I first got interested in aviation at the age of seven. The year was 1935, and I was living in the Bronx, New York, with my Aunt Tony. I was looking at the airplanes flying into LaGuardia airport and said to myself, "I'm gong to fly those and see the world when I grow up."
My cousin Billy Sloboda was six years older than I and taught me how to build rubber-powered model airplanes from kits that my father purchased for me, and I flew them with many crashes in the small backyard of the five-story tenement apartment that I lived in at that time.
At the age of nine, I moved to Rutherford, New Jersey, to live in my father's house. Still building rubber-powered models, I managed to get my father interested in the hobby. He bought a kit for a Buccaneer that had a five-foot wingspan and bought me a kit with a pylon mounted wing with a three-foot wing span. We worked on the models at opposite sides of a Ping Pong table in the basement rec. room. He bought an Ohlson 60 for the Buccaneer and an Ohlso23 for me. We flew both Free Flight many times at a big vacant field with no problems. The last time we went, he started his engine with me holding the fuselage and told me to set the timer to limit the engine run time. Unfortunately, I mis-set the timer and the model got too high when the engine quit. We tracked it, but the last time we saw it was on its way to Newark, New Jersey. It was never returned. My father didn't build anything after that and I did some Control Line stuff.
I finished High School in 1947 and graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1953 with a B.S. in Aeronautical Engineering. I was too busy during that time working my way through college to do anything with models.
In June 1953, I entered flying training as a Second Lieutenant United States Air Force and got my wings in July 1954, flying B-25 J Medium Bombers. On to Randolph Field to B-29 school. Then assigned to Strategic Command to fly the KB-29 Tanker (B-29 modified into a Tanker).
Leaving Active duty in August 1956 and transferring to the Air Force Reserve, I got a job with General Dynamics Located in San Diego as an Aerodynamics Engineer. I was assigned to working on the design of the MACH 2, F-106 interceptor.
In 1958, having made some significant design changes to F-106, I was loaned to Lincoln Laboratory, MIT to aid in its integration to the Semi Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) System.
Remaining in New England and holding many important engineering positions along the way, I retired in 1992 and moved to Maine. I Joined the AMA and have been a member and past officer of the Skystreakers Club in New Gloucester, Maine. In addition, I retired as a Col from the USAFR. Having flown for 27 years in 14 different airplanes along the way, my favorite is the B-25 Michel.
