The Owners Before Us

The People Who Flew These Airplanes Before We Did

By Tony Caldwell, Founder — The Caldwell Collection at Mustang Field

When you restore an old airplane, you spend a lot of time with the paperwork. FAA registration files, bills of sale, airworthiness certificates, repair logs, affidavits from long-dead mechanics. If you're patient, and you read carefully, the paperwork starts to tell you something the airplane can't tell you on its own: the names of the people who signed for it, flew it, crashed it, fixed it, loved it, lost it, sold it, and passed it along.

We've built provenance reports now for most of the aircraft in the Collection. Thirty of them, at last count, thousands of pages of FAA documents traced back to the factory. And the names that come out of those files are, in a lot of cases, extraordinary. Some are people you've heard of. Most aren't. But all of them were somebody — and every one of them owned a machine that eventually made its way into our hangar at Mustang Field.

This article is about them. The owners before us.

— THE FOUNDERS —

The Lincoln PT-W, serial 801, registered N561M, has its own founder's signature: the factory application was signed on July 25, 1929 — three months before the stock market crash — by Victor H. Roos, who had co-founded the Roos-Bellanca Company in 1922 and, in September 1927, co-founded Cessna-Roos Aircraft with Clyde Cessna himself. Roos departed that partnership after one month, but the company became Cessna Aircraft. He managed Swallow, he built American Eagle-Lincoln, he lived until 1964, and he saw American aviation transform from barnstormers to the jet age. His name is on the piece of paper that created our Lincoln.

Clyde Cessna

Travel Air gives us Beech, Cessna, and Stearman — three men who each went on to build their own legendary aircraft companies — on the same founding paperwork. Travel Air Manufacturing Company was started in Wichita on January 26, 1925, and by 1928 it was the largest-volume aircraft manufacturer in the United States, building twenty-five airplanes a week. Our Travel Air B-14-R "Speedwing," serial 2005, is the only one ever built. Not one of a few. One. It won an EAA Airventure Lindy Award when it was restored. There is no other example of this airplane anywhere in the world, and its paperwork connects it to three of the founding figures of American light aviation in a single airframe.

Walter Beech

And then there's Al Mooney, who designed the Alexander Eaglerock's signature long wing in 1925 at the age of nineteen — nineteen — and later designed the Culver Cadet LCA, and later still founded Mooney Aircraft. We have one of the long-wing Eaglerocks which is currently being restored, and we have a Culver Cadet. The two ends of Al Mooney's prewar career are both in our collection and will soon be sitting in our hangar.

Al Mooney

— THE HOLLYWOOD BIPLANE —

The Waco UMF-3, serial 3936, registered N13571, is the airplane with the most improbable owner list in the whole Collection. It was destroyed by fire in 1945 and its wreckage was purchased in 1998 — a fifty-three-year gap between ash and rebirth — and the people whose names appear in its paperwork before that fire are like a casting call for the 1930s.

Brian Aherne owned it. British actor, Academy Award nominee, Hollywood leading man and husband of Joan Fontaine of the thirties and forties — Sylvia Scarlett, Juarez, Smiling Through. Alongside him was Louis D. Lighton, who produced the 1933 Best Picture winner Cavalcade. Two Hollywood figures co-owned this open-cockpit Waco biplane in the middle of the Golden Age of American film. Try to imagine it: Aherne between pictures, Lighton between productions, the two of them flying a UMF-3 somewhere out of Burbank or Long Beach in the afternoon sun.

Aherne has photos of the plane, looking exactly as it does today, in his autobiography “A Proper Job”.  He tells a funny story of offering a ride from Hollywood to Broadway, a trip he made often, to a friend who showed up with a pile of suitcases.  That didn’t work out well!

Then the airplane passed to Ralph Edwin "Red" Morrison, who was the personal pilot for William Randolph Hearst. The William Randolph Hearst. Morrison was also the manager of Helena Airport, a co-founder of the first accredited aeronautics school in the United States, and the founder of Morrison Flying Service — a business his wife Elizabeth "Bitty" Morrison ran for more than sixty years after his death, making it one of the longest-running family aviation businesses in the Northwest.

Then came Herman A. Poulin and Central Aircraft — pioneers in helicopter agricultural spraying who received the first-ever Bell helicopter dealership in 1947. Then Edwin Marquart, the WWII Navy veteran who designed the MA-5 Charger homebuilt biplane and whose fuselage repair work at Flabob Airport was critical to this Waco's eventual survival. Every one of them left their mark on the paperwork, and their names are still there, waiting for someone to read them.

—WAR HEROES WHO CAME HOME & KEPT FLYING—

The Rose Parrakeet A4-C, serial 506, registered N14882, carried a man named Arthur F. "Doc" Lindquist for fourteen years — from 1993 to 2007. Lindquist was an electrical engineer who graduated from the Milwaukee School of Engineering in 1942, flew a Republic P-47 Thunderbolt on ninety-three or more combat missions over occupied France and Germany during the Second World War, came home, earned a Doctor of Dental Surgery from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 1950, and practiced dentistry while pursuing a life in vintage aviation that eventually produced one of the most remarkable private projects in the modern history of the craft.

Doc Lindquist built, from scratch, a full-scale flying replica of a Fokker D-VII — the German WWI fighter that was widely considered the most capable fighter of that war. That replica appeared in the 2004 Martin Scorsese film "The Aviator," starring Leonardo DiCaprio. After filming, Lindquist donated it to the Liberty Memorial National WWI Museum in Kansas City, where it now hangs in the "No Man's Land" panorama exhibit as a permanent tribute both to the aircraft's historical significance and to Lindquist's craftsmanship. When he bought our Rose Parrakeet in 1993, he was already deep into that project. He died in 2009, eighteen months after selling the Parrakeet. He was eighty-six.

The Fairchild PT-19 in our hangar — serial 253, registered N464BC — was flown, after the war, by a man named Harold L. Keathley. Keathley was a B-29 pilot with the 468th Bomb Group, 15th Bomb Wing, 20th Air Force, flying out of Tinian in the Marianas. He flew thirty-four bombing missions against targets in the Japanese home islands. His thirty-third mission, on July 29, 1945, was a round trip of approximately 2,250 miles from Tinian to Aomori and back — at the time, the longest combat bombing run of the entire Second World War. His B-29 was called Skookum. He came home, stayed in the Air Force until he retired as a Major after twenty-five years of service, ran a car dealership in Union City, Tennessee, called Keathley-Dunn Auto Sales, and bought a surplus PT-23 from the War Assets Administration in 1946 — a primary trainer of exactly the type used to teach pilots the fundamentals of flight before they advanced to heavy bombers. The man who flew the longest combat mission of the war chose, in civilian life, to fly the airplane that taught pilots to be pilots. He died in 2010. He was survived by seven children, sixteen grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren.

—THE CIVIC FLYERS—

The Lincoln PT-W that Victor Roos signed into existence went, in 1930, to a man named Charles H. Blosser of Concordia, Kansas. That same year — 1930 — Blosser laid the first dirt airstrip on his farm outside Concordia. That airstrip became Blosser Municipal Airport, KCNK. It is still in active operation today, still bearing his name.

In June 1935, the Republican River flooded northern Kansas. Blosser flew — continuously for days — over the inundated landscape, spotting for rescue boats, dropping food to stranded residents, and ferrying people across the water. He personally rescued twenty-eight people and received a commendation from the Concordia Chamber of Commerce for "heroic services." He later served as Mayor of Concordia. He received the Kansas Governor's Aviation Honors Award in 1988, was inducted into the Kansas Aviation Hall of Fame posthumously in 1990, and at some point late in life was recognized as the oldest living licensed pilot in the United States. He died in December 1989 at ninety-four, just months after his governor's award. The airplane that he owned during the year he broke ground on his airstrip — our Lincoln PT-W — is a tangible link to the founding era of Concordia aviation.

The Fairchild KR-21 we own was briefly owned in 1935 by Robert D. Scholes, the first and long-tenured manager of Galveston Municipal Airport in Texas. That airport was officially renamed Scholes Field in his honor. Today it bears IATA code GLS and is called Galveston Scholes International Airport. Scholes owned our airplane for about three months. The airport carries his name forever.

Later in the same airplane's chain we find R.A. Cardinal Jr., who owned it from 1953 to 1954. Cardinal went on to manage Tuscaloosa Regional Airport from 1968 to 1977, and Robert Cardinal Park on the airport grounds is named in his honor. Two of the owners of one airplane each had an airport, or a part of one, named after them.

— THE DYNASTIES —

Sometimes the provenance paperwork gives you a name you already know. The Fairchild 24 C8A was owned, in one chapter of its life, by Muncie Aviation Corporation, which was founded by Edmund F. Ball — of the Ball Corporation, the Ball jar dynasty, one of America's most prominent industrial families. The airplane's paperwork runs, improbably, through the Ball family.

Star Cavalier Prototype

— THE RESTORERS & PRESERVERS—

The airplanes in this Collection survived because people cared about them.  You don’t make it to nearly 100 years old without a lot of help!  We have two Dave Allen’s to thank for two different Waco’s in the Collection.  Dave Allen of Coronado, California got a wreck of the 1934 UMF 3 from Barry Branin in exchange for work he helped Barry do on his 1935 YMF and spent 12,000 hours meticulously restoring it.  The  “other” Dave Allen as he used to name himself to me restored, along with his wife Jeanne, two beautiful Waco biplanes.  We’re finishing the 1929 Waco ASO they were working on when they flew west in their honor.

Paul Seibert

Howard Botts, Wayne Borman and Dick Curtis were long time friends who lived side by side on an improvised grass strip in Wichita, Kansas.  As a retirement project the three hauled an old wreck of a Fairchild PT 23 out of a field and 17,000 man hours later flew it to Airventure with a Ranger 200 engine installed.  They one all kinds of awards for their work before bringing it to the Collection for permanent display and regular flying.

Paul Seibert told his future wife Marilyn on their first date that he wanted to find a little airplane in a barn covered with guano that he could restore.  He did just that, and every night after dinner, Paul went to his shop and slowly restored our 1929 Fleet Model One to life.  Unfortunately, Paul lost his just before he finished.  He needed one last push to get his project in the air – which was provided by two young men, the Mendoza brothers, at West Coast Air Creations.  Paul’s dream flies regularly at the museum. 

These are just a few of the names that keep old airplanes in the air. Without them, the Collection doesn't exist — not because we couldn't buy the airplanes, but because there would be no airplanes to buy. The preservation work happened in a thousand hangars across this country, mostly without cameras and mostly without thanks.

— HOMECOMINGS—

Sometimes the paperwork closes a circle.  The Collection’s gorgeous 1938 Ryan SCW NC46207 is returning home to Mustang Field after an absence of 83 years.  Originally purchased from Ryan in 1938 by Jerry Sass, one of the founders of Oklahoma Air College and Mustang Field where the museum is located, our Ryan has literally made a circumnavigation of the globe since it was last here. 

Another is our Waco UPF-7, serial 5703, registered N32071, which was built in Troy, Ohio, in 1941. In April 2021, after owner Jack Hill's thirty-nine-year custodianship ended with his death, the airplane was purchased by Marla Boone — who lives in Troy, Ohio, a short distance from the original Waco factory site. Marla is a trustee of the WACO Historical Society that operates the WACO Air Museum in Troy. Her late husband Steve served as president of the society for several years. Marla earned her own FAA A&P certificate and Inspection Authorization after Steve's death in 2020, continuing their joint commitment to vintage aviation maintenance. Within five weeks of buying our Waco, she signed the Form 337 herself for the ADS-B Out installation. The airplane had come home to the city where it was built, in the care of the woman who runs the institution that preserves the story of its manufacturer.

And Jack Hill himself — let's not rush past him. Hill was born in 1932, saw a WWII B-17 Flying Fortress buzz his North Carolina hometown as a boy, and that was the hook. He got his private license, did a little crop dusting, went to Embry-Riddle, went to Capital Airlines, became a first officer on DC-3s and DC-4s, transitioned to United when Capital merged, and spent the next thirty-six years flying the 727, the 747, the 747-400, and just about everything in between. He was United's Captain of the Year at JFK Flight Office in 1990. He was an ALPA Accident Representative. The conference room at the Washington Warren Airport in North Carolina is dedicated to him. He bought our Waco in 1982, had it restored by the renowned father and son team of Jon and Scott Shue and kept it until eleven weeks before he died in 2021. He lived just long enough to see it placed in Marla Boone's hands.

— COME SEE THEIR AIRPLANES —

The Caldwell Collection at Mustang Field is open every Wednesday thru Friday 11am-4pm and Saturday from 10 am to 2 pm — no appointment required, admission is always free. We're at 6600 S. Mustang Field Road, Hangar 3, El Reno, Oklahoma, at El Reno Regional Airport.

When you come and stand in front of these airplanes, you're not just standing in front of the machines. You're standing in front of the lives that passed through them. Victor Roos signing the paperwork three months before the 1929 crash. Brian Aherne flying between pictures. Doc Lindquist back from ninety-three missions over Europe. Charles Blosser spotting rescue boats in the Republican River flood. Glenn Johnston with his hand-drawn wing diagrams. Jack Hill between United flights. Paul Siefert whistling as he walked to his hangar every evening.

An airplane's provenance is really just a list of names. But if you read the names carefully, and you track the lives behind them, what you end up with isn't a list at all. It's a history of the country, written in the margins of FAA paperwork, one airplane at a time.

We're grateful to all of them. Every one of them. The owners before us.

▸ The Museum: thecaldwellcollection.org

▸ About Me: tonycaldwell.net

▸ The Dream Wacos Collection: dreamwacos.com

▸ Contact: info@thecaldwellcollection.org

The Caldwell Collection at Mustang Field is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit established in 2024. Aircraft donations are tax-deductible; consult your tax advisor.