 I'm Travis Gross, the Executive Director here at the Sheboygan County Historical Society, and thank you for coming out for our final installment of our March Speaker Series on the history of transportation in Sheboygan County. Yes, I'm not our program coordinator, Chloe. She's much taller than I am. But she and Baby Samuel and husband Josh are doing well, and rumor has it she's going to pay us a visit tomorrow. So maybe we'll get to meet the newest member of the museum family tomorrow. So this evening, we are going to learn a little bit about the history of flight in Sheboygan County. So we'll hear about our municipal airport as well as the Aviation Heritage Museum or center, excuse me, that's housed out at the airport. Tonight joining us, we have Dave Rudd here. He's the Director of Operations, as well as Vice President of the Aviation Heritage Center. And joining him is his partner, Dan Miller, who is their resident historian. He'll have all the history, and Dave will share some of the other technical aspects of the airport and flight here in Sheboygan County. So let's welcome Dave and Dan. As we were introduced, I'm Dan. This is Dave. Dave and I have been involved with the Aviation Heritage Center for quite a few years. I was on the Board of Directors and President of the Board of Directors for a while, and Dave is now on the Board of Directors, like it was told, he's Director of Operations out there. So what we want to do is I want to do the first part of the presentation where I'm going to talk about the history of aviation in this area, how it all started, and Dave will take over later and talk about the Aviation Heritage Center and the Sheboygan Memorial Airport. We both got into aviation when we were boys. We loved airplanes. Went to air shows, went to airports to look at airplanes, built models. The same routine that a lot of guys go through. Aviation interests in this area started with soon after the Wright Brothers flew. Several years after the Wright Brothers flew, there was a lot of aviation interests in the country. I kind of equivalent to the Mercury astronauts when the space program started when I was a boy. That was a big deal. It was all over the papers, all over the news, and that's kind of the way it went in early aviation. The Wright Brothers flight was all over the news. It went across the United States. There was publicity, there was flights. There were more demonstrations going on and other companies were building aircraft, and it kind of exploded in the early 1900s. In a lot of areas across the United States, pilots would go out and barnstorm and they would demonstrate aircraft. There weren't that many airports, so they would land at fields, fairgrounds, demonstrate the airplane's capabilities and take up some of the braver people for rides. One of these, and in the Sheboygan area, one of the more famous aviators was Lincoln Beachy. He flew a Curtis pusher that had a prop behind the engine that pushed the aircraft, and he did a lot of flight demonstrations in Wisconsin. He was over in Sheboygan area doing his demonstrations. One of the people that were watching him was Anton Bratz. Now, Anton Bratz was a research engineer for Kohler Company, and he was a very incredible person. As far as I can see, he not only was an idea person, but he was an engineer person, and he was a builder. As you can see, he was at home with a microscope as he was with a wrench. There was no stopgaps here. Now you have engineers that come up with an idea, they send it to the next guy, he designs it and they send it to the next guy, and they build it, he did it all. He had an interest in mechanics and machinery and car. He built his own car in the early days. He built this thing and drove around and took his family on rides. The Bratz special, yes. What a guy. Well, when he got into aviation, like anything else he did, he didn't do it halfway. He went in on it totally. He became enthralled with it. And after that exhibition flight, he decided he wanted to get more involved, so he experimented with gliders, he got his own pilot's license, but getting in the air wasn't enough for him. He wanted to get more involved. So on the south side of Sheboygan, where Union Avenue is, to the southwest, he developed some land there, and he built his own airport. He put up a hangar, a 48 by 48 hangar. He bought two aircraft. One was a Jenny, a J-4 Jenny, and the other was this standard right here, that type of aircraft. And here's the airport, and that's either a standard or a Jenny. They looked quite a bit alike sitting in front of it. He used these two aircraft to train pilots, to take people for rides and exhibitions. He wasn't a barnstormer type pilot, because he had an engineering background. He was very no-nonsense, practical-minded. He saw the future of aviation. He saw that there was a lot more to come here yet. So he was one of these kind of guys that just pushed the safety factor. None of his airplanes were ever lost in the air, but they were lost in other ways. In 1925, he had started this venture in the early 20s, in 1925, a lightning bolt hit the hangar and burned it down, and both airplanes were inside. So he lost both aircraft, and that's later. So what he did was, he built a fireproof hangar, and he bought these woods in Express. I don't know if you can see that very well right here. There's another picture of it here. It was a more powerful biplane that would fill more of the demands that he had for aviation, and he built this supposedly indestructible hangar. Well, then a windstorm came. Lifted the roof up and crashed it down on a Woodson. So he goes, okay, but this guy never gave up. He was a very energetic go-getter. There was no giving up for this guy. So he started rebuilding the Woodson, and while he was doing that, of course, he worked for Kohler, and Walter Kohler made him an offer. He said, why don't you come out by Kohler? I got an idea. I want to build an airport out there, and I want you to design it, and I want you to build it, and I want you to manage it. He said, it sounds like a good deal. So he went that route. So him and Walter Kohler, they got together and they started operations at the Kohler airport. And what's really unique is Walter Kohler was also a visionary, like Anton Bratz. He saw the possibility of aviation and business and transport, and in every way possible, even private aviation. He saw the future of it and how it could really develop and help him and help other businesses. And together with Bratz, they really made a beautiful facility, a very productive facility at the Kohler airport with light beacons or with a standard tower beacon, lighted runways, asphalt or cinder for the runways, and really developed it. And it got really busy there, because a lot of aviators would gravitate towards a field with these kind of facilities. They also had repair facilities. So it was, hey, this is the place to go. This is the place to develop aviation. But Bratz's old airfield on the south side of Shiborgen was still operational. It was left open. People still use it. And I think the summer, AJ's summer managed that airport at that time later on when Bratz was not there. As Kohler developed the airport, he developed events, because he wanted aviation to really generate in this area and keep going and keep motivating people to get into aviation. So one of the events he had was in 1930, he had the American Legion Convention at Kohler, and he built an aviation event around it. They had an air race from Superior, Wisconsin, because there was an air field up there, to Kohler for that event. A group of Army aviators came in from Selfridge Field, Michigan. There was nine aviators, and they came in these P-12 fighter planes. And also an Army 4-trimer came in. All kinds of dignitaries, other airplanes, other pilots. It was a big show. It was a really great show for aviation. One of the fighter pilots was Austin Straubel. Is that name familiar? His name is under Greenby Airport. Another pilot was named Felix Wakes. Felix Wakes was a son of Lithuanian immigrants. Yes. Are you a Lithuanian? Yes. We have a Lithuanian in the crowd. You're going to like this, if you don't already know about it. Where was I? OK. Felix Wakes. Yes, he was. A very good pilot, I might add. And that will come out later. But a friendship developed between Bratz and Kohler, Wakes, and Bratz's daughter, Martha. So when Felix got out of the Army Air Corps, and a year or two later, he came back to Kohler. And he was very welcome there, because he was not only a good pilot, but he had an engineering background. So he fit right in with the rest of the crew at the Kohler Airport. And then it was Martha. So a romance ensued in a marriage, and one big happy family. And they all got the Kohler Airport going, and kept it going. Kept a lot of energy in there. Other pilots were coming in. And at the same time, actually, before that, Walter Kohler had bought an aircraft, a Ryan Brohm, because he knew that he needed an aircraft for his business. And the Ryan Brohm was a very sophisticated piece of engineering at the time. It was also the sister ship to the spirit of St. Louis. You can see this. If you see the spirit of St. Louis, you can see the similarities. So Kohler became a licensed pilot. But he had other pilots flying around, because when he went on business, or when he ran for governor, he'd be in a back seat doing all his writing, his business. And Warner Bunny, standing there next to Walter Kohler, was his first chief pilot. As the year progressed, the Lithuanian contingency out of Chicago, there was a large population of Lithuanians in the Chicago area, they came up with a national idea for their Lithuanian population to get a pilot to fly across the Atlantic Ocean to Lithuania. Now, aircraft have crossed the ocean before this, but not many. After Lindbergh, there was like four other aircraft that crossed the ocean. And they approached Wiccas, because they knew he was a Lithuanian. They said, hey, this is what we'd like to do. Are you on board with it? And he said, sure. They had already purchased an aircraft, a Lockheed Vega, which at that time was one of the most sophisticated aircraft in the country. It was big, it was powerful, and it had range. Unfortunately, the year before that, the Lithuanians had tried to attempt another crossing with a different aircraft. And they had a fatal crash in Germany. But that wasn't going to give up. They weren't going to give up on it. So they got money together, and they bought this Vega from the Shell Oil Company that had been flown by Jimmy Doolittle at one time. So they brought it to the Kohler airport. Wiccas and Bratz did the modifications on the aircraft. What they did was they took the old engine off, and they put a bigger, more powerful 550 horsepower Pratt and Whitney on there for the power that they needed to take off. And they stuffed the cabin full of fuel tanks, 670 gallons of fuel. Yeah, and it's a lot of gas for that airplane. It's a flying gas tank. And then they also put new instrumentation in it and a new directional radio. So the plane was decked out. But when you get it all done and everything's loaded, it's 8,000 pounds. So they did the testing at Kohler airport. And then they flew out, then Wiccas flew out to Roosevelt Field in New York. I got a little picture of Roosevelt Field here, but it's a little bit more modern than it was. You can look at it later if you'd like. But he flew out to Roosevelt Field, and then they did fuel testing. They put so much fuel in the airplane takeoff, come back. When the fuel got to a certain degree that was so heavy that it would stress the landing gear, they dumped the fuel in the air and came back and loaded up with more fuel. And they kept that up. I don't know how many days or weeks they did that with. But they finally, to see if the airplane could take the weight off the runway. So they finally got to that stage where they knew they could get off. So they filled up the tanks, and on September 25th, I do believe, September 21st, 1935, he took off from Roosevelt Field on his way to Lithuania. The idea was to fly at a certain altitude so he could use tailwinds. But there was too much icing up there, so he had to bring the aircraft down below the clouds. But then there was a headwind. And he consumed way too much fuel. By the time he got to Ireland, he knew he didn't have enough fuel to get to Lithuania. And because of his radio, he was able to tell that there was fog over England and fog over Germany. Doesn't look good. So he's gonna land in Ireland, get gas and continue on the flight. When he was flying over Ireland, he was looking for a place to land and chasing cattle away so he could find a place to come down because there was no airfield. So, and then he was dodging haystacks and a wall, stone wall. And the aircraft caught a wing, like so, came around and busted the landing gear, broke it up. So there he was. Well, the venture's over, not getting to Lithuania flying. But what they did was they crated it up and he shipped it to Lithuania. There's humor there, huh? Not for him. But anyway, his wife, Martha, she sailed across the safeway and met him in Lithuania. And then they had the royal treatment there, of course. And then they both went, after they got all the celebration over, they came back to Kohler. And excuse me, I gotta get a little water. Wakers would continue to work, Wakers would continue to work with Bratz and Kohler at the airport. But he also went on to study aeronautical engineering at UW Madison, the same place that Lindbergh went, but Lindbergh didn't do so well there. But he went to UW Madison and he also went to MIT. The guy was smart, the guy knew his aviation. And he went on to work for Boeing Aircraft Company and became a test pilot for the B-17s and the B-29s during the war. Unfortunately, his life was not long. He died at 49 in that short life. But his contribution to aviation is astounding. And in this area, we call him Har Lindbergh. He was the sixth person to solo across the Atlantic Ocean, the sixth, and he came from here. Yeah, I know. When I was a boy, I read all about aviators and famous aircraft and famous aviators, aces and all works. I never gave this area much thought. I thought it was always gonna be an exotic location like California, New York, someplace else. That's where all the big names were. That's where all the famous people were. Little did I know until I got to the Aviation Center that we had a guy like this in our history. Guys like Kohler, Bratz, Wacus. I mean, and the names are endless. Some other ones. And during this time period, as the Kohler Airport got more and more developed, the air traffic increased. And for a town of 1800, there was no other town in the whole state of Wisconsin that had the air traffic that we had here. It was amazing. Air traffic, air shows, aviation activities. Kohler's Ryan Brom, Bratz in the woods and Express was here, Mel Thompson's Waco 10, Joel Richardson's Travel Air, and many others, including a female aviator who stopped by. Her name was Nellie Whitehawk, Will Height. She was the first licensed woman aviator from South Dakota. And she married a guy from Sheboygan and she was commissioned by the governor of South Dakota to fly a letter to Governor Kohler here. But she didn't land. She dropped it with a parachute, with a piece of granite from Mount Rushmore. That's how it was publicity. That's how it was delivered. Yes, in August of 1931, Bratz was always experimenting with his airplanes, trying to set records. In 1931, he took the Woodson Express, up to 17,000 feet without oxygen. Anton Bratz Jr., Bratz's son, was also studied engineering and he went on to work at North American Aviation and helped design the P-51 Mustang and the B-25 bomber. These people all came from Sheboygan area, which is amazing, designing these aircraft. I'm just enthralled by this. As Kohler and Bratz got older, they became less involved in aviation and aviation events kind of slowed down at the airport. But Mel Bratz, who was one of Kohler's chief pilots also, not Mel Bratz, Mel Thompson, yeah. Mel Thompson, who is kind of like a legend in this area when it comes to aviation. So many aviators, older aviators, they'll tell you, Mel Thompson taught me how to fly. Mel Thompson did this, Mel Thompson did that. Mel Thompson barnstormed. He had a training school for pilots. He fixed aircraft he had at the Kohler Airport and he managed the Kohler Airport until 1961 when the new Memorial Airport was built. So he touched aviation in so many ways. All these guys, all these people, the Richardson brothers, the list is just endless how many guys were involved in aviation at the Kohler Airport. And they touched so many other people. They trained other pilots, they fostered aviation. Kohler knew that if he did this, aviation industry would grow. Ryan Brom was the leader jet of its day. So was the Lockheed Vega. These aircraft were instrumental in developing aviation on all levels. And Kohler Airport was right in the center of it. How about that? A little extra here. The beacons that Kohler had at the airport, Kohler was building generators. And these beacons will be needed at remote locations where there was no electricity hookup. So the Kohler generators were used for these beacons. So all over the world, 11,000 miles of airway, 600 Kohler units that were used for, the beacons were used for pan American clipper airplane flights in the Pacific. They were used by all over the South American area. Just hundreds and hundreds of airfields that were remotely located were powered by Kohler generators with their beacons. So that's another contribution that Kohler made to aviation. He was also a champion of aviation. And some of the laws he pushed or some of the ideas he pushed towards aviation were fundamental and used in aviation for years. That was just a little, but that's the contribution that these gentlemen and these companies made in this area. That's my part, Dave. Here we go, here we go. I'd like to thank Dan for giving his presentation. We were bouncing stuff off, doing this presentation. We were kind of bouncing stuff off of each other. And I was amazed at the stuff that I learned from him. So it's kind of nice. I'm gonna do a presentation on the Shabbat County Airport and how that all got started all the way up to present day. I'm gonna have some fun stuff in there, some stuff that you might know and you might not know. And I'm gonna kind of ask you, especially about the dedication, if anybody's been there. But I was at both of the Ryder Cup and the 2015 Gulf outings. And so I'll talk a little bit about that too. So in 1955, the Shabbat and County Council, they decided to... They had all these airports over the city. They had the Vandervaart, they had the Brods, they had the Kohler, they had Polarware, had an airport. These were all grass strips and stuff. So what they did was, the Jet Age was just starting to come in in the 1950s and these were all grass strips and they had the vision and the foresight to say, hey, we have to get some more people into the, as far as jets coming in and stuff like that. So they had to build an airport. They went to the Shiboyne County and they said, we'd like to build an airport. So what they did was, they had the Wisconsin Aeronautical Commission. They said, you got two spots. One was section 13 and that was two miles north of Shiboyne Falls. The other one was section 15 where the airport is right now and that's about a mile and a half or two miles northwest of the airport. So Oscar Damrell, he got a group of guys together. It was Edwin Fessler was a chair of that committee and also Walter Ireland. So they got together with the rest of the committee and they started in 1955 going around and getting all the stuff together, the financing, the plots, where they're gonna build it. Anyways, the Wisconsin Aeronautical Commission said that section 13 was not quite right for the airport so they did section 15. And so they started to plan around that and then they went to the landowners, bought land from the Strauss family, the Criplines, the Markwards, the Schlick things and they bought property. They started getting that all bought up. Then they went to different construction people. They went to Reliance for the black topping and they went to a cramp for the digging and the excavating of the airport. So when that was back in 1959, Walter Ireland dug the first shovel of dirt for the Shmoyne County Airport. So things started to move pretty quickly. By 1960, they need an airport manager. So actually this is what the airport looked like when they got done with it. The airport was built in two phases. One was the runways. The other one was the buildings and navigation, the lights and all that stuff. So they got that put together and when they had to go out and find an airport manager. So they went around and they knew that Chaplin had an airport out in Plymouth. Harry Chaplin, a little story on him. Harry Chaplin was in the Air Force at the time or Army Air Corps and he came back. His mother had the family farm, Edith, and they turned the family farm into an air park out in Plymouth. Harry's dad, Harvey, was with, he had his lighting business. So what he did was he put some money towards it and he built the first hangar on Chaplin Air Park. So Harry was running that air park and he got called by the commission or committee and by that time he was running a bunch of different airports. He had five airports that he was running or five airports that he ran. One was the Wapaka Municipal, of course, the Chaplin Air Park, and also Manitowoc and Barabusa. He knew pretty much about how to run an airport. So then he got on board and like I said, everything's starting to work pretty quick here. They, like I said, they broke around in 1959. They got the funds and stuff for it and they got the runways built by 1960. They were flying airplanes on that field. It wasn't quite done, but that's Harry Chaplin right there. So he got a bunch of it going along with the committees and also in 1962 they got the airport done they had a bunch of, they had a big dedication and that's where I'd like you to come in. How many people were at that dedication? Has anybody been to the dedication? I've talked to a couple people. That was a work in progress in itself because they had different things going on there. The first day it rained, so they had to cancel everything except for Cole Palin who he came in from the Reingbeck Museum out in New York. He flew in his spad. Unfortunately the grass was wet because he couldn't land on the paved runways. He landed on the grass because I was a tail-dryer. He crashed in one of the ravines and broke one of the wings. So after talking to Ryle, Harry's son, Ryle was 15 at the time, but he worked on a lot of airplanes as far as doing fabric and stuff like that. So they brought it into a hangar and Ryle says, well I can do the fabric and stuff on that airplane. And I'm sure Colin was saying, I'm not gonna listen to a 15 year old kid, but sure enough they spent all night, four o'clock, they finally got them with the airplane and he got to fly it the next day. So I thought that was pretty amazing. There was estimate between 15 and 20,000 people. As you can see up on the top here, there's a lot of people here. There was military jets, there was a parachute team. There was also a lot of regular airplanes coming in to the dedication. The Saturday of the dedication, it was ribbon cutting and so they did the ribbon cutting and stuff like that. They had to cancel the air show except for a coal there. And the next day it was a lot sunnier and they happened to pull the air show and the dedication off. The second thing is they had a dedication or a memorial on Sunday. And if you ever wonder how the Sheboyin got its name or Sheboyin County Memorial Airport, it was dedicated to all the war women and men that died in the wars previously. So that's why you got the Sheboyin County Memorial Airport. I know I was at a meeting one time we were all talking and wondering how come they called it Memorial Airport. So they were given airplane rides. They used to give airplane rides for a penny a pound. So if you're 70 pounds, 70 cents. So that was kind of interesting. There was the Red Cross or the first aid people there. Luckily there was no incidents except for the spad there. And actually there was two. One of the parachutes burned his hand on a flare and there was a little girl there that got her thumb bit by a field mouse. So I thought that was kind of cute. So the day went off pretty well. Everything ended at five o'clock and they had different displays. They had missiles, military jets. Another funny thing about it is they had, at the dedication they had generals and commanders and stuff do the dedication and from Truex Field. So they had a F-102 jet come up from Truex Field and they had a car in the middle of Shebaun County and they raced to see who would get to the airport fastest. Now I've been trying to ask a bunch of people who won that race and I couldn't ever find nobody to tell me who won the race, but the jet made it up in 12 minutes. So that's a C-119. There was also a C-123 up there. Also, there was P-51 Mustangs that did a formation and stuff like that. There was a, what else happened there? There was, they had some jets coming up from Truex. They couldn't land, but they did fly over. Here's a program from the dedication. So it's wings over Shebaun County and of course you can see that it was a memorial to all the flyers killed in action and that was July 28th and 29th of 1962. They had some commuter airplanes while back in the 1960s, also Harry and the committee were trying to get some commuter airlines in here. The first one they went to was North Central and North Central had already been going into the Manitowoc Airport. So they were in labor negotiations as far as getting there and they thought that the airports were too close to where either Shebaugan could drive up to Manitowoc or Manitowoc could come down to Shebaugan, but they ended up choosing Manitowoc. Although the North Central still did go into Shebaugan very few times, either to pick up freight or some passengers, but there was a bunch of different airlines. The first one at Shebaugan was the commuter airlines and there was a mid-state and also Air Wisconsin. Air Wisconsin was flying twin otters at the time and they'd come in, they'd load people and they'd take off. Some of the routes were all the way down to Indiana, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Stevens Point and where else did they go? Yeah, they went to Detroit, Kokomo, Indiana, stuff like that. So that's, and this is what the airport looks now, like now, I shouldn't say it looks like that now. There was three different changes as far as the airport, as far as the runways, because the jets and stuff would get bigger, so they had to extend the runways. And the first runways that they built were a 3,600 and a 3,000 foot runway. The second expansion was as far as it was 5,000 foot, the Northwest and Southeast were 5,000 foot and the other one was 5,400 feet, the long runway right here. Let me see here, yeah, right here. Yeah, it's two, one and zero, three at the time. Then back in the 2000, 2006 they did another expansion on it as the jets got bigger, the gulfers were coming in, the passengers were coming in and it's, to present day, the runways are 6,800 feet by 100 wide and the Northwest and Southeast is 5,200 by 75 feet. As you can see here, they started to add more buildings, the corporates are down here. On this one, the Heritage Center isn't even built, so it was before 2004. Now we get up to when they wanted to do another expansion and part of it was they wanted US customs here because Kohler was traveling overseas, that both of their planes, the Gulf Stream and the Global both can travel overseas and what they wanted was to use customs, instead of landing in either New York or I know Plentco landed in Mexico or, I'm sorry, Texas and then so, or flying to Green Bay or Racine, so they decide that it'd be a lot easier, that way they wouldn't have to land and then shut down the jet, go through customs and then take off again. It's just a little bit easier, especially with the range on those jets that they could fly right to Sheboygan and so they decided to build the customs and the terminal and it also houses the airport manager and so they built this. I believe this was about a $4.5 million dollar addition. This is what the terminal looks like. It's a nice people can come in, relax, the pilots can come in, grab coffee, watch TV, stuff like that and the passengers can go through to pick up their transportation. So it's so far it's working out really nice. The customs is here and then there's also a door here where you go through or you go in through the outside to customs. They have a locking cell, they have bathrooms, stuff like that in there. They have an incinerator because all the stuff that comes off the airplane, if it was any type of perishables or fruit or anything, that's all gotta be incinerated. Here's kind of the customs window. Some people can pass some stuff through there but they usually have a door. Here's what the airport looks like now. As you can see, we have another building down at the end. Has anybody been to the restaurant or out to the airport to go through? They call it an FBO, it's a fixed space operation. I always say to people it's kind of where they get their gas or their rides, their taxis, stuff like that, rental cars. So right now, that's right up on the top, it's called Burroughs Aviation. These here are all the corporates. You got the Kohler hangar, the Brots hangar, as at the Richardson, BMS Kohler. Kohler's got Terry Kohler or Windway Corporation, has two hangars here. One's maintenance and one's for storage of their airplane. Let me see what else we got here. What's that? Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. We have the heritage, I can't forget that. Yeah, the other right here was the first FBO that they built back in 1961. They built that, they had a roll, let's see if we can't move it, here we go. And then they had a roll hangar that got redone. As you can see, it's all nice black top and paved. They did the ramp one year and that went from black top to about 12 inches of concrete because as these jets get bigger, they also get heavier. So this picture here is from the NASCAR race last year. So you can see all the regional jets or the race team jets, some of them had three. I know Dale Earnhardt had, Junior had three of them there. And Joe Gibbs and some of the other teams had a bunch of jets there and this is a regional jet. This is one of Dale Earnhardt's jets. It holds 50 passengers and that's how they get back and forth to the racetracks. This year, another fun event that we had besides NASCAR was the Ryder Cup. Like I said, I was at the 2015, I helped out with that. Mainly my job was just unloading and loading up bags. So those airplanes are tall and you're just heaving bags up into the baggage compartment. Got to see Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson and celebrities like that. So right here, I'll show a picture of our DC-3 but that's the DC-3 is right here. And that's one of our projects that we're working on but as you can see during the Ryder Cup, we closed this runway down right here and those were all jets. It was amazing that that went into it, the crew that we worked with. I also, our chapter, EAA chapter helped out with that event and we also had jet events. It's a company that's from Minneapolis. They came down, they'd bring the jet in, they'd park it. Our job was to get the passengers up to the terminal so that they could get either their fuel or their ride out to the golf course. Get that all straightened out. By the time the girls at the desk had that all straightened out, we had their baggage off the plane up to the front door, loading into their taxi or van or whatever they were taken out to the golf course or to their hotels. It was kind of amazing too because with the Ryder Cup, I should say, I should back up, the PGA in 2015 was more of a serious thing where the Ryder Cup was, I can't tell you how much beer and wine I unloaded off those airplanes and on the way back, I loaded more Spotify into those airplanes than you would not believe. And I kept on saying some of those to some of the passengers. It's like, we have beer in Wisconsin here. It's, you know, we're probably the beer capital of the world. But no, they brought their own, it was a lot of fun. The people were a lot of fun and so, yeah, it was a very well organized, the county did a great job, jet events and our EAA chapter just had a little part in it. As you can see, people are flying in, this is also the Ryder Cup, people are flying in in their private jets. This jet right here is what they call a quarter share. So if you don't have a plane, you can rent them. And I'm not quite sure how much it is, maybe three, four thousand bucks, depending upon where you're going, but a lot of people came in on the jets like that, the private jets. We had for the Ryder Cup, we had 1100 to 1200 operations, the 500 aircraft on the field and six international flights. I know one came in from Ireland, but he landed in New York. Because Rolex was putting on the event, they came in from Switzerland, they went through customs. We also had some people from Canada and Mexico that came in had to go through customs. So there was some people that did use the customs facility. Let's see what else. Oh, every time I took either a pilot or a passenger out to the runway, we had to stop and take a picture of that airplane. Do you know whose airplane that is? That's Michael Jordan's. Michael Jordan came to the golf course and every time he drove past I think, I'm still trying to figure out what the design on an airplane is. Yeah, and I don't know if you can see, but you can see the jumping man in the back here and usually the MJ, 236 MJ, that's Michael Jordan. So he came, I didn't see him at all. Although I did see a couple of basketball players, Steph Curry, I picked him up, he came in a private jet like the one you saw before, didn't know who he was. I'm not really a basketball player or a basketball person. So that was kind of funny because when he left, everybody, oh, did you see Steph Curry? And I go, who is he, you know, don't know. So now I'd like to get back into the Aviation Heritage Center. The Aviation Heritage Center was built in 2004. Or I should say, the first shovel was 2004, dedicated in 2006. We had, I'll just go over a little brief story about the Heritage Center. The chapter was meeting at different spots all over. The Bemis-Hanger, a couple of bars, SNR bar, just different places, and we had stuff all over. And finally, yes? It's in the chapter. The EA chapter in Sheboygan. It's very little, right? Yes, yeah. Chapter 766, it's our own little Sheboygani chapter. We had no home. Yeah, we had no home. So we went to different donors and said, hey, we'd like to build a clubhouse. And the donor says, you're not building a clubhouse. We're not gonna donate to a clubhouse. But if you invite the public, or build it for the public, we'll donate, so $1.5 million, that's what we had. The gate guard in the front, that's a T-33. And we picked that up off of eBay. It didn't look that nice. We had a semi truck bring it up, and it didn't look that nice only we were working on it, but they polished it all up, and we put it on a pole and had a beautiful dedication. The dedication, we had, of course, Terry Kohler was there, and also Paul Polbaresny. I don't know if you know about the EA, Paul Polbaresny is president. We had him come down and speak, which Paul is a great guy. When I first called to have him come down, I'm sorry, it's a little side story here, but I was driving, I'm sorry, I was calling up to his secretary, saying we'd like to have Paul come down and dedicate our T-33. She goes, well, hang on a minute, I'll talk to Paul and we'll see what we can do. So I figured that she's gonna call me back. One morning I was driving to the airport and all of a sudden I get this call. He says, Dave? I go, yes. This is Paul Polbaresny. I'm coming down to your dedication, and I thought that was the coolest thing, because I thought he'd have a secretary or one of his staff call, but he personally called himself, so he came down with his wife and it was a nice time. We do other projects too, we have the T-28. That project was dedicated to the Hmong who fought in Laos. There's a lot of Hmong population in Sheboygan, Minneapolis, and also the California area. And so we put that together and we had a dedication on that, we had the pilots come out, we had the T-28s that usually meet at Sheboygan, we had them flying over. We also had the Hmong pilots meet the instructors that they had back in Laos. So it was kind of a tear-jerking time too, because they were telling stories. But that was a great project. And so this airplane, in the next slide, you'll see we picked that one up in Rockford, Illinois. The guy was gonna rebuild it and just never got to doing it. So we bought that. I can talk a little bit about our museum and our next project, which is the DC-3. When we decided to do this DC-3, we wanted a Wisconsin-based airline. And so we decided North Central Airlines. The, it was amazing to me that when we decided to put the word out to the North Central retirees that all the stuff that came from their basements, I mean, it's just amazing, the tools and the, like there's a ski bag here. I couldn't believe that they'd keep all that stuff. But here's a full case of ashtrays and matches and you name it, they brought it. It was nice. Here's one of our memorabilia from Shboy County people. They drop stuff off and we put it into the display cases for viewing and stuff. We have the Hurt Singer, just a couple of pictures from Hurt Singer's Sausage. I don't know if anybody remembers them. We have a bunch of different people that we collected stuff from. Paul Hammer, he's an attorney in Shboy County. He dropped off his models, which were really nice. They're a super museum quality. Here's our Mung exhibit. Not only do we have the plane, but we also have the exhibit. And when the Mung come in, I always like talking to them because they can pick out any place on that airport where they were and where the general lived, the movie theater, the schools, you name it. There was also the Mung religious, they were up there. So yeah, that was, if you ever get out to the Heritage Center, please stop and see that exhibit. As Dan was talking, the Felix Wakes Museum exhibit, we have a full exhibit on that. And it gives you the map when he crossed and some of the other stuff. Like Dan said, he was treated as a hero for going across the Atlantic. It was quite a feat at that time. We have some more North Central stuff. Like I said, they donated the stewardesses and captains uniforms. It gives the routes that they flew. Stuff advertising, stuff like that. So airplanes, you name it, they gave it to us. I don't think I've ever seen that many luggage tags in my life. So what happened with the DC-3 is they, it was started by FWD Corporation. And they had a little Bob, Cessna Bobcat, they were flying people around. And they got into saying, hey, let's start an airline. So they went up to the bigger airplanes. The DC-3 was the main one after that. The Convairs, all the way up to the DC-9s. Has anybody ever flown on North Central Airlines? You have, okay, yeah. Every time that I go up to the airport, somebody says, yeah, when I was a kid, I used to fly on North Central. So it's cool to listen to those stories. It's also cool to listen to the pilot's stories. Usually, I'm out there on Sunday afternoons and they have all kinds of stories that they tell me. We have an upper deck, observation deck. You can go out and see the airplanes. Let's see what else we got. A library, and during the T-28 clinic, this is where they camp out for the weekend. We have a T-28, or what we call a T-28 clinic, there's pilots from all over the country, from California to New Jersey. They come here, they do their formation flyings, and they get their ratings and stuff like that. So it's not only fun, but it's pretty serious stuff. I've flown every once in a while so let me jump a ride with them. So it's quite impressive. Those airplanes are noisy and they have a lot of power. It's amazing when they're just doing a turn that you see that top plane just hanging in that blue sky. It's quite a picture. We have a gift shop where we sell anything, anywhere from hats, to shirts, to mugs, to models, to books, to you name it. So we have that, and we make a little money off of that. Here's another project that we started. We wanted to do some for kids. So what we did was one of our board members had this in his garage, and he was down in Franklin. And the story behind that is he picked it up in a museum out in California, and he is a kind of gadget guy, and he was gonna make that into a simulator with all the gauges and stuff working, and that thing sat in his garage for a while, and his wife said, you know, the kids are getting older. We need room for another car when they start driving, so the T-33 had to go. So he went down and picked it up, and that was, that section was just a mess. That poor girl had a pretty rough life. When it was new, it crashed, and so he resurrected it, and now what we wanna do is, in fact, we have it out to right now, and we have kids jumping in it, and we have a yoke that they can play with, and we have guns sounding, and we have sound of the engines starting up and running, and we also have headsets to where they can hear the two pilots talking to each other, so it's kind of a cool little demonstrator. What we wanna do is take it to different, maybe, schools. I know we've already been asked by Oshkosh during Air Venture to bring it up in the Warbird area, so hopefully we can make a little money off of it. We were talking about the T-28, that's what it looked like when we got it, so we did a lot of work on it. We brought it up in a semi-truck from Rockford, Illinois, and I forget how long we worked on it, it wasn't that long, but we had a full crew working on it. Here's our next project, the DC-3. That came out, the story on the DC-3, we were looking around, as I said, for North Central, we were looking around at different places to where we can find a DC-3, and we found one in Illinois, it was just on the other side of the border, and that thing was buried into the ground, and we thought, oh, how are we gonna get that thing back? Are we gonna put it on a ship, bring it back, or are we gonna take it apart, put it on a trailer, or what? And by the time we decided somebody had already went in there, dug it out of the mud, fired up the engines, and took off. So we lost that one. This one here, we found out in, no, no, we found that in Victorville, California, out in the desert. It was a perfect place for an airplane. The story on that one, the guy, he had a helicopter service that he was doing, tours on the Grand Canyon, and that was kind of his chase plane where he put all his gear and stuff in, and unfortunately that never panned out. So that airplane was sitting by his house, just sitting there. He worked on it every once in a while, but also in the insurance company goes, you can't have that DC-3 sitting by your house with the fuel and stuff in it, so he had to move it down to one of his buddy's hangers. So we went out there, worked on it, hasn't flown for 20 years, got the engines fired up after 20 years. The smoke's just belling out of the exhaust, oil all over, but it was so cool to see that thing fire up. It was built in 1941. It was first purchased by Eastern Airlines. We found out after looking at the serial numbers and stuff that that was actual Eastern, or excuse me, a north-central airline airplane. So that was pretty cool to find actual north-central airline, DC-3. So our plans with the airplane is the minimum is, we're gonna have it as a static display. Our goal or what we'd like to do is get it back to running status because they flew it back from California and they had a list or a page of stuff that was wrong with it. The only thing that one of the guys said is that the only thing that was working on it, everything worked on it were the lights, so that was kind of amazing after sitting at that many years. So I'm inviting everybody to come out, take a look at it, go inside, maybe bring back some memories when you used to fly. I've had the vice president, excuse me, the president's daughter back in the day, 1950s, the daughter, she came out, take a look at it and her husband. I've also had the great, was it the great granddaughter or the granddaughter of an FWD corporation came out and they were just amazed with the airplane. Well, there's a story that I don't know if I wanna tell but I'll tell it anyhow. We were gonna work on the engines, take the engines off, at one time that was a thought of ours and work on them and stuff like that so we parked it up against the building, which is great. But there was one problem, we forgot to lock the tail wheel. If you remember when we had all those strong winds and we had chocks underneath the wheels but the wind was so strong on that tail, that's a huge tail that it just pushed that thing into our building and it caught the wingtip. So right now we're looking for a wingtip, it crunched the wingtip and we'll get that fixed. Either one or two ways. We have one that we're looking at down in Florida, Lakeland, Florida, or we'll just rebuild the wingtip. So yeah, that was a bad mistake that we learned, you know. But when I got the call from the volunteer at the Heritage Center saying that the airplane turned into the building, I thought, there's no way. Because that's a heavy aircraft. And sure enough, I got out there and I said, oh boy, so that's not good. So we do different things out at the Heritage Center. This is Dorothy, one of our volunteers, and she always had the craft shows. Has any of the women been to one of our craft shows? No? She does craft shows out there. So we do craft shows. And here's some of the stuff that they put out there for sale. We have weddings, we used to do weddings. This wedding was beautiful. The bride did a great job. You can't even tell it was a hanger with all the uplighting and stuff like that. She did a really nice job. We have sock hops. The El Dorados come. Like Travis was saying, you guys had the El Dorados for a year, a sock hop also. So we had the El Dorados out. Actually, Stu is one of our volunteers at the time. He says, you guys gotta raise some money out here. Let's get the band out here and play. We have a couple of sock hoppers, pool dress and leather jacket and stuff. We have hanger dances. So these people are all in 1940s military outfits. That was another funny event we had. We have different car clubs coming out. We have this summer, past summer, we had the Corvette Club come out. Corvette Club come out. There's over 40, 42 Corvettes coming out. We have the Model T Club coming out. We have the Porsche Club coming out. They check out because they're looking for places to go. So they come out here. The Corvette Club had their meeting out there. Little dinner, so that was nice. We have kids tours. They come out to preschool all the way up to high school. So we have those kids coming out. We have what we call youth aviation. It's a day course that kids can learn how to different parts of the airplane and at the end of the day we get my airplane ride. And that's the highlight of their day. We also do merit badges. So we had the Boy Scouts. A lot of these Scouts are from Chicago area. They came up. Here's another Boy Scout troop. We did 60 Boy Scouts in one day, us three. Which was, it was a pretty long day. Yeah, it was a lot of flying. We have different kids come out. And we have a program through EAA called the Young Eagles program. And we give kids from eight to 17 their airplane ride and tell them about the airplane. I'm very proud of him. I don't know, does anybody go to Trinity Lutheran? In Sheboygan? This is, he is Josh Meck. And this is his mother. I don't know if you know Pastor Meck. Yeah, Josh was one of my, I gave him his first airplane ride. And right now he's a captain for Delta. So I am very proud of him. We've also had other people. I don't know if you know George Nimmer or the Nimmers. George was another one. He went to Southern Illinois University, was top of his class and he's out flying. I don't know where he's at, but I know he's flying for some airline. This day was the new hire, kind of a new hire party. So they had a little dinner for all the new people that they brought on. And this is kind of a cute story too. These two girls were terrified when I first, and that's what happens with a lot of the kids, they get real nervous. And these two kids were picking on each other all the time as they're getting into their plane. And once we got down, they were all smiles. So that was a fun group of kids. Like I said, we have our T28 clinic. So you get between, I don't know, probably 11 to 19, 20 aircraft coming out. Has anybody been to the T28 clinic? You have, okay. So we got those guys coming out. Are they based in Sheboygan? No, no, actually, there's only one T28 that's based in Sheboygan. One T28 is based in Waukesha. His name is Paul Walter, he's on our board. And that's how they got there. What they did was they, a couple of them did the flyover for Road America, for the national anthem. And they had to land some place. So they came to Sheboygan and they said, hey, this is a pretty nice place. They used to be out of the Buick. They used to do their clinic down on Buick. And it was an air condition. I mean, this is, we had the Taj Mahal compared to that. Just a hanger that we were working out of. So that's our T28 clinic. You can see the people and people come out and check out the airplanes. And they do different flights and stuff like that. And they'll do pass-overs. They probably, I know they pass over the city here. We have our wings and wheels. We have, how many people have been to wings and wheels? Okay, good. So we do pancakes and stuff around, oh, I don't know, around 900 pancake breakfasts. Airplanes, cars, boats, and other things. Activities, rockets for schools, stuff like that. As you can see, we have tractors. Tractors is another thing. Just different things out there. And at the end of my presentation, I always got to thank the volunteers that come out to the Heritage Center and help us without the volunteers. We wouldn't be able to survive. They're a great group of people. And like I said, without them, we couldn't survive. So they were open from 11 to four Wednesday through Sunday. And they come out, open up the building and answer people's questions, take phone calls, stuff like that. So if you're sitting around and have nothing to do, come out and volunteer. So other than that, that's the end of my presentation. Yes. You forgot to mention the movies that are out there. Oh, yes I did. Sorry, Dan. Good. Yes. Thank you. We do have some movie schedules and we have some other stuff over on where Travis is. If you wanna pick that stuff up, it tells a little bit about the T-33, the movie nights schedules and a little bit about the museum. I don't have a lot of brochures on the museum, but our DC-3 also, it tells about the DC-3. Second Friday of every month, we present an aviation movie. I've been doing this for 15 years and nobody ever gets tired of it, not even me. So it's all aviation-based theme movies and some documentaries on all types of aviation systems and women pilots, the whole works. And it's a lot of fun. I run it like a history class and I encourage crowd involvement, experiences, whatever, questions and answers. It's a lot of fun. Make it a destination. The movie starts at seven o'clock, but sometimes we have a guest speaker. Sometimes I talk about the movie and talk about the aviation center and stuff like that. There's one more thing I wanted to say. When Dave was showing that picture of the airport now, I was thinking, what would these guys think? If you could go back with a time machine, grab all these people and stick them on a ramp during the Ryder Cup. Their jaws would hit the floor. They thought they'd be in another planet, but this was their vision. I was gonna say, when I was talking to Ryle Chaplin and Wanda Joann, they're amazed as what the airport's looking like now compared to when they first started it. A lot of progress. I know that the taxiway, they're gonna do a couple more improvements. Some of the taxiways are gonna be lengthened, stuff like that. They're constantly improving that taxiway, or excuse me, the airport, because that's what brings it into business. Harry Chaplin said it was the air gateway to Chihuahua County. He was right. And this T28 thing that Dave was talking about, you need to see this. Because up at AirVenture, you don't get that close to the pilots and you don't get that close to the airplanes at all times. You do get out by the airplanes, but the pilots, when they're at the center, they're there. They're not sequestered somewhere else. So they're very engaging. And this was a windfall for them, because like Dave said, they were all these groups of aircraft, different types of military trainers are in groups and they're always training and trying to find a place where they can all get together and train before AirVenture is not easy. They were competing with 86 groups, T34 groups, and it was just getting to be ridiculous where they could not find a place that would really suit them. Some of the T28 pilots were coming up for Wings and Wheels and when we built the facility, Paul Walter said, wow, this is really cool. Would you mind? And we said yes, indeed. So that versus history. Yeah, that's at the end of July, about four days before they fly up to AirVenture and that's just a phenomenal experience. If you like round engines, it's a place to go. Any other questions or comments? Yes. Yeah, have there been any thoughts? As of right now, a lot of the corporates say with the general elevation, we're getting along. Basically what you do is your radio out and it broadcasts over the whole area and we don't have any problems with the corporates. The jets and stuff, I mean, when I'm up flying, if I hear a jet coming in, I'll just peel off and go out until they land and then I'll come in. We had a meeting with Chuck Mayer way back and he also said that Chuck Mayer was one of the airport managers and he said that the corporates are fine without having a controlled tower. Although we did have a controlled tower for NASCAR and we had a controlled tower for the PGA, the Gulf out. Temporary towers. Temporary tower, yeah, this temporary tower. But most of the general aviation airports in the area are radio controlled. Everybody has their own frequency. Every airport has their own frequency and you just radio in your intentions. Coming in, downwind, whatever. Right. Trying not to crash. You always tell your position, you know, like you're five miles older. It's all about communication. Communications is huge. Something that I had to learn with my wife, but it's not. Something else, oh, Dave, I didn't mention this. Dave is a licensed pilot. He has his own airplane. I started learning in 1983 with Chaplin. Harry Chaplin was still living. And from there, I went on to get my instrument rating, my multi-engine, and I also have a sea plane rating, which was really fun. Landed on Michigan and usually we did most of our training on Lake Winnebadell, so that was a fun license again. I'm sorry. That was huge, that was good. You had to bring that up. No, that's good. I'm glad you did, because I can show you. I can find it. Oh, there it is. How am I making sure that that DC-3 doesn't move again? If you look right here, they call them Jersey Barriers. They're heavy cement. I mean, you gotta take a forklift to move those things. And I don't know if you can see it, but there's a chain that we have a chain down, so it doesn't move. We learned our lesson. Isn't there a tail wheel lock on there too? Yes, and that's what happened when it went into the building. We didn't have the tail wheel locked. So every time the plane sits, you're all supposed to lock the tail wheel. Yeah, the plane was parked on the backside of the building where the ramp is. It was parked towards the windows of the building, and the wind rotated the aircraft 90 degrees. Into the building. Fortunately, it didn't touch any of the windows. I was surprised that it didn't break windows. That was amazing, but when they told me that, I couldn't believe it either. Is there anybody? Go ahead. Go ahead. I was there one day, and there was a 707 that came in. Although that aircraft came in before the ramp was done, and they had metal plates about that thick that they put underneath the wheel, so it wouldn't sink into the black tub. Right now, that concrete is like 11 to 12 inches thick. So we have global express is coming in. Those are pretty big planes. We had a C-130 once. C-130, yeah. Yes, yeah, that's very cool. Yeah, that was on its way up to Air Venture. That was a really, it was a beautiful big airplane, yeah. Yeah, it was gorgeous. Actually, what he did, there was a guy from Sheboygan. I don't know if he was a photographer or what, but he came to pick him up, so he ran out there and jumped in the airplane, and they took off for an Air Venture. So yeah, that was a nice airplane. Yes. Well, Customs is there, I forget their hours, but there's a guy there, but you do have to make a reservation to come into Customs. And then at nighttime, I see a lot of color jets coming in, and also you'll see the Customs guy come flying up, so, or I shouldn't say fly, but drive, drive up. The Customs, as far as Sheboygan County jets, Johnsonville, they have a big global express. They can, I've seen them coming in a bunch of times. I don't know where they're coming in from, but those jets can fly 7,000 miles without refueling or anything, so they're coming in from all over the world. So it's not just these small little jets, I mean, they're doing business all over the world. Yes, go ahead. That wingtip? It's big, it's about this tall. It's really light though, I can pick it up by myself, but I'd say it's probably six feet, four feet. What's as big as this table? Yeah, something like that. The length probably is, it's a lot bigger. Yeah. Yeah, it is, but aluminum isn't, it's strong when it's riveted together, but it's very weak too, so. Well if they made it, if they made it to be sturdy or it wouldn't be able to get off the ground. Right, it'd be too heavy, pretty heavy, anybody else? Yes. Your question? The collar, the original collar? That was right, you can answer that. If you know where the facility is now, the older buildings, it was north by northeast of that area. There's a cemetery out there, it's, yeah I think it was, I think it was to the east of that or just in that area. I remember as a boy, there was still a hanger out there, an older, Quonset type hanger, and that's about where it was. As a kid I worked for the collar stables and farms, and we used to put their farm machinery in that Quonset, that old hanger, so, it's kind of interesting. Anybody else? Awesome, thank you very much Dave, Dan, appreciate it. Thank you, I have to say that aviation in Shibuya County is a special thing. When I was in high school I was able to take an aviation course in high school, and the final exam was flying a four-seater Cessna from Shibuygan to Oshkosh, Oshkosh to Manitowoc and Manitowoc back to Shibuygan. And we got our final grade on the pre-flight checks, mapping out the routes, doing all the radio calls, about the only thing we didn't get to do was work the rudders, the pilot worked the rudders, but we did everything else. I think that lens, once I went off to school, and I told people I got to know from other areas that I flew airplanes for a high school class, they couldn't believe it, they thought I was lying. So, I think this aviation has a real special history in our community, and the way it looks, and the way it sounds, it's only gonna continue to get bigger and better. So, with that, I'd like to thank you all again for attending, I'd like to thank H.C. Denison for their sponsorship of our programming here at the museum.