October 14, 2025 • 39 mins
Terry Howell, the Chief Operating Officer of the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum, takes us on a captivating journey through the rich tapestry of aviation history. Nestled in McMinnville, Oregon, this museum is not just a collection of aircraft; it’s a vibrant hub dedicated to preserving the stories of those who flew them and the technology behind the machines. The museum has earned its stripes as one of the top ten aviation museums in the U.S., and with good reason!
In our conversation, Terry reveals how the museum has evolved over the years—from its humble beginnings to housing the iconic Spruce Goose, a marvel of engineering and a testament to human ingenuity. We learn about some of the incredible exhibits, including a detailed discussion of the Spruce Goose’s storied past and its journey to McMinnville, which sounds like something out of a movie. Oh, did I forget to mention the SR-71 Blackbird they have in the museum? It is just one of the unique collection of aircraft, from vintage warbirds to space travel artifacts, along with ongoing restoration projects.
Terry shares anecdotes about the museum's educational initiatives that bring aviation and space exploration to life for kids and adults alike, emphasizing the importance of hands-on learning. Whether it’s a field trip for local schools or summer camps focusing on aviation science, the museum plays a pivotal role in inspiring future generations to reach for the stars.
The passion of the volunteers, many of whom are veterans with firsthand experience, adds an extra layer of authenticity and connection to the aircraft they care for. With so much to see and do, we encourage listeners to plan a visit to this gem of a museum. You'll walk away with not just knowledge, but a deep appreciation for the history that shaped our skies.
[00:00] Welcome and Introduction
[01:17] Thought to Ponder
[01:47] Guest Introduction: Terry Howell
[03:22] Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum Overview
[05:27] The Spruce Goose: A Storied History
[08:11] Restoration and Favorite Aircraft
[12:32] Space Artifacts and Future Plans
[17:54] Flight Simulators and Unique Exhibits
[20:13] Exploring the Skunkworks Collection
[20:52] The IMAX Theater and Event Spaces
[22:54] Community Engagement and Local Impact
[26:25] Educational Programs and Camps
[31:45] Veterans and Volunteer Contributions
[33:20] Conclusion and Final Thoughts
[34:46] Fun Facts and Jokes
Takeaways:
- The Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, is a treasure trove of aviation history, showcasing iconic aircraft while promoting education for all ages.
- Terry Howell's journey from the Coast Guard to COO of a leading aviation museum highlights the power of seizing opportunities and following your passion.
- The Spruce Goose, housed in the museum, is not just a plane; it's a legendary piece of history that took years to restore and is a must-see for aviation enthusiasts.
- The museum offers engaging educational programs, including summer camps, robotics workshops, and field trips, emphasizing hands-on learning and community involvement.
- Terry passionately discusses the unique artifacts and aircraft, including the Warthog A-10 and the SR-71, showcasing the museum's diverse collection aimed at inspiring future generations.
- Visitors can experience thrilling flight simulators at the museum, offering a taste of flying iconic aircraft like the Spruce Goose and the SR-71, making learning both fun and immersive.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
As one of the ten bestaviation museums in the United States
and With more than 20 years ofexperience, this museum continues
to inspire and educate allgenerations to promote and preserve
aerospace history and to honorthe patriotic service of those who
have served our nation, bothcivilian and military. It is also
home to one of the most iconicaircraft in all of aviation history.
(00:26):
We're going to find out moreon on St. Louis in Tune. Welcome
to St. Louis in Tune and thankyou for joining us for fresh perspectives
(00:48):
on issues and events withexperts, community leaders and everyday
people who make a differencein shaping our society and world.
I'm Arnold Stricker along withco host Mark Langston who is on assignment
today. Folks, we're glad thatyou've joined us today. We want to
thank our sponsor, Better RateMortgage for their support of the
show. You can listen toprevious shows@stlintune.com please
(01:10):
help us continue to grow byleaving a review on our website,
Apple Podcast or yourpreferred podcast platform. We're
going to get into a thought toponder today, and this is a good
one. All these thoughts toponder are good, and it's designed
to help you think along youryour day or along your week, or maybe
your year, if you're soinclined that way. On the path of
(01:33):
life, few signs are big orclear. Just don't get fooled by the
ones that say you can't getthere from here. Again, on the path
of life, few signs are big orclear. Just don't get fooled by the
ones that say you can't getthere from here. Our guest has never
been fooled about anythingrelated to aerospace and he is in
(01:58):
aviation. He is the ChiefOperating Officer for the Evergreen
Aviation and space Museum inMcMinnville, Oregon. Terry Howell,
welcome to St. Louis in Tune.
Thank you very much for having me.
Terry, how did you getinvolved with the Evergreen Aviation
and Space Museum? I know youhave a background. You've been in
(02:19):
the Coast Guard. You've done alot of teaching, you've done a lot
of marketing kinds of things.How'd you get involved with them?
Like many things in my life,it's just things line up in front
of you and you take advantageof opportunities. After I'd retired
from the military, from theCoast Guard, I worked for 15 years
for Military.com working myway up from writer to editor in chief.
(02:43):
And when that kind of decided,when I decided to step away from
that, I in the nonprofit worldand started working with a group
called Veterans Legacies. Andit just so happened that one of the
key contributors and foundersof the Veterans Legacies was associated
with the museum through apurchase of the property. And they
(03:03):
had asked if I could come inand help with some of the digital
marketing. And we got in thereand figured out there was a whole
lot more to be done than that.And like with military.com either
through attrition or goodluck, I moved my way up to this position
of coo. So hopefully that wasquick enough to stick within my view
of brevity.
Yeah, no, that's fine.
No.
What? Now, describe theEvergreen Aviation and Space Museum
(03:26):
to us a little bit. And folks,just a little disclaimer here. My
wife and I were up in Oregon.We were going on a wine tour. We
were driving by this place,and all of a sudden these huge hangars
appeared. And it's like, whatin the world is that out in the middle
of a field? And we were goingto McMinnville and I was like, I
need to look that up, whatthat was. And I found out what it
(03:47):
was, and we went back the nextday and took the tour. And we spent
like, gosh, six or seven hoursthere, for crying out loud. But Terry,
tell us a little bit about theEvergreen Aviation and Space Museum.
As you alluded to at thebeginning, we're focused on preserving
history and openingopportunities in education and enlightening
people. And not just historyof aviation and aerospace, but the
(04:11):
direction that they may wantto participate. The museum itself
is two very large buildings,about 165,000 square foot each. The
first one was dedicated tohousing the Spruce Goose. And that
portion of the museum openedin 2001. Prior to that, the founder
(04:31):
had been collecting warbirdsand keeping them in a smaller museum
just across the highway. Andthen as time went on, they. They
just acquired more and moreaircraft and decided to build the
second building, which at thattime was dedicated to space travel
and the history of space. Andso we ended up partnering with the
Cosmosphere out of Kansas, andthey built the. They built up a very
(04:55):
nice display around the factthat someday we were going to hope
to get the space shuttle. Thatdidn't happen. But the museum, it's.
Now that part of the portionof the museum houses an amazing collection
of vintage helicopters andpost Vietnam War era fighters and
stealth technology in additionto the race to Space. So that's a
(05:15):
real quick overview.
Yeah, the Cosmosphere isanother great place in Hutchinson,
Kansas, folks. If you've neverbeen there, that's a little closer
to St. Louis. But hey, ifyou're on the west coast or even
if you're in the Midwest orthe east coast, you need to get to
McMinnville and see the Sprucegoose. That's the. Is that the big
draw for the museum.
The Spruce Goose?
Yes. Yes.
(05:36):
There's a. Obviously a longand storied history around Howard
Hughes and the. The buildingof the Spruce goose. And then of
course, the being calledbefore Congress to explain why it
cost so much and hadn't flownyet, leading to the one and only
flight to prove the proof ofconcept. And then he buried the.
Buried it back in his hangarin Southern California. The Spruce
(05:57):
goose was essentially bouncedaround between owners. At one point,
Disney had the property thathoused the Spruce goose and along
with the goose and werescaling back in that operation. So
they eventually gave it to anaero club in Southern California,
which they started thediscussion whether they should part
it out and send the biggerpieces to like the Smithsonian and
(06:20):
so on. And that's when thefounder of the museum, Michael King
Smith, started puttingtogether a bid for it to move to
Oregon, which again, seemsreally absurd to most folks. But
the fact is it's with thatkind of story and how they got it
here, it's a very interestingand amazing feat.
It is a feat because it was afeat to get it from Long beach up
(06:40):
there to McMinnville, thatwhole process. Isn't there a video
on that or like a story? Iknow at the museum, but I think online
there's some information aboutthat too. Correct?
Yes. There's a really gooddocumentary done by Peter Devil about
the rescuing of the Sprucegoose and its shipment to McMindle.
And it really gets into thefiner details and it's really well
(07:03):
produced. It's one of myfavorite versions of the story, or
not necessarily version of thestory, but storytelling around that.
Now, folks, you can see in apicture the Spruce goose and how
big it is. But until you seeit in person, it's you. You won't
believe that. What were yourinitial thoughts when you saw that
thing for the first time?
(07:23):
I think it's like everybody,the first thing they do is they look
around and say, where is it?Because it is so big. It's like a
backdrop to everything else.And essentially it's from one perspective
or another. It's like a biggray wall in front of you. The 165
foot museum that it's in ispretty much wingtip to wingtip. There's
just a little bit of space ateach end of the building that isn't
(07:44):
filled by the wings of thatamazing plane.
To let you know, folks, thatwingspan is 300. Just shy 1 inch
shy of 320ft.
Feet.
So wider. The wingspan's widerthan are longer than a football field.
So just get that a little bitin perspective. That's what he's
talking about there. And thelength is 218ft and 8 inches long.
(08:08):
It's 79ft 4 inches. I've gotthis in front of me. 300,000 pounds.
So when it first showed up,you guys didn't. It wasn't all obviously
in one piece. You had to putit together. But there was a whole
process of restoring it. Andexplain a little bit about what went
into that restoration process.
In reality, it predates myexperience with the museum. But there's
(08:30):
quite a few of the gentlemenwho worked on it still working as
volunteers at the museum. Andthey were assembled by Michael King,
Smith's father, his name wasDel Smith. He put together a team
and they went down to SouthernCalifornia and carefully dismantled
the plane. And of course, partof it was shipped up in barges. Part
of it was shipped up on atruck. And they brought it up and
took it across the highwayfrom where the museum now is. And
(08:51):
over, I think it was a three,four year period they rebuilt it.
And except for some of themajor, like the tail and so on, which
they assembled once they gotit inside the museum. But it was
a lot of painstaking work. Andit's amazing to see how well they
did to bring it back to itsoriginal luster, so to speak.
So you have. One of thebuildings is completely aviation.
(09:13):
And I don't want to ignore thespace portion. We'll talk about that.
Do you have a favorite planein the aviation area other than the
Spruce Goose?
I grew up in the 60s and soone of my favorite planes, especially
just to draw as a kid, was theSaber Jet. So I'd say that RF86 is
one of my favorites. We have.We have a couple of. They are quite
(09:35):
replicas. They are built fromoriginal parts. But we have a. The
first jet that was flown bythe Germans toward the end of World
War II. And that's theMesserschmitt. And then we have the
first era of jets built byBritain. The second version of that
was. The first one was calledthe Vampire. The second is the Venom.
(09:56):
And the Venom is also made ofwood with obviously with some metal.
But it's a very interestinglittle twin tail kind of a plane
that. So those are my threefavorites on the aviation side or
what we now call the West Pavilion.
And you've got. I reallyappreciate how you've done this.
You've got early. An earlyflight section and you go historically
the golden age. You also havea Spirit of St. Luke replica there.
(10:18):
Go into some of the war birdsfrom World War II in Korea and Vietnam.
And then you do also do someamphibious kinds of planes. And getting
into the space area, man, Itell you what, my favorite's probably
SR71. But what's your favoritein the space area?
First of all, you nailed itwith the SR71, that it's probably
the most popular aircraft wehave next to the Spruce Goose. And
(10:41):
every year we actually have agathering every other year of pilots
and crewmen and engineers whoworked on that aircraft that come
out and do a big seminar overFather's Day weekend. And it's a
huge draw. And the way we haveit displayed is different than many
other places. It's in the rawwould be the wrong way to put it,
but it's not surrounded by anykind of observer by itself. And then
(11:01):
all of the special equipment,the sensors and the cameras and all
those sort of things are allset up in a separate display so people
can see how it not only helpedthe plane itself, but how it did
its job of kind of snooping onthe our enemies at the time during
the Cold War. Personally, myfavorite plane is the Warthog A10.
That was the aircraft myfather was a crew chief on. So I
(11:22):
have some affinity to thatplane, but probably even more so,
if I have to be honest, is thecollection of helicopters I stated
earlier. I was in the CoastGuard and it's one of the very first
Coast Guard helicopters, alongwith some Piaseckis which are dual
rotor first generation. One ofthem in fact has the cloth skin and
we have an H3 that is hungfrom the ceiling over the. The space
(11:46):
section of the. Of that museumdepicting the rescue of the frogmen
and so on from. And theastronauts. So a lot of interesting
things going on in there, butI probably have to lean towards my
helicopter days. And inaddition, we have a Global Hawk hanging
from the ceiling and anamazing collection of drones including
or about to launch a displayof adversary drones, current drones
(12:09):
that are being used by Iran,Russia and a handful of others that
are. They're prototypes, butthey're built by the same company
that builds the. The copiesfor the US Military to train on or
train against, I should say.
Wow.
So we have got quite a fewdrones on display there, including
one of the fastest helicoptersever made, which is again a drone.
(12:31):
But It's a pretty amazing plane.
So the space artifacts, thespace things that you have, you have.
Is it a Gemini capsule or aApollo or Mercury capsule?
Gemini, I believe. We alsohave the. We have replicas of Sputnik
through the Lunar Lander andthe Rover. We also have a Titan and
(12:58):
missiles that are actually intheir stand upright. The Titan, if
you go in, you can go all theway down to the base of that. And
there's a launch facilityreplica which is actually filled
with the original launchfacility control room equipment.
And it's pretty amazing.Again, a lot of that stuff is on
loan from the Air Force, butmuch of it is on loan from the Cosmosphere,
(13:20):
which are great partners of ours.
What are the. What's down theroad? Do you have some things I read,
something about anotherstealth fighter possibly coming in
or what's down the road thatyou can reveal to listeners that
they might see in future visits?
One of the things, and I kindof divert around to get to the answer,
(13:40):
and I apologize, but we have arestoration department that people
can actually walk through andtake tours while the guys are actually
working on it. One of ourbiggest projects right now is a C47
that was D Day Hero. Itactually flew three missions, I believe
it is during D Day, and thenfollowed up with Marketplace Wow.
And our market garden and someother activity. So it's. And then,
of course, it was a. Anairline plane for quite a while,
(14:02):
and then it was on displayoutdoors for years. And so we're
in the process of essentially,from the rivets up, bringing that
plane back to its originalglory. And so the reason I say that
is because once that aircraftis finished, we'll start working
on rent, restoring, or if notrebuilding our F117. We have an F117.
Its name is the Lone Wolf,which. What's interesting about the
(14:23):
F117 Nighthawks is that eachof the first crew members got the
name. Crew chiefs got thename. They're playing. So there's
a Toxic Avenger and othernames, but ours is the Lone Wolf.
And what's special about theLone Wolf is it was the first one
to deliver ordinance duringDesert Storm. And it, when we received
it, it was demilitarized,which is a fancy term that means
(14:44):
they took anything off thatwas top secret or could be used to
shoot or whatever it was. RA10has the gun barrel, but it doesn't
have the gun, that kind ofthing. And so they demilitarized
it, which means they strippedall the. What they call ram, which
is A radar absorbing material.They took all the leading edges off
the wings and the noseportions of what they call the tail
feathers were removed. So muchof the aircraft that gives it its
(15:07):
sleekness has been removed.And I think the term that some people
use to describe how it looksis kind of like a stink bug right
now. But so we're working withthe local university, Oregon State
University, to reconstruct theleading edges of those wings through
both melding of two worlds.We're going to be using aluminum,
but because those leading edgewings were actually originally ceramic
and they were all like aknife's edge, the university is printing
(15:29):
out the sections of it with a3D printer and then which will be.
Which will be melded or notmelted, but essentially adhered to
aluminum and then attached tothe leading edges. So we can rebuild
that look and get it. Bring itback to its. Bring it out of the
stink bug, so to speak, andback into its original glory. So
(15:50):
that plane is our big nextproject in that we received that
about a year and a half ago toa lot of fanfare. The general who
flew it during that mission,he also delivered the first ordinance
in Panama. He has come out anddone several seminars and speak,
met with people to talk aboutthat aircraft. So that one's exciting
and fun. We've got a coupleother planes in the works we're hoping
to get. One is A. An F15,which we already have a couple, but
(16:13):
this one in particular is in.They're decommissioning it, like
right now from an Air Guardbase that is painted in World War
II camo with the AlliedNormandy stripes on it. And it's
dedicated to. It's got animage of on the tail of the gentleman.
The airfield is named afterKingsley. He was a Congressional
(16:35):
Medal of Honor recipient fromWorld War II. And so we're hoping
to pull off a deal to get thatone on display because it's just.
It's such an original andawesome paint job that. And really
important to Oregon as far asthe connection to Kingsley, who is
from Portland, and our localNational Air Guard.
So how far from Portland areyou located? Just for give people
a perspective.
(16:57):
Crows fly it's about 30 milesto 40 miles, something like that.
But we're in the kind of theheart of wine country, which means
the. A bit of a circuitousroute to get there. So we're about
45 minutes from Portland. Andlike I said, we're. In fact, you
mentioned the field that. Thatwe're in that's in front of the Museum
is now all under vine. Oh,wow. So it's rather aesthetically
pleasing. They're putting in abrand new hotel which will be finished
(17:19):
in 27. That's not us, thelandlord, but it's on the property.
They also own and operate awater park called Wings and Waves,
which has a 747 on the top ofit. And people can go up, climb up
inside the 747 and ride aslide. Water slide back out of it.
So a lot of interesting thingson the campus. And we've got a lot
of things planned for thefuture to adhere. Tie it to the wine
(17:41):
industry and also make it adestiny. More of a destination.
Yeah, absolutely. This isArnold Strucker with Mark Langston
of St. Louis and Tomb. We'retalking to Terry Howell. He's the
chief operating officer forthe Evergreen Aviation and space
Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.You guys have a. One thing I remember
I didn't get in it. The flightsimulator there. And explain a little
(18:01):
bit about that. I remember Igot in one down at the Cosmosphere
and almost got sick. I don'tknow. What if yours is one of those
spinning around ones or.
Yes, this one's a 360°. Theonly thing it doesn't do is move
back and forth. But it doesspin and rotates backwards and so
on. And I've only done itonce. We. You have the opportunity.
(18:23):
In fact, we have two of themnow. You have the opportunity to
ride it as a simulated rollercoaster, which is very cool. But
someone with my lack ofintestinal fortitude. I don't like
not having some sort ofcontrol what's going on.
Yeah.
And so that one I would notfor. I did decide I was going to
do the F18 one day and thatwas awesome. Except I was bent on
(18:44):
trying to do as many barrelsas I possibly could until I realized
that there's only so many youcan do before again, that intestinal
fortitude comes to bear. And Iend up trying to run the clock out
in the flight level, straightlevel for the last minute and a half
of the ride. But it's very,very popular. Kids love it. The adults
love it. We have everythingfrom the ability to fly the Spruce
(19:07):
goose, which doesn't do a lotof aerobatic moves. But you can fly
the Spruce goose or all theWorld War II birds. You can fly the
SR71, which again is almost asboring as the flying the goose when
it comes down to what you cando. Because essentially that was
just. You fly really fast andyou turn right, and since you don't,
it doesn't move forward. Youdon't necessarily get that full inertia
(19:29):
of the. Of how fast the SR71actually goes. But like I said, the
rest of the rides on that arevery popular.
So what do you think is themost unusual aircraft or space artifact
that you have?
I think I referred to theVenom earlier. To me, that's pretty
unusual. There's someinteresting things about that aircraft.
The fact that it was one offew aircraft that had what they call
(19:51):
a shotgun start, where you puta canister that looks like a big
shotgun shell behind the pilotand essentially fire it off. And
that's how you started the engine.
Wow.
And the fact that it's awooden jet and like the first generation
of jets, fighter jets afterWorld War II, they referred to the
swallow, which is theMesserschmitt 6 2, which was, again,
(20:13):
a very interesting aircraft. Isaid, it's hard to say if this. Think
that as far as rarity goes, wehave everything from the Wright Flyer
replica through to the StealthFighter. We have a collection of
Lockheed Skunk Works planes.So we have the. What is in our version
is a T33, which was originallythe F88, which was Skunk Works first
(20:34):
plane. We have the 104 Starkfighter, the Stealth fighter, the
D21 drone, and the SR71. So wehave a kind of a mini collection
within our collection of Skunkwork planes. So we do a Skunk Works
tour. They go into a smalltheater, learn about where Skunk
Works comes from, and then getto go out and see and touch the aircraft
that are featured in that.
Because you have a theaterthere, it's an imax.
(20:57):
It hasn't been an IMAX foryears. It's a licensing thing. But
it is a giant screen 3Dtheater that seats 225 people, but
the screen is 75ft across. Andso it's. It's definitely an experience.
We have a smaller theater inthe. In what we call now the East
Pavilion, the Space Museum,where we feature things like if NASA's
(21:18):
doing something interesting,we'll feature a place where people
go and sit and watch whateverNASA's featuring on their site. Or,
like I said, some training andtours start from there.
But something that I was kindof. There is a lot to do, because
I wasn't. I was kind ofsurprised. You have. It's an event
space too. You have birthdaysthere. Do you have wedding receptions
(21:39):
there and things like that?
Yes. So the. The originalfounder of the Museum. Del Smith
and Michael Smith, they hadvisions of it being at one point,
I think they called it theAeroventure Park. They had. They
actually for a while hadarmored vehicles you could drive
around on a hill and so on. Sosome of those things have gone to
the wayside. But what was leftwas that we have the theater building
(22:01):
which is located right inbetween the two massive museum buildings.
It has a couple of biplanehanging from the ceiling inside the
lobby. But the right hand sideis all dedicated to the movie theater
and projection. And the lefthand side is conference centers and
event spaces. We have a logcabin, they call it the Lodge, which
is slash a chapel. They have alot of weddings there. And they have
(22:22):
an event center next to thatfor hosting receptions and so on.
We put on in the museumitself. We have a couple of big events
each year. A wine McMinnvillewine and food Classic in March that
features all the localwineries and so on. And that we.
Over the years it used to bededicated to just that east Pavilion.
But this year we're going totry integrating it throughout the
(22:43):
entire museum. So that'll befun and interesting. But like I said,
like you said, it's definitelya lot of event focused things. Everything
from weddings to graduationsand proms and bar mitzvahs, you name
it, they come here to do it.
Become a pretty prominentplace in the community. Then.
Yes, I would say McMinnvilleis. Because the wine industry and
(23:06):
everything has really grown.It's its own Persona. But back in
98, when this museum wasdreamt of, in 2001 when it was opened
the first time, the firstbuilding, it's always been the center
of attraction for the city ofMcMinnville. You go to local sandwich
shops and they got the SpruceGoose painted on the wall. We have
a local chain of bar hotelplaces called the McMenamins and
(23:27):
they have a painting of theSpruce Goose and some rather odd
situations. But in thepaintings are always the things that
the Spruce Goose never did,like flying over a mountain lake.
But it is interesting how itis entrenched in the local community.
I want to take a brief breakand Terry, when we come back, I'd
like for you to speak to manyof the educational opportunities
(23:47):
that you provide for not onlyschool students, but the community
and people who come in. Ithink I was looking at some of those
educational things and I wantyou to highlight what you think are
some of the most valuablethings. But we're going to take a
quick break here, folks. Thisis Arnold Stricker with Mark Langston
who's on assignment. You'relistening to St. Louis in tune. Don't
go away. As strange as as itmay sound.
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This is Arnold Stricker of St.Louis in tune on behalf of the Dred
Scott Heritage Foundation. In1857, the Dred Scott decision was
a major legal event andcatalysts that contributed to the
Civil War. The decisiondeclared that Dred Scott could not
be free because he was not acitizen. The 14th Amendment, also
(25:19):
called the Dred ScottAmendment, granted citizenship to
all born or naturalized herein our country and was intended to
overturn the US Supreme Courtdecision on July 9, 1868. The Dred
Scott Heritage foundation isrequesting a commemorative stamp
to be issued from the USPostal Service to recognize and remember
the heritage of this amendmentby issuing a stamp with the likeness
(25:39):
of the man Dred Scott. But weneed your support and the support
of thousands of people whowould like to see this happen. To
achieve this goal, we ask youto download, sign and share the one
page petition with others. Tofind the petition, please go to dredscottlives.org
and click on the Dred ScottPetition drive on the right side
of the page. On behalf of theDred Scott Heritage foundation, this
(26:01):
has been Arnold Stricker ofSt. Louis in Tunes.
Welcome back to St. Louis inTune. This is Arnold Stricker with
Mark Langston. Mark is onassignment and he's missing some
great stuff. We're talkingwith Terry Howell from the in McMinnville,
(26:23):
Oregon from the EvergreenAviation and Space Museum. He's the
Chief Operating Officer andTerry, I had before the break had
talked about one of the thingsthat I thought was really great that
you guys do are all theeducation programs that you have
going on and all year round,it's just not for classroom kids,
for field trips and thingslike that. You do have some camps.
(26:44):
Talk a little bit about someof those things because I think people,
I want them to get a feel forthat. Museums, sometimes they just
have things there and you justgo in and maybe they have the onesie
twosie field trips. But youguys really have quite a few things
going on.
Yeah, we do. In fact,education is the foundation of the
museum, going all the way backto the founding. We offer through
(27:07):
the education departmentseveral different versions of a summer
camp or spring camp. We justfinished one last week. It's a day
camp. So I don't know how itis in Missouri, but in Oregon, once
a quarter or once a month theteachers have an in service day.
So school is out and parentsare looking for ways to keep their
kids occupied as well as, ashopefully educated. So we've been
(27:28):
featuring this for about ayear now and the other day we had
quite a large group of kidsfrom several age groups out and we
partnered with a localaviation school and they flew over
one of their smallerhelicopters, landed it in the parking
lot at the museum and let thekids kind of climb all over it and
talk to the pilot and learnabout how the helicopters work and
so on. And that's the kind ofthing that happens on a regular basis.
(27:51):
We have spring break camp. Soduring spring break we offer again
a day camp that's similar toour summer camps. And then throughout
the summer we have camps andthey're dedicated to everything from
different topics from aviationspecific to space travel or space
engineering, coding, severalthings. And again it ranges from
k through usually 10th grade.We don't get a lot of older kids,
(28:15):
but we did have a programwhere we partner with the local schools
around robotics. They comeinto our facility to we have a couple
classrooms that they use foractually building their robots and
then they have roboticcompetitions and so on. So we're
really involved at the localschool districts and a lot of homeschool
groups. We do, as youmentioned, a ton of field trips and
those can range from selfguided to having a curriculum assigned
(28:38):
to it and giving the kidseverything from a scavenger hunt
research do while they're inthe museum. So again, it's a major
focus of our, of the museumand how we contribute to the community
in that way. As far as adultEducation and getting closer to the
12th grade and above. We haveintern programs. We work with Horizon
(28:58):
Airlines. They have a localcharter school that's focused on
aviation. And so those youngmen and women come in and they get
to work on everything from howto learn how to put fabric on an
aircraft skin to doing rivetsand tearing down and restoring engines
and so on. And again, part ofthat is our tour program, too. We
(29:20):
allow. We have one tour thatwe give in the restoration area where
people get to do their ownriveting and take home a piece of
aircraft skin with a rivet init that they've done themselves.
So that's probably a littlemore Trotsky than education, but
it's fun. And again, like Isaid, whenever there's a major event
going on with NASA, we'll openup either the large theater or the
(29:41):
smaller one in our eastpavilion to people that come in and
watch and learn. We do severalseminars. One of my favorites is,
is the niece, great niece,maybe great, great niece of Betsy
Coleman comes out and does anin person, in Persona kind of presentation
about Betsy Coleman and whatshe was, what she did. And for those
(30:02):
who don't know, Betsy Colemanwas African American woman who was
the first African Americanfemale pilot licensed. She actually
had to go to France to get herlicense. And then she came back to
the United States and starteda flight school. And she was a barnstormer
and really popular in thatera. She died, unfortunately, in
(30:23):
an aviation incident. But wehave an aircraft like she flew on
display that has her storyattached to it. But for several years,
we've had her niece come outand do a presentation in education.
We get local schools to comeout. In fact, there's a school in
Salem, which is about an hoursouth of us, that is called the Bessie
Coleman Elementary School. Sothose kids come up every year for
that.
(30:44):
That's really cool.
So that's some of the thingswe do. It's not all of it, but that's
the bulk of it.
Did you ever imagine when youwere working on helicopters in the
Coast Guard, that this is oneof the things you would be doing?
Quite frankly, never. At onepoint I thought I might get my A
and P and work on aircraft,but I figured out pretty quickly
(31:06):
that, and this is, I don'twant to discourage people from working
on aircraft, but there's a lotof risk involved in working on commercial
aircraft, and you don't getpaid much more than a Toyota mechanic.
So I decided to go a differentdirection. So before I got out of
the military. I got mybachelor's degree and then shortly
after my master's. And thatkind of set me up for what I did@military.com
and eventually here at themuseum. The nice thing is in military.com
(31:27):
everything was virtual. It wasonline content. And the nice thing
is here everything's hands on.The whole idea of we try to integrate
digital as much as we can orcan afford to, but for the most part,
this is getting your handsinto it and learning about what's
going. What happened and howthings were developed and so on.
So it's a much more tactile.Tactile, I should say.
Yeah. One of the great thingsI think is you involve a lot of veterans
(31:50):
and I really encourage them tocome back listening to you. At the
front end of the program. Youhave some of these individuals who
were involved with a lot ofthese aircraft come back for some
days when they're highlighted.I think it's great that you have
these veterans come back like that.
That. And we have a lot ofveterans who actually are part of
our volunteer corps. So wehave three to four different opportunities
(32:13):
around volunteering here. Oneof them is as a docent which give
guided tours and talk aboutthe aircraft and the history and
the people that are involvedin the aircraft. But we also have
collections team, arestoration team, and both the restoration
and the collections team areall operated by volunteers. We don't
have any paid staff in thoseareas right now. We really rely heavily
on their experience and theirlove for what they do to help the
(32:35):
museum be successful. It'sinteresting because again, we even
have. Whenever we need to doanything with the F117, there's a
gentleman in southern Oregonthat drives all the way up to come
up and clean it up and makesure that all the stuff is there.
And then he'll help tellstories about his work on it. We
have a gentleman does the samething for an F15 that we have. So
we have again, there's a lotof passion and spree decor and so
(32:57):
on with these gentlemen andladies who worked on these aircraft
and going even to this SR71.We have a gentleman who was one of
the people that worked at thejet propulsion side of that. And
he just loves talking abouthow. Because that engine on that
SR71 is a marvel in itself andhow it operates, air aspirated. And
so it's. Again, it justdrives. It drives them. Which helps
(33:20):
keep us excited about what wedo here at the museum too.
We've been talking to TerryHowell. He's the chief operating
officer for the EvergreenAviation and space Museum in McMinnville,
Oregon. Folks, if you get achance to get up there, please do.
You will not be disappointedat all. Terry, thanks very much for
coming on St. Louis and Tomb.We greatly appreciate the information
and what you're doing up thereto get keep aviation and space going.
(33:44):
Certainly my pleasure andthank you very much. I appreciate
the opportunity.
What a great time talking toTerry Howell. Folks, I want to give
you the website for the museumbecause you should check out some
of the videos that they have,some of the other information that
they have. It'severgreenmuseum.org, evergreenmuseum.org
they were listed as one of the10 best aviation museums in the United
(34:06):
States by Travel and Leisuremagazine. I can't believe that they
probably to me, they're onlyone of the top three. I know the
Smithsonian has one and Imentioned earlier the Cosmosphere
in Hutchinson, Kansas. They'realso, by the way, affiliated with
the Smithsonian Museum.They're a Smithsonian affiliate.
So great group of folks.You'll just be awed you can spend
(34:29):
at least a day there. Didn'tget completely through the space
portion just because wasrunning out of time. So make sure
that you plan to go toMcMinnville and you plan to go to
this particular museum. Blockout the whole day. There's a lot
of great stuff for kids to dothere and I want to encourage you
to do that. So a little mentalfloss here. Here's some thinking
(34:52):
things. You think of all thestates and all the capitals in the
United States. There are fourstates whose first letter is also
the first letter, the city inwhich is a capital. In other words,
here in Missouri we haveJefferson City. J and M for Missouri.
That doesn't work. But thereare four states in the United States
(35:14):
that the first letter of thecapital city is the same as the first
letter of the state. Do youknow what those are? Okay, here's
one of them. Oklahoma City,Oklahoma. Here's another one. Indianapolis,
(35:36):
Indiana. Did any of you getHonolulu, Hawaii? And the last one,
this is a hard one. Dover,Delaware. Dover, Delaware. Yeah.
Yeah. How about that one? Oh,for those of you that didn't get
(35:58):
it, I'm so sorry. We're goingto close out the show with some jokes
and Mark's favorite kind ofthing. Mark's favorite kind of funnies.
So I just sold my homingpigeon on ebay for the 22nd time.
(36:18):
Signs seen. This is a signthat is seen the back of a van driver
is old. Can't hear your horn,can't see your finger. Have a nice
day. What do we learn fromcows, buffaloes and elephants? It's
(36:39):
impossible to reduce weight byeating grass and salads and walking
Tum should sell pumpkin spiceflavored antacids and call them autumns.
(36:59):
And where do pirates buy theirhooks? At secondhand stores. My wife
asked me if I could clear thekitchen table. Well, I had to get
a running.
Start, but I made it.
And I've often heard that icyis the easiest word to spell. Looking
at it now, I see why. And whatdo you call a belt made of watches?
(37:23):
A waste of time. When peoplepay, they buy a lot of bottled water.
And people pay a fortune forthose little bottles of Evian water.
Then I read it backwards andscientists have found that cows produce
more milk when the farmertalks to them. Apparently it's a
(37:46):
case of in one ear and out theudder. Lastly, a warning sign. We
don't care if you smoke inthis room. We don't care if you play
poker naked. However, both ofthese things are illegal in Louisiana.
If caught by a state trooper,citations will be issued. And here's
(38:07):
the dad joke of the day. Whathappens when a microscope runs into
a telescope? Theykaleidoscope. Oh, goodness gracious.
That's all for this hour.Thanks for listening, folks. If you've
enjoyed this episode, you canlisten to additional shows@stlintune.com
(38:29):
consider leaving a review onour website, Apple Podcasts, Podchaser,
or your preferred podcastplatform. Your feedback helps us
reach more listeners andcontinue to grow. Thanks to Bob Berthiselle
for our theme music, oursponsor, Better Rate Mortgage. Our
guest, Terry Howell, chiefoperating officer for the Evergreen
Aviation and space Museum inMcMinnville, Oregon, and want to
(38:50):
thank co host Mark Langston.And we thank you folks for being
part of our community ofcurious minds. St. Louis in tune
is a production of Motif MediaGroup and the US Radio Network. Remember
to keep seeking, keeplearning, walk worthy and let your
light shine. For St. Louis intune, I'm Arnold Stricker.
As one of the ten bestaviation museums in the United States
and With more than 20 years ofexperience, this museum continues
to inspire and educate allgenerations to promote and preserve
aerospace history and to honorthe patriotic service of those who
have served our nation, bothcivilian and military. It is also
home to one of the most iconicaircraft in all of aviation history.
(00:26):
We're going to find out moreon on St. Louis in Tune. Welcome
to St. Louis in Tune and thankyou for joining us for fresh perspectives
(00:48):
on issues and events withexperts, community leaders and everyday
people who make a differencein shaping our society and world.
I'm Arnold Stricker along withco host Mark Langston who is on assignment
today. Folks, we're glad thatyou've joined us today. We want to
thank our sponsor, Better RateMortgage for their support of the
show. You can listen toprevious shows@stlintune.com please
(01:10):
help us continue to grow byleaving a review on our website,
Apple Podcast or yourpreferred podcast platform. We're
going to get into a thought toponder today, and this is a good
one. All these thoughts toponder are good, and it's designed
to help you think along youryour day or along your week, or maybe
your year, if you're soinclined that way. On the path of
(01:33):
life, few signs are big orclear. Just don't get fooled by the
ones that say you can't getthere from here. Again, on the path
of life, few signs are big orclear. Just don't get fooled by the
ones that say you can't getthere from here. Our guest has never
been fooled about anythingrelated to aerospace and he is in
(01:58):
aviation. He is the ChiefOperating Officer for the Evergreen
Aviation and space Museum inMcMinnville, Oregon. Terry Howell,
welcome to St. Louis in Tune.
Thank you very much for having me.
Terry, how did you getinvolved with the Evergreen Aviation
and Space Museum? I know youhave a background. You've been in
(02:19):
the Coast Guard. You've done alot of teaching, you've done a lot
of marketing kinds of things.How'd you get involved with them?
Like many things in my life,it's just things line up in front
of you and you take advantageof opportunities. After I'd retired
from the military, from theCoast Guard, I worked for 15 years
for Military.com working myway up from writer to editor in chief.
(02:43):
And when that kind of decided,when I decided to step away from
that, I in the nonprofit worldand started working with a group
called Veterans Legacies. Andit just so happened that one of the
key contributors and foundersof the Veterans Legacies was associated
with the museum through apurchase of the property. And they
(03:03):
had asked if I could come inand help with some of the digital
marketing. And we got in thereand figured out there was a whole
lot more to be done than that.And like with military.com either
through attrition or goodluck, I moved my way up to this position
of coo. So hopefully that wasquick enough to stick within my view
of brevity.
Yeah, no, that's fine.
No.
What? Now, describe theEvergreen Aviation and Space Museum
(03:26):
to us a little bit. And folks,just a little disclaimer here. My
wife and I were up in Oregon.We were going on a wine tour. We
were driving by this place,and all of a sudden these huge hangars
appeared. And it's like, whatin the world is that out in the middle
of a field? And we were goingto McMinnville and I was like, I
need to look that up, whatthat was. And I found out what it
(03:47):
was, and we went back the nextday and took the tour. And we spent
like, gosh, six or seven hoursthere, for crying out loud. But Terry,
tell us a little bit about theEvergreen Aviation and Space Museum.
As you alluded to at thebeginning, we're focused on preserving
history and openingopportunities in education and enlightening
people. And not just historyof aviation and aerospace, but the
(04:11):
direction that they may wantto participate. The museum itself
is two very large buildings,about 165,000 square foot each. The
first one was dedicated tohousing the Spruce Goose. And that
portion of the museum openedin 2001. Prior to that, the founder
(04:31):
had been collecting warbirdsand keeping them in a smaller museum
just across the highway. Andthen as time went on, they. They
just acquired more and moreaircraft and decided to build the
second building, which at thattime was dedicated to space travel
and the history of space. Andso we ended up partnering with the
Cosmosphere out of Kansas, andthey built the. They built up a very
(04:55):
nice display around the factthat someday we were going to hope
to get the space shuttle. Thatdidn't happen. But the museum, it's.
Now that part of the portionof the museum houses an amazing collection
of vintage helicopters andpost Vietnam War era fighters and
stealth technology in additionto the race to Space. So that's a
(05:15):
real quick overview.
Yeah, the Cosmosphere isanother great place in Hutchinson,
Kansas, folks. If you've neverbeen there, that's a little closer
to St. Louis. But hey, ifyou're on the west coast or even
if you're in the Midwest orthe east coast, you need to get to
McMinnville and see the Sprucegoose. That's the. Is that the big
draw for the museum.
The Spruce Goose?
Yes. Yes.
(05:36):
There's a. Obviously a longand storied history around Howard
Hughes and the. The buildingof the Spruce goose. And then of
course, the being calledbefore Congress to explain why it
cost so much and hadn't flownyet, leading to the one and only
flight to prove the proof ofconcept. And then he buried the.
Buried it back in his hangarin Southern California. The Spruce
(05:57):
goose was essentially bouncedaround between owners. At one point,
Disney had the property thathoused the Spruce goose and along
with the goose and werescaling back in that operation. So
they eventually gave it to anaero club in Southern California,
which they started thediscussion whether they should part
it out and send the biggerpieces to like the Smithsonian and
(06:20):
so on. And that's when thefounder of the museum, Michael King
Smith, started puttingtogether a bid for it to move to
Oregon, which again, seemsreally absurd to most folks. But
the fact is it's with thatkind of story and how they got it
here, it's a very interestingand amazing feat.
It is a feat because it was afeat to get it from Long beach up
(06:40):
there to McMinnville, thatwhole process. Isn't there a video
on that or like a story? Iknow at the museum, but I think online
there's some information aboutthat too. Correct?
Yes. There's a really gooddocumentary done by Peter Devil about
the rescuing of the Sprucegoose and its shipment to McMindle.
And it really gets into thefiner details and it's really well
(07:03):
produced. It's one of myfavorite versions of the story, or
not necessarily version of thestory, but storytelling around that.
Now, folks, you can see in apicture the Spruce goose and how
big it is. But until you seeit in person, it's you. You won't
believe that. What were yourinitial thoughts when you saw that
thing for the first time?
(07:23):
I think it's like everybody,the first thing they do is they look
around and say, where is it?Because it is so big. It's like a
backdrop to everything else.And essentially it's from one perspective
or another. It's like a biggray wall in front of you. The 165
foot museum that it's in ispretty much wingtip to wingtip. There's
just a little bit of space ateach end of the building that isn't
(07:44):
filled by the wings of thatamazing plane.
To let you know, folks, thatwingspan is 300. Just shy 1 inch
shy of 320ft.
Feet.
So wider. The wingspan's widerthan are longer than a football field.
So just get that a little bitin perspective. That's what he's
talking about there. And thelength is 218ft and 8 inches long.
(08:08):
It's 79ft 4 inches. I've gotthis in front of me. 300,000 pounds.
So when it first showed up,you guys didn't. It wasn't all obviously
in one piece. You had to putit together. But there was a whole
process of restoring it. Andexplain a little bit about what went
into that restoration process.
In reality, it predates myexperience with the museum. But there's
(08:30):
quite a few of the gentlemenwho worked on it still working as
volunteers at the museum. Andthey were assembled by Michael King,
Smith's father, his name wasDel Smith. He put together a team
and they went down to SouthernCalifornia and carefully dismantled
the plane. And of course, partof it was shipped up in barges. Part
of it was shipped up on atruck. And they brought it up and
took it across the highwayfrom where the museum now is. And
(08:51):
over, I think it was a three,four year period they rebuilt it.
And except for some of themajor, like the tail and so on, which
they assembled once they gotit inside the museum. But it was
a lot of painstaking work. Andit's amazing to see how well they
did to bring it back to itsoriginal luster, so to speak.
So you have. One of thebuildings is completely aviation.
(09:13):
And I don't want to ignore thespace portion. We'll talk about that.
Do you have a favorite planein the aviation area other than the
Spruce Goose?
I grew up in the 60s and soone of my favorite planes, especially
just to draw as a kid, was theSaber Jet. So I'd say that RF86 is
one of my favorites. We have.We have a couple of. They are quite
(09:35):
replicas. They are built fromoriginal parts. But we have a. The
first jet that was flown bythe Germans toward the end of World
War II. And that's theMesserschmitt. And then we have the
first era of jets built byBritain. The second version of that
was. The first one was calledthe Vampire. The second is the Venom.
(09:56):
And the Venom is also made ofwood with obviously with some metal.
But it's a very interestinglittle twin tail kind of a plane
that. So those are my threefavorites on the aviation side or
what we now call the West Pavilion.
And you've got. I reallyappreciate how you've done this.
You've got early. An earlyflight section and you go historically
the golden age. You also havea Spirit of St. Luke replica there.
(10:18):
Go into some of the war birdsfrom World War II in Korea and Vietnam.
And then you do also do someamphibious kinds of planes. And getting
into the space area, man, Itell you what, my favorite's probably
SR71. But what's your favoritein the space area?
First of all, you nailed itwith the SR71, that it's probably
the most popular aircraft wehave next to the Spruce Goose. And
(10:41):
every year we actually have agathering every other year of pilots
and crewmen and engineers whoworked on that aircraft that come
out and do a big seminar overFather's Day weekend. And it's a
huge draw. And the way we haveit displayed is different than many
other places. It's in the rawwould be the wrong way to put it,
but it's not surrounded by anykind of observer by itself. And then
(11:01):
all of the special equipment,the sensors and the cameras and all
those sort of things are allset up in a separate display so people
can see how it not only helpedthe plane itself, but how it did
its job of kind of snooping onthe our enemies at the time during
the Cold War. Personally, myfavorite plane is the Warthog A10.
That was the aircraft myfather was a crew chief on. So I
(11:22):
have some affinity to thatplane, but probably even more so,
if I have to be honest, is thecollection of helicopters I stated
earlier. I was in the CoastGuard and it's one of the very first
Coast Guard helicopters, alongwith some Piaseckis which are dual
rotor first generation. One ofthem in fact has the cloth skin and
we have an H3 that is hungfrom the ceiling over the. The space
(11:46):
section of the. Of that museumdepicting the rescue of the frogmen
and so on from. And theastronauts. So a lot of interesting
things going on in there, butI probably have to lean towards my
helicopter days. And inaddition, we have a Global Hawk hanging
from the ceiling and anamazing collection of drones including
or about to launch a displayof adversary drones, current drones
(12:09):
that are being used by Iran,Russia and a handful of others that
are. They're prototypes, butthey're built by the same company
that builds the. The copiesfor the US Military to train on or
train against, I should say.
Wow.
So we have got quite a fewdrones on display there, including
one of the fastest helicoptersever made, which is again a drone.
(12:31):
But It's a pretty amazing plane.
So the space artifacts, thespace things that you have, you have.
Is it a Gemini capsule or aApollo or Mercury capsule?
Gemini, I believe. We alsohave the. We have replicas of Sputnik
through the Lunar Lander andthe Rover. We also have a Titan and
(12:58):
missiles that are actually intheir stand upright. The Titan, if
you go in, you can go all theway down to the base of that. And
there's a launch facilityreplica which is actually filled
with the original launchfacility control room equipment.
And it's pretty amazing.Again, a lot of that stuff is on
loan from the Air Force, butmuch of it is on loan from the Cosmosphere,
(13:20):
which are great partners of ours.
What are the. What's down theroad? Do you have some things I read,
something about anotherstealth fighter possibly coming in
or what's down the road thatyou can reveal to listeners that
they might see in future visits?
One of the things, and I kindof divert around to get to the answer,
(13:40):
and I apologize, but we have arestoration department that people
can actually walk through andtake tours while the guys are actually
working on it. One of ourbiggest projects right now is a C47
that was D Day Hero. Itactually flew three missions, I believe
it is during D Day, and thenfollowed up with Marketplace Wow.
And our market garden and someother activity. So it's. And then,
of course, it was a. Anairline plane for quite a while,
(14:02):
and then it was on displayoutdoors for years. And so we're
in the process of essentially,from the rivets up, bringing that
plane back to its originalglory. And so the reason I say that
is because once that aircraftis finished, we'll start working
on rent, restoring, or if notrebuilding our F117. We have an F117.
Its name is the Lone Wolf,which. What's interesting about the
(14:23):
F117 Nighthawks is that eachof the first crew members got the
name. Crew chiefs got thename. They're playing. So there's
a Toxic Avenger and othernames, but ours is the Lone Wolf.
And what's special about theLone Wolf is it was the first one
to deliver ordinance duringDesert Storm. And it, when we received
it, it was demilitarized,which is a fancy term that means
(14:44):
they took anything off thatwas top secret or could be used to
shoot or whatever it was. RA10has the gun barrel, but it doesn't
have the gun, that kind ofthing. And so they demilitarized
it, which means they strippedall the. What they call ram, which
is A radar absorbing material.They took all the leading edges off
the wings and the noseportions of what they call the tail
feathers were removed. So muchof the aircraft that gives it its
(15:07):
sleekness has been removed.And I think the term that some people
use to describe how it looksis kind of like a stink bug right
now. But so we're working withthe local university, Oregon State
University, to reconstruct theleading edges of those wings through
both melding of two worlds.We're going to be using aluminum,
but because those leading edgewings were actually originally ceramic
and they were all like aknife's edge, the university is printing
(15:29):
out the sections of it with a3D printer and then which will be.
Which will be melded or notmelted, but essentially adhered to
aluminum and then attached tothe leading edges. So we can rebuild
that look and get it. Bring itback to its. Bring it out of the
stink bug, so to speak, andback into its original glory. So
(15:50):
that plane is our big nextproject in that we received that
about a year and a half ago toa lot of fanfare. The general who
flew it during that mission,he also delivered the first ordinance
in Panama. He has come out anddone several seminars and speak,
met with people to talk aboutthat aircraft. So that one's exciting
and fun. We've got a coupleother planes in the works we're hoping
to get. One is A. An F15,which we already have a couple, but
(16:13):
this one in particular is in.They're decommissioning it, like
right now from an Air Guardbase that is painted in World War
II camo with the AlliedNormandy stripes on it. And it's
dedicated to. It's got animage of on the tail of the gentleman.
The airfield is named afterKingsley. He was a Congressional
(16:35):
Medal of Honor recipient fromWorld War II. And so we're hoping
to pull off a deal to get thatone on display because it's just.
It's such an original andawesome paint job that. And really
important to Oregon as far asthe connection to Kingsley, who is
from Portland, and our localNational Air Guard.
So how far from Portland areyou located? Just for give people
a perspective.
(16:57):
Crows fly it's about 30 milesto 40 miles, something like that.
But we're in the kind of theheart of wine country, which means
the. A bit of a circuitousroute to get there. So we're about
45 minutes from Portland. Andlike I said, we're. In fact, you
mentioned the field that. Thatwe're in that's in front of the Museum
is now all under vine. Oh,wow. So it's rather aesthetically
pleasing. They're putting in abrand new hotel which will be finished
(17:19):
in 27. That's not us, thelandlord, but it's on the property.
They also own and operate awater park called Wings and Waves,
which has a 747 on the top ofit. And people can go up, climb up
inside the 747 and ride aslide. Water slide back out of it.
So a lot of interesting thingson the campus. And we've got a lot
of things planned for thefuture to adhere. Tie it to the wine
(17:41):
industry and also make it adestiny. More of a destination.
Yeah, absolutely. This isArnold Strucker with Mark Langston
of St. Louis and Tomb. We'retalking to Terry Howell. He's the
chief operating officer forthe Evergreen Aviation and space
Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.You guys have a. One thing I remember
I didn't get in it. The flightsimulator there. And explain a little
(18:01):
bit about that. I remember Igot in one down at the Cosmosphere
and almost got sick. I don'tknow. What if yours is one of those
spinning around ones or.
Yes, this one's a 360°. Theonly thing it doesn't do is move
back and forth. But it doesspin and rotates backwards and so
on. And I've only done itonce. We. You have the opportunity.
(18:23):
In fact, we have two of themnow. You have the opportunity to
ride it as a simulated rollercoaster, which is very cool. But
someone with my lack ofintestinal fortitude. I don't like
not having some sort ofcontrol what's going on.
Yeah.
And so that one I would notfor. I did decide I was going to
do the F18 one day and thatwas awesome. Except I was bent on
(18:44):
trying to do as many barrelsas I possibly could until I realized
that there's only so many youcan do before again, that intestinal
fortitude comes to bear. And Iend up trying to run the clock out
in the flight level, straightlevel for the last minute and a half
of the ride. But it's very,very popular. Kids love it. The adults
love it. We have everythingfrom the ability to fly the Spruce
(19:07):
goose, which doesn't do a lotof aerobatic moves. But you can fly
the Spruce goose or all theWorld War II birds. You can fly the
SR71, which again is almost asboring as the flying the goose when
it comes down to what you cando. Because essentially that was
just. You fly really fast andyou turn right, and since you don't,
it doesn't move forward. Youdon't necessarily get that full inertia
(19:29):
of the. Of how fast the SR71actually goes. But like I said, the
rest of the rides on that arevery popular.
So what do you think is themost unusual aircraft or space artifact
that you have?
I think I referred to theVenom earlier. To me, that's pretty
unusual. There's someinteresting things about that aircraft.
The fact that it was one offew aircraft that had what they call
(19:51):
a shotgun start, where you puta canister that looks like a big
shotgun shell behind the pilotand essentially fire it off. And
that's how you started the engine.
Wow.
And the fact that it's awooden jet and like the first generation
of jets, fighter jets afterWorld War II, they referred to the
swallow, which is theMesserschmitt 6 2, which was, again,
(20:13):
a very interesting aircraft. Isaid, it's hard to say if this. Think
that as far as rarity goes, wehave everything from the Wright Flyer
replica through to the StealthFighter. We have a collection of
Lockheed Skunk Works planes.So we have the. What is in our version
is a T33, which was originallythe F88, which was Skunk Works first
(20:34):
plane. We have the 104 Starkfighter, the Stealth fighter, the
D21 drone, and the SR71. So wehave a kind of a mini collection
within our collection of Skunkwork planes. So we do a Skunk Works
tour. They go into a smalltheater, learn about where Skunk
Works comes from, and then getto go out and see and touch the aircraft
that are featured in that.
Because you have a theaterthere, it's an imax.
(20:57):
It hasn't been an IMAX foryears. It's a licensing thing. But
it is a giant screen 3Dtheater that seats 225 people, but
the screen is 75ft across. Andso it's. It's definitely an experience.
We have a smaller theater inthe. In what we call now the East
Pavilion, the Space Museum,where we feature things like if NASA's
(21:18):
doing something interesting,we'll feature a place where people
go and sit and watch whateverNASA's featuring on their site. Or,
like I said, some training andtours start from there.
But something that I was kindof. There is a lot to do, because
I wasn't. I was kind ofsurprised. You have. It's an event
space too. You have birthdaysthere. Do you have wedding receptions
(21:39):
there and things like that?
Yes. So the. The originalfounder of the Museum. Del Smith
and Michael Smith, they hadvisions of it being at one point,
I think they called it theAeroventure Park. They had. They
actually for a while hadarmored vehicles you could drive
around on a hill and so on. Sosome of those things have gone to
the wayside. But what was leftwas that we have the theater building
(22:01):
which is located right inbetween the two massive museum buildings.
It has a couple of biplanehanging from the ceiling inside the
lobby. But the right hand sideis all dedicated to the movie theater
and projection. And the lefthand side is conference centers and
event spaces. We have a logcabin, they call it the Lodge, which
is slash a chapel. They have alot of weddings there. And they have
(22:22):
an event center next to thatfor hosting receptions and so on.
We put on in the museumitself. We have a couple of big events
each year. A wine McMinnvillewine and food Classic in March that
features all the localwineries and so on. And that we.
Over the years it used to bededicated to just that east Pavilion.
But this year we're going totry integrating it throughout the
(22:43):
entire museum. So that'll befun and interesting. But like I said,
like you said, it's definitelya lot of event focused things. Everything
from weddings to graduationsand proms and bar mitzvahs, you name
it, they come here to do it.
Become a pretty prominentplace in the community. Then.
Yes, I would say McMinnvilleis. Because the wine industry and
(23:06):
everything has really grown.It's its own Persona. But back in
98, when this museum wasdreamt of, in 2001 when it was opened
the first time, the firstbuilding, it's always been the center
of attraction for the city ofMcMinnville. You go to local sandwich
shops and they got the SpruceGoose painted on the wall. We have
a local chain of bar hotelplaces called the McMenamins and
(23:27):
they have a painting of theSpruce Goose and some rather odd
situations. But in thepaintings are always the things that
the Spruce Goose never did,like flying over a mountain lake.
But it is interesting how itis entrenched in the local community.
I want to take a brief breakand Terry, when we come back, I'd
like for you to speak to manyof the educational opportunities
(23:47):
that you provide for not onlyschool students, but the community
and people who come in. Ithink I was looking at some of those
educational things and I wantyou to highlight what you think are
some of the most valuablethings. But we're going to take a
quick break here, folks. Thisis Arnold Stricker with Mark Langston
who's on assignment. You'relistening to St. Louis in tune. Don't
go away. As strange as as itmay sound.
(24:17):
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and MLS ID 401335 and equalhousing lender.
This is Arnold Stricker of St.Louis in tune on behalf of the Dred
Scott Heritage Foundation. In1857, the Dred Scott decision was
a major legal event andcatalysts that contributed to the
Civil War. The decisiondeclared that Dred Scott could not
be free because he was not acitizen. The 14th Amendment, also
(25:19):
called the Dred ScottAmendment, granted citizenship to
all born or naturalized herein our country and was intended to
overturn the US Supreme Courtdecision on July 9, 1868. The Dred
Scott Heritage foundation isrequesting a commemorative stamp
to be issued from the USPostal Service to recognize and remember
the heritage of this amendmentby issuing a stamp with the likeness
(25:39):
of the man Dred Scott. But weneed your support and the support
of thousands of people whowould like to see this happen. To
achieve this goal, we ask youto download, sign and share the one
page petition with others. Tofind the petition, please go to dredscottlives.org
and click on the Dred ScottPetition drive on the right side
of the page. On behalf of theDred Scott Heritage foundation, this
(26:01):
has been Arnold Stricker ofSt. Louis in Tunes.
Welcome back to St. Louis inTune. This is Arnold Stricker with
Mark Langston. Mark is onassignment and he's missing some
great stuff. We're talkingwith Terry Howell from the in McMinnville,
(26:23):
Oregon from the EvergreenAviation and Space Museum. He's the
Chief Operating Officer andTerry, I had before the break had
talked about one of the thingsthat I thought was really great that
you guys do are all theeducation programs that you have
going on and all year round,it's just not for classroom kids,
for field trips and thingslike that. You do have some camps.
(26:44):
Talk a little bit about someof those things because I think people,
I want them to get a feel forthat. Museums, sometimes they just
have things there and you justgo in and maybe they have the onesie
twosie field trips. But youguys really have quite a few things
going on.
Yeah, we do. In fact,education is the foundation of the
museum, going all the way backto the founding. We offer through
(27:07):
the education departmentseveral different versions of a summer
camp or spring camp. We justfinished one last week. It's a day
camp. So I don't know how itis in Missouri, but in Oregon, once
a quarter or once a month theteachers have an in service day.
So school is out and parentsare looking for ways to keep their
kids occupied as well as, ashopefully educated. So we've been
(27:28):
featuring this for about ayear now and the other day we had
quite a large group of kidsfrom several age groups out and we
partnered with a localaviation school and they flew over
one of their smallerhelicopters, landed it in the parking
lot at the museum and let thekids kind of climb all over it and
talk to the pilot and learnabout how the helicopters work and
so on. And that's the kind ofthing that happens on a regular basis.
(27:51):
We have spring break camp. Soduring spring break we offer again
a day camp that's similar toour summer camps. And then throughout
the summer we have camps andthey're dedicated to everything from
different topics from aviationspecific to space travel or space
engineering, coding, severalthings. And again it ranges from
k through usually 10th grade.We don't get a lot of older kids,
(28:15):
but we did have a programwhere we partner with the local schools
around robotics. They comeinto our facility to we have a couple
classrooms that they use foractually building their robots and
then they have roboticcompetitions and so on. So we're
really involved at the localschool districts and a lot of homeschool
groups. We do, as youmentioned, a ton of field trips and
those can range from selfguided to having a curriculum assigned
(28:38):
to it and giving the kidseverything from a scavenger hunt
research do while they're inthe museum. So again, it's a major
focus of our, of the museumand how we contribute to the community
in that way. As far as adultEducation and getting closer to the
12th grade and above. We haveintern programs. We work with Horizon
(28:58):
Airlines. They have a localcharter school that's focused on
aviation. And so those youngmen and women come in and they get
to work on everything from howto learn how to put fabric on an
aircraft skin to doing rivetsand tearing down and restoring engines
and so on. And again, part ofthat is our tour program, too. We
(29:20):
allow. We have one tour thatwe give in the restoration area where
people get to do their ownriveting and take home a piece of
aircraft skin with a rivet init that they've done themselves.
So that's probably a littlemore Trotsky than education, but
it's fun. And again, like Isaid, whenever there's a major event
going on with NASA, we'll openup either the large theater or the
(29:41):
smaller one in our eastpavilion to people that come in and
watch and learn. We do severalseminars. One of my favorites is,
is the niece, great niece,maybe great, great niece of Betsy
Coleman comes out and does anin person, in Persona kind of presentation
about Betsy Coleman and whatshe was, what she did. And for those
(30:02):
who don't know, Betsy Colemanwas African American woman who was
the first African Americanfemale pilot licensed. She actually
had to go to France to get herlicense. And then she came back to
the United States and starteda flight school. And she was a barnstormer
and really popular in thatera. She died, unfortunately, in
(30:23):
an aviation incident. But wehave an aircraft like she flew on
display that has her storyattached to it. But for several years,
we've had her niece come outand do a presentation in education.
We get local schools to comeout. In fact, there's a school in
Salem, which is about an hoursouth of us, that is called the Bessie
Coleman Elementary School. Sothose kids come up every year for
that.
(30:44):
That's really cool.
So that's some of the thingswe do. It's not all of it, but that's
the bulk of it.
Did you ever imagine when youwere working on helicopters in the
Coast Guard, that this is oneof the things you would be doing?
Quite frankly, never. At onepoint I thought I might get my A
and P and work on aircraft,but I figured out pretty quickly
(31:06):
that, and this is, I don'twant to discourage people from working
on aircraft, but there's a lotof risk involved in working on commercial
aircraft, and you don't getpaid much more than a Toyota mechanic.
So I decided to go a differentdirection. So before I got out of
the military. I got mybachelor's degree and then shortly
after my master's. And thatkind of set me up for what I did@military.com
and eventually here at themuseum. The nice thing is in military.com
(31:27):
everything was virtual. It wasonline content. And the nice thing
is here everything's hands on.The whole idea of we try to integrate
digital as much as we can orcan afford to, but for the most part,
this is getting your handsinto it and learning about what's
going. What happened and howthings were developed and so on.
So it's a much more tactile.Tactile, I should say.
Yeah. One of the great thingsI think is you involve a lot of veterans
(31:50):
and I really encourage them tocome back listening to you. At the
front end of the program. Youhave some of these individuals who
were involved with a lot ofthese aircraft come back for some
days when they're highlighted.I think it's great that you have
these veterans come back like that.
That. And we have a lot ofveterans who actually are part of
our volunteer corps. So wehave three to four different opportunities
(32:13):
around volunteering here. Oneof them is as a docent which give
guided tours and talk aboutthe aircraft and the history and
the people that are involvedin the aircraft. But we also have
collections team, arestoration team, and both the restoration
and the collections team areall operated by volunteers. We don't
have any paid staff in thoseareas right now. We really rely heavily
on their experience and theirlove for what they do to help the
(32:35):
museum be successful. It'sinteresting because again, we even
have. Whenever we need to doanything with the F117, there's a
gentleman in southern Oregonthat drives all the way up to come
up and clean it up and makesure that all the stuff is there.
And then he'll help tellstories about his work on it. We
have a gentleman does the samething for an F15 that we have. So
we have again, there's a lotof passion and spree decor and so
(32:57):
on with these gentlemen andladies who worked on these aircraft
and going even to this SR71.We have a gentleman who was one of
the people that worked at thejet propulsion side of that. And
he just loves talking abouthow. Because that engine on that
SR71 is a marvel in itself andhow it operates, air aspirated. And
so it's. Again, it justdrives. It drives them. Which helps
(33:20):
keep us excited about what wedo here at the museum too.
We've been talking to TerryHowell. He's the chief operating
officer for the EvergreenAviation and space Museum in McMinnville,
Oregon. Folks, if you get achance to get up there, please do.
You will not be disappointedat all. Terry, thanks very much for
coming on St. Louis and Tomb.We greatly appreciate the information
and what you're doing up thereto get keep aviation and space going.
(33:44):
Certainly my pleasure andthank you very much. I appreciate
the opportunity.
What a great time talking toTerry Howell. Folks, I want to give
you the website for the museumbecause you should check out some
of the videos that they have,some of the other information that
they have. It'severgreenmuseum.org, evergreenmuseum.org
they were listed as one of the10 best aviation museums in the United
(34:06):
States by Travel and Leisuremagazine. I can't believe that they
probably to me, they're onlyone of the top three. I know the
Smithsonian has one and Imentioned earlier the Cosmosphere
in Hutchinson, Kansas. They'realso, by the way, affiliated with
the Smithsonian Museum.They're a Smithsonian affiliate.
So great group of folks.You'll just be awed you can spend
(34:29):
at least a day there. Didn'tget completely through the space
portion just because wasrunning out of time. So make sure
that you plan to go toMcMinnville and you plan to go to
this particular museum. Blockout the whole day. There's a lot
of great stuff for kids to dothere and I want to encourage you
to do that. So a little mentalfloss here. Here's some thinking
(34:52):
things. You think of all thestates and all the capitals in the
United States. There are fourstates whose first letter is also
the first letter, the city inwhich is a capital. In other words,
here in Missouri we haveJefferson City. J and M for Missouri.
That doesn't work. But thereare four states in the United States
(35:14):
that the first letter of thecapital city is the same as the first
letter of the state. Do youknow what those are? Okay, here's
one of them. Oklahoma City,Oklahoma. Here's another one. Indianapolis,
(35:36):
Indiana. Did any of you getHonolulu, Hawaii? And the last one,
this is a hard one. Dover,Delaware. Dover, Delaware. Yeah.
Yeah. How about that one? Oh,for those of you that didn't get
(35:58):
it, I'm so sorry. We're goingto close out the show with some jokes
and Mark's favorite kind ofthing. Mark's favorite kind of funnies.
So I just sold my homingpigeon on ebay for the 22nd time.
(36:18):
Signs seen. This is a signthat is seen the back of a van driver
is old. Can't hear your horn,can't see your finger. Have a nice
day. What do we learn fromcows, buffaloes and elephants? It's
(36:39):
impossible to reduce weight byeating grass and salads and walking
Tum should sell pumpkin spiceflavored antacids and call them autumns.
(36:59):
And where do pirates buy theirhooks? At secondhand stores. My wife
asked me if I could clear thekitchen table. Well, I had to get
a running.
Start, but I made it.
And I've often heard that icyis the easiest word to spell. Looking
at it now, I see why. And whatdo you call a belt made of watches?
(37:23):
A waste of time. When peoplepay, they buy a lot of bottled water.
And people pay a fortune forthose little bottles of Evian water.
Then I read it backwards andscientists have found that cows produce
more milk when the farmertalks to them. Apparently it's a
(37:46):
case of in one ear and out theudder. Lastly, a warning sign. We
don't care if you smoke inthis room. We don't care if you play
poker naked. However, both ofthese things are illegal in Louisiana.
If caught by a state trooper,citations will be issued. And here's
(38:07):
the dad joke of the day. Whathappens when a microscope runs into
a telescope? Theykaleidoscope. Oh, goodness gracious.
That's all for this hour.Thanks for listening, folks. If you've
enjoyed this episode, you canlisten to additional shows@stlintune.com
(38:29):
consider leaving a review onour website, Apple Podcasts, Podchaser,
or your preferred podcastplatform. Your feedback helps us
reach more listeners andcontinue to grow. Thanks to Bob Berthiselle
for our theme music, oursponsor, Better Rate Mortgage. Our
guest, Terry Howell, chiefoperating officer for the Evergreen
Aviation and space Museum inMcMinnville, Oregon, and want to
(38:50):
thank co host Mark Langston.And we thank you folks for being
part of our community ofcurious minds. St. Louis in tune
is a production of Motif MediaGroup and the US Radio Network. Remember
to keep seeking, keeplearning, walk worthy and let your
light shine. For St. Louis intune, I'm Arnold Stricker.
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