Letters to the Editor
Thankful for Modeling and Modelers
My wife of 53½ years, Tina, and I spent four days at the AMA Headquarters building dedication and Celebration of Eagles [!!!]. This I consider one of the highlights of my young life of 77 years.
All the AMA functions were great — even the big wooden scissors [for the ribbon-cutting] that wouldn't cut hot butter. Everyone got a laugh out of this, which was fun. I gave [AMA Executive Director] Joyce Hagar a file at our NFFS [National Free Flight Society] banquet to sharpen them.
Our wonderful flying field, and now the magnificent Headquarters building with expansion of the beautiful museum, is a dream come true. It probably means more to me than any other modeler, due to my humble beginnings.
I was born in the little town of Irvington KY, just across the Ohio River from Indiana. I was almost born a Hoosier, which wouldn't be half bad since it's a beautiful state. I've found from my many trips to Muncie, the AMA folks and the local people are the friendliest and most helpful of anywhere I've been.
My father was a circuit-riding Methodist preacher, and the little towns we lived in didn't have electricity or running water. I am still a hill boy from Kentucky.
When I was nine or 10, my mother, Nell, went to Elizabethtown KY and bought me a model airplane kit for 25¢. She helped me cut out all the pieces using scissors, which broke most of the balsa wood. We didn't get the model finished, so she bought me a 10¢ stick model, which would fly across the street.
Today I still get a thrill, the same thrill I got then, flying models.
I went to the first of my 43 Nationals in Chicago in 1941 at age 16. I rode a Greyhound bus holding two small Rubber models in my lap all night. I met many of my heroes.
My mother died last year at 100 years old. When she was 98½ she assembled a simple all-balsa model, the Centurian. She was tickled beyond words when [curator] Michael Smith installed it in a glass case next to one of mine in the AMA museum. She was my greatest supporter for 76 years.
In 1938 I first joined AMA when a license to fly Rubber and Glider cost 50¢. I didn't have money for an engine, for which a license cost $1. I only built small Rubber models and Gliders since I couldn't afford materials and rubber for big models. This is my 63rd competition year.
I was elected vice president of AMA for District IV in 1954 when I was 29. I have been an associate vice president for several decades under outstanding guidance from my friend and district vice president Jim McNeill. He and many others advanced AMA to where it is today.
Modeling is without a doubt the greatest of all sports. I owe my 35 years at Lockheed as a designer directly to models. Jim Wade, the employment manager of engineering, contacted me shortly after I returned from Finland as captain of the Wakefield team in 1951. I was a textile machine designer in West Point GA, and Jim made me an offer I couldn't refuse.
Most of my career with Lockheed was designing wind-tunnel models, which I'd almost paid them to be able to do. I was privileged to help design some of the world's greatest airplanes: the C-130, C-141, C-5A, and F-117 stealth fighter.
I am a full believer that God bestows special blessings to modelers. We have to do things that the average citizen is not required to do. Adding together all the disciplines of modeling, Free Flight, Radio Control, Control Line, boats, race cars, and rockets, we modelers are outnumbered by over 1,000 to one by fishermen and hunters.
We modelers should consider ourselves part of a brotherhood. Few, if any, organizations are as blessed as modelers, having as many fine people as we have.
By helping the upcoming young people like the Science Olympiad, we can ensure the future of modeling. Most of what we know we learned from someone else, beginning with our parents, then teachers, fellow workers, family members, and modelers. The things we have learned should be passed along, which might be a help to many.
I'm thankful every day for my modeling friends.
George Perryman Smyrna, Georgia
About a month or so we decided to go back to the club's field and give it another try. I seem to be "accepted" now (not sure if it's because I now have an AMA card or if it was due to the club's newsletter), but the same grouchy older gentlemen are still there, pompous and arrogant as ever. I know how you feel about cliques.
Recently I had one of them tell me, rather sarcastically, where I had screwed up with the way I had modified one of my airplanes. I just looked at him and said, "Listen, it's my airplane; if I want to put a flap on it, I will." Why do people go out of their way to give someone else a hard time about something? What's the point of acting and behaving like bullies? I don't get it.
In defense to all of the older gentlemen out there, however, I will have to say that not all of them are that way. I have met some very nice people out there; it's just those arrogant few who feel they are the only ones who belong at the field and try to run everyone else off. I have heard of
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
