One of the things I love most about where my office is located is the fact that I am right on the museum floor. As people walk by, I can hear people talking about just how amazing the museum is, or at times, things that we need to look at correcting. I get a good feel of the general mood and flow of the day.
One day not long ago, a gentleman walked by my office and asked in sort of a grumpy manner, “When is something new coming in?” He never really broke stride as he asked, as if he was going to keep walking by my office door. I told him we are getting a Huey in just a short time. He just froze. “You are?”
I confirmed what I said. He then stepped in to my office and asked for details. After I gave him a few, he took a seat, removed his glasses, and brushed tears from his eyes. I asked him if he was “over there” at all. He said he was. “I went over in 1968. I became a pilot on the Huey.”
He looked lost in thought for a moment, and then kind of laughed, “We were really in some unpleasant places.” Then he took a more serious tone. “That damn thing brought me home every time. Even on my last mission, we came home shot up, I was wounded, others onboard were hit. It was leaking and smoking. But it brought us home. When I landed and shut down, fluids just let go from everywhere. She would not have gone another 10 feet. I owe my life to it.”
When I told him of our dedication on May 22 at 10 a.m., he stood up with a sense of a new mission and said, “I will be there.”
When we made the decision to acquire an aircraft to provide us an area to talk about Vietnam, it seemed like a no-brainer. It would be great to fill our ramp with aircraft such as the F-4 and F-105, but space is an issue, and we are also not strictly a military museum. So the airframe we were going to get had to tell the story. It had to be a symbol of the war. There is no more iconic airframe from that conflict than the UH-1 Huey.
Please note that the EAA Aviation Museum is closed until at least August 1, 2020.