The Manchester Enterprise
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Project takes wing
Resident helps with effort
By Alana West, Special Writer
PUBLISHED: January 11, 2007
The historic warbirds in the Yankee Air Museum at Willow Run Airport in Belleville take to the air in the summer, but are grounded for repair during the winter. A dedicated crew of volunteer airplane mechanics works throughout the winter getting the World War II airplanes ready to fly in summer air shows, including the museum's Thunder Over Michigan.
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As crew members remove the wings from the airplanes to look for corrosion and overhaul the engines, they talk about future goals for the museum, past successes and tragedies, as well as renovations that will begin this spring to expand the museum.
A huge construction project is set to begin this year with a completion date of 2011. It will include a museum with exhibits and galleries, as well as an aircraft restoration site and welcome center. A restaurant, hotel, conference area and the Michigan Aerospace Academy are expected to be added by 2017.
Cost to complete the project is expected to reach $150 million, said Dick Stewart, the museum's president. Money will be raised through air shows, donations, sponsors and fund-raisers.
"This is a big year for the Yankee Air Museum," said Bob Hynes, a former U.S. Air Force pilot who provides public relations for the museum. "We don't truly have a museum right now. It's out of commission until after (the project is finished)."
The expansion will begin in February with the move of a 2,400-square-foot Willow Run schoolhouse to a site on Beck Road at a cost of $90,000.
Once the schoolhouse is relocated, a private donation of $575,000 will be used to refurbish the building and bring it up to code. The building will become the museum library.
The groundbreaking for the welcome center is set for April.
"We have to expand," Stewart said. "We are outgrowing our space, and the county is planning to tear down the space we are in."
A fire destroyed the museum's first home Oct. 9, 2004. Lewis Major of Manchester, one of seven people at the museum the day of the fire, helped push airplanes out of the building as smoke filled the hangar.
"We pushed the planes out by hand," he said.
Dave Saunders, a volunteer mechanic, said that if the brakes had been set on the C-47, they wouldn't have been able to get it out.
"They pushed on the tires. The C-47 was the last plane out," he said.
The group managed to rescue four aircraft, including a Boeing B-17, B-25 and C-47, the only airplane at the museum that saw combat in World War II. Everything else was lost in the fire.
"We lost nine planes and one of the most complete aviation libraries," said Lou Farkas, who was named Volunteer of the Year in 2006 by museum officials.
Farkas said museum volunteers are trying to rebuild the collection of artifacts and library documents, and often people call to make donations.
"The other day this lady called to tell us her husband had been in the war, and her kids didn't want his military gear. We went (to look at it) and it was a flight suit for a World War I pilot," Farkas said, adding that it was a rare find and good example of items that the museum is collecting and preserving.
About 3,000 volunteers work at the museum, with about 10 percent of them actively involved in restoring the airplanes.
"Every hour the plane flies, you need 10 hours of maintenance," said Dale Worcester, who said many veterans are members of the museum.
Worcester said it took nine years of skilled volunteer labor to restore the B-17, which is now worth $3 million.
"We can't replace it. No one has them anymore," he said.
The museum's B-17 was featured this year in a British movie filmed in Canada called "Closing of the Rings" and also flew in the classic war movie, "Tora, Tora, Tora."
John Stahley, crew chief on the B-25, is retired from American Airlines and said many of the other volunteers who help keep the airplanes in service are also retired airplane mechanics.
"The camaraderie here is great. Nobody's trying to outdo each other. Everybody has a can-do attitude, and everybody pitches in," said Robert Laird, a volunteer who helps maintain the airplanes.
Major, who is a crew member of the B-25 that he helped restore, said he always has had a passion for airplanes, building them from model kits and dreaming of becoming a pilot.
In 1998, upon his retirement from the University of Michigan, he attended an air show at Willow Run and decided to join the museum.
"I helped with the restoration of the B-25, and they told me to get a flight suit, I was on the crew," he said.
Now Major and the other volunteers are hoping area residents with the same love of aeronautical history will lend a helping hand by supporting the museum's efforts. To help, e-mail artifacts@yankeeairmuseum.or g or call 1-734-483-4030.
Alana West is a freelance writer. She can be reached at .
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