MANAGEMENT IN AVIATION HISTORY BENCH MARKS
Between 1996 and 2002, I hosted many aviation-related groups including the OX-5s, the 99s, and retired Lockheed employees as well as former Miss America, Laurel Schaefer, and several WWII WASP, including Iris Cummings Critchell. Former Lockheed test pilot Robert Gilliland (right) visited oſten, seen here during the Portal’s restoration. Gilliland was the first test pilot for the SR-71 and at the time I met him, he was already a popular speaker and personally interested in America’s early aviation history. Hon. John Goglia (leſt) was a member of the NTSB when he visited the Portal. It began our collaboration on many on-going projects. Goglia has earned the Charles Taylor Master Mechanic award, and is well known internationally for the annual Aerospace Maintenance Competition. Photos: Author
was impressed by the Rotunda’s close proximity to the airport and Lockheed Aircraft Company. He conceived a plan to use the structure as a shrine to aviation and worked to that end for two decades. On December 17, 1953, the Rotunda was dedicated as the “Portal of the Folded Wings Shrine to Aviation” in a ceremony presided over by Lt. Gen. Ira C. Eaker. In attendance were members of the Early Birds and other pioneer aviation organizations who were contemporaries of Orville and Wilbur Wright, Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart and Com. Richard E. Byrd. Following the 1994 Northridge
earthquake, Pierce Brothers Valhalla Cemetery worked with historic preservation specialists to restore the structure which had long been neglected. On May 27, 1996, The Portal of the Folded Wings Shrine to Aviation was officially rededicated in a public ceremony with keynote
54
DOMmagazine.com | may 2019
speaker Dr. Tom Crouch, chairman of the Aeronautics Department at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. More than 50 family members of the pioneers buried at the Portal, including Taylor’s stepdaughter Izella Katherine Shafer (now deceased), attended.
OUR STORY BEGINS In 1995, my aviation research led me to John Bevins Moisant, who had earned his license under the instruction of Louis Bleriot in France. Moisant captured the imagination of the world in 1910 by becoming the first to cross the English Channel (Paris to London) carrying a passenger, his mechanic, Albert Fileux, and a kitten he called “Paree- Londres.”
That same year, Moisant won the
controversial race around the Statue of Liberty on Long Island at the Belmont Park Aviation Meet. On the last day of 1910, Moisant was killed in New Orleans as he attempted to
break the world’s altitude records and was hastily buried in a vault at Meterie Cemetery. I traveled to New Orleans to lay a flower at the base of Moisant’s vaulted grave and asked the cemetery office for burial records. To my disbelief, Moisant’s family had moved him to Valhalla cemetery beneath the dome of the Portal of the Folded Wings Shrine to Aviation, which was only miles from my house in California. Back home, I hastened to visit his grave.
FORGOTTEN GRAVES I had never heard of the Portal of the Folded Wings, and I did not know that the 1994 Northridge earthquake had caused such severe damage to the exterior of the structure that it was almost torn down. Instead, the owners were convinced that the architecture was valuable enough to restore. When I saw the Portal for the first time in September 1995, it was a construction site shrouded in scaffolding 100 feet tall. I wore a hard
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76
