply a chance to sit in a small, single engine aircraft and imagine what it would be like to fly among the clouds on your own. And that leads some of our visitors to question why anyone would donate a "like new" Cessna to a museum.

Let's go back in time to about 2 years ago when our Cessna was not "like new."

Many parts were missing or unusable.

The interior was sun rotted, the compass was unusable and several other instruments were missing. Jerry Gunter was the lead person on this project with support of Eddie and Debbie Shields, Rick Cromer, Milton Gant, Eddie Green, and the US Airways DO CREW.. The aircraft was disassembled, restored where necessary, painted, and put back together. And although it is not airworthy, it is one of our most popular educational "hands-on" exhibits. See more images here.

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Women in Aviation - Artifact Day

Our first of many artifact days was

held on Saturday March 15.
This is a new event and features artifacts that we have in storage but are unable to put on display at the museum. This month we celebrated Women's History Month by featuring Women in Aviation and we were pleased to have JoAnn Barber (former Flight Engineer on our C-130) join us and talk with our visitors.

We'd like to thank the folks at our library for helping to collect the items for the event. To see more images of the day, click here.

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Windows to the Past

by Floyd Wilson, Museum Founder

Our guest speaker for April 1994

was Col. Robert S. Johnson, This was Bob's 50th anniversary of his last combat mission, who On May 8, 1944 flew his ninety-first and final combat mission over Europe, and on this mission, he shot down two German fighters, bringing his final total of downed enemy aircraft to 27. This mission also established Bob as the first American to break Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker's record of 26 enemy aircraft shot down in World War I in Europe. Bob was pulled out of combat and brought back to the United States to meet with President Roosevelt after which he and the top scoring ace from the Pacific Theater, Richard Bong, toured the U.S. selling war bonds. Bob finished World War II as the fourth highest scoring American ace.

There were two things which make Bob such a special part of CHAC, First being The 56th Fighter Group with which Bob flew in World War II began in Charlotte, North Carolina, at Morris Field in 1941. And secondly, Bob and Barbara have retired to an area just outside of Charlotte.