Group Planning Museum For Aviation Hall Of Fame Group Has Offers Of 35 Planes From Michigan And Florida
The Idaho Aviation Hall of Fame is planning a museum on the Boise airport’s west edge.
To help fill it, the group has offers of 35 planes from two collections in Michigan and Florida, including a 1930s Waco and a Curtis Jenny biplane from the World War I era.
“This is a very active aviation state,” Gene Nora Jessen, Hall of Fame president, said Monday.
The tradition runs from the bush pilots who fly small planes to giant airlines. United Airlines’ forerunner, Varney Airlines, started in Boise with commercial operations in 1926.
Aviation opened up the backcountry and made important contributions to logging and mining thanks to one of the most extensive backcountry airstrip networks in the United States.
The museum idea took root in 1991 after then-state aeronautics director Bill Miller wrote an article calling for recognition of Idaho aviation pioneers. That caught the attention of pilot Louis Keever. The two met and formed the Hall of Fame, which now has 164 members.
The group’s first project was a Hall of Fame Wall, which has recognized eight aviation pioneers. There is a wall at the Boise Airport and copies in the state’s seven other major airports.
The museum will cost about $3 million, including contributed services, according to a preliminary estimate.
“We’re just beginning serious fund raising,” Keever said.
A rendering of the main building was done by Nat Adams, a former Navy pilot. And the Idaho National Guard is contributing site development work as a summer training program.
Plans call for a historical library and a shop for aircraft restoration.
Among the more unusual displays would be a diorama with sections of a B-23 bomber that crashed at Loon Lake near McCall during World War II. The Air Force has given the Hall of Fame approval to pull the remains out, Executive Director Louis Keever said. The group also needs environmental approval from the Forest Service.
The museum will display equipment as well as people.
“It’s good to show what pilots used to fly and what they’re flying now,” Delphine Aldecoa said.
A Boise resident who is in the Hall of Fame, Aldecoa is a retired chief air traffic controller - the second woman to hold that post in the United States.
The Hall of Fame hopes to break ground next spring, opening its first building with a theater and library by July 1998. The aircraft would be displayed by the end of 1999, mainly in nearby buildings.