Update: Be sure to check out the website http://www.TheCaldwellCollection.Org
I remember when I was just getting back into aviation and telling my wife, “If I could just find a nice Piper Dakota…”, it would be all the airplane I ever needed. That turned out to be dramatically wrong, as my family loves to mirthfully remind me. Later, when she mentioned that I’d been in mourning ever since we sold the Waco my friend Les and I owned I took that as a strong suggestion that I buy another. Then I got the crazy idea that I wanted to eventually own all the Waco “F” models. One at a time of course.
Somehow that morphed. It became owning several of them, all at once. All of a sudden I was a “collector”. One “know-it-all,” told me I was in danger of owning “too many airplanes” and that in his vast experience, more than four was problematic for the average owner. Well, I’ve never wanted to be “average” …
So, owning a dozen doesn’t seem at all strange to me. But when I turn around and consider where I started fifteen years ago it does seem somewhat remarkable. So, I think I’ll remark on it.
As I started adding to what my insurance agent calls “the fleet” my enjoyment of these amazing machines increased despite the know-it-all’s prediction. But something did begin to increasingly bother me. Despite taking some of the planes to fly-ins, where others could enjoy them, I kept wishing they weren’t hidden away in my hangars where I was the primary beneficiary of their beauty.
And while this desire to share them with others continued to build, another desire crept in which was to be able to fly them off grass runways more often. Beginning the restoration of a Travel Air with big skinny, prone to break in a crosswind on concrete, wheels made me want grass even more.
I started looking at different options for hangaring and flying from an airport with grass runways. As I looked, I kept feeling like Goldilocks as I couldn’t seem to find anything that was “just right”. I was headed down a path that I thought was as close as I was likely to get when I got a call from a pilot from my old flying club. He was interviewing for the job of Airport Manager at El Reno, Oklahoma, which I’d considered in my search. He wanted to know why I hadn’t decided to build a hangar there. As we talked, we agreed to get together and visit more about possibilities.
Scott Law, my flying club friend, and I met with the City Manager, Matt Sandidge, to discuss possibilities and during that conversation, I lamented that their old World War II hangars weren’t available and that, even worse, they might be torn down. We all decided to go have a look at one that they were considering demolishing and before I knew it, they were offering to practically give it to me because they had become excited about my idea of making my planes available for the public to see.
You may have had an experience in your life where you have ended up somewhere you never intended on going and asked yourself, “How did I get here?”. That’s where I find myself today and why, even though I’ve just walked you down my path, I still find it a bit incredible that I’ve started an aviation museum!
Maybe you’re asking yourself, “What’s he talking about?”
I’d like to announce that I’ve created “The Caldwell Collection, Inc.”, which is intended to be a nonprofit aviation museum dedicated to sharing the Golden Age of aviation, as well as the flight training experience where all World War II pilots began their aviation journey. The City of El Reno is partnering with me in doing that by making one of their hangars available for me to tear down and rebuild exactly the way it looked in 1943 to house the “collection” I have now and those airplanes I will be adding to it.
Like most ventures I’ve been involved with it seemed simpler to write a check than ask others for money, so I have donated the money The Caldwell Collection, Inc., needs to rebuild the hangar. As I thought about it, I decided I could continue my aviation morphing from “collector” to “curator” if I gave away all my planes to this new museum. So, that’s what I’m doing.
When I told my sister about my crazy idea, she called me a “benefactor”. I’ve been called a lot of things but that’s something no one else ever referred to me as. I thought I ought to look that one up and the dictionary defines benefactor as “Someone who gives one a gift.” Well, that sounds nice, but it doesn’t seem very accurate to me. That’s because I’m the one who has received a gift.
See, I got the gift of flight. More than that I got the gift of fascination with flight. I received it when I was just a little kid. Like the charm necklace I gave my wife when we married decades ago, and to which I add a little something every year, planes and the people who are passionate about them keep giving me more and more gifts. I have always believed we all stand on the shoulders of others who came before us, so I am just trying to repay those folks by sharing my passion with others. Actually, then, I’m the beneficiary, not the benefactor.
Well, that’s how I got here. Like a Transformers toy, I have metamorphosed from a kid looking at the sky and dreaming of flying to a pilot, airplane owner, collector, and now, apparently, curator. Along the way, pilots and other people have poured blessing after blessing into this being who loves to look down upon the earth from a thousand feet with the smell of burnt oil in his nostrils and the wind in his hair who now gets the chance to pay it forward.
I hope as this website morphs into the museum’s calling card, and the dilapidated hangar at the old Mustang Field gets made new, you’ll consider coming for a visit. If you do it’s my hope, that you’ll have your imagination stirred, your spirit lifted, and you’ll want to mount upon the rickety wings of a round engine collection of sticks and fabric and go…fly!
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