Watervliet 40C January Vol. 1 EAA Chapter 585 Meeting will be on January 13 th @ 7:00pm at the chapter clubhouse. Board of Directors Meeting To be announced. Greetings to all, I have the distinct privilege of being the Newsletter editor again for Chapter 585 and looking forward to serving the Chapter again. I was the editor prior in 1991, hopefully I will be doing a better job with the advances in technology I didn t have at that time. I wish to give thanks to Dovie Downey for being the editor for these past several years and to also thank her for the write up on me in the last newsletter she did. I don t claim it is a big deal, I just do what I do and enjoy it. Dovie also was doing the newsletter for the SWMCC, Southwest Michigan Car Club which her and Larry are members, so she has had her hands full to say the least, not easy being editor for one and then add it to two. She and Larry will be heading to Texas for the winter and we wish them safe travel there and back again. Anyone wishing to have an article or something in the newsletter, please don t hesitate, we welcome anything aviation related. I am considering adding on a forsale section to the newsletter but I need to talk this over with the board for it s acceptance. See you all at the next meeting. Terry White Presidents Corner Greetings, 2016 already. I was planning on flying my Bearhawk sometime this year, but life happens. I had to move twice, into two places that were smaller with smaller workshops, two Grandkids born that we have now adopted, a business to run, etc.etc. Naturally I long for the good old days when I still had planes to fly and work on. I used to fly my Chief during lunch hours on the farm. I traded it for a Bonanza that I flew everywhere, and all the time. I would fly down to Mishawalka Pilots Club every Sunday to meet with friends that I meet in Oshkosh. We would then fly in a gaggle down to Rochester Ind. for breakfast. I miss that. I used to spend two weeks at Oshkosh every year back when we could camp where we could see the flight line from the campsite avoiding the crowded airshow line. I do remember going out to the line to watch the first landing of the SST. Concorde inside the US with Al Todd. New camera in hand we looked around for a while to find the perfect spot for pictures. As soon as it touched down a guy in front of me jumped up and started waving a lawn chair, at an airplane going two hundred miles an hour, three stories in the air, with really thick little round windows, in the middle of thousands of people. After we pointed out his error in judgment he slithered off somewhere else, show over. I also remember the workshops which I still enjoy. They were usually hands on as they still are. I remember Ray Stits himself demonstrating his new Polyfiber process, Burt Rutan, in a tent doing his fiberglass and foam cutting. Jim Bede, Chuck Yeager flying an ultralite, etc. Ok back to reality. I can't help feel a little out of touch, I did spend several years out of the loop, but with the help of membership I will survive. There are a couple of items (goals) I had in mind for the next 2 yrs. One is too inventory and reorganize the hanger possibly, To get more help somehow for Rich and his crew more help for the 5k run/chile hop. I did enjoy the aircraft turn out for the chile hop. That's all I have for today, I hope to get better at this in the future Sincerely Gary 1
WASPS not allowed to be buried in Arlington Female WWII pilots barred from Arlington National Cemetery McLEAN, Va. The ashes of World War II veteran Elaine Harmon are sitting in a closet in her daughter's home, where they will remain until they can go to what her family says is her rightful resting place Arlington National Cemetery. Harmon piloted aircraft in World War II under a special program, Women Airforce Service Pilots, that flew noncombat missions to free up male pilots for combat. Granted veteran status in 1977, the WASPs have been eligible to have their ashes placed at Arlington with military honors since 2002. But earlier this year, then-secretary of the Army John McHugh reversed course and ruled WASPs ineligible. After Harmon died in April at age 95, her daughter, Terry Harmon, 69, of Silver Spring, Maryland, was dismayed to learn that the Army had moved to exclude WASPs. She said her mother had helped lead the effort to gain recognition for WASPs. "These women have been fighting this battle, off and on, for over 50 years now," she said. Harmon's family and others are working to overturn McHugh's directive. A petition on change.org <http://change.org/> has received more than 4,000 signatures. Harmon also hopes Congress will ask incoming Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning about the issue at his upcoming confirmation hearing. McHugh's memo, which Terry Harmon obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, says Army lawyers reviewed the rules in 2014 and determined that WASPs and other World War II veterans classified as "active duty designees" are not eligible for inurnment placement of their urns in an above-ground structure at Arlington. The largest group affected by the memo is actually the Merchant Marine, nearly 250,000 of whose members served during World War II. The WASP program was much smaller just over 1,000 women were accepted into the program, which ran from 1942 to 1944. In a statement, Army spokesman Paul Prince said the cemetery superintendent in 2002 had no authority to allow WASPS' remains into the cemetery. Under federal law, he said, WASPs are eligible only for burial at cemeteries run by the Department of Veterans Affairs not Arlington National Cemetery, which is run by the Army. Kate Landdeck, a Texas Woman's University history professor who has focused much of her academic research on WASPs, said she doesn't understand the rationale for the Army going out of its way to exclude this group of women from Arlington after they had been deemed eligible for over a decade without controversy. WASPs "are a distinct group of women with the surviving 100-or-so women all in their 90s," she said. "It is just mean-spirited for the Secretary of the Army to question their value to their country. Again." Gen. Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, who commanded the Army Air Forces in World War II, created the WASP unit in 1942 with the intention of granting it full military status, but Congress never approved it. So the WASPs served as a paramilitary unit, subject to military discipline and staying in barracks, Landdeck said. They test-flew repaired military aircraft, trained combat pilots and towed airborne targets that other pilots fired at with live ammunition during training. Arlington is running out of space and faces ongoing pressure over its eligibility requirements. Tight rules spell out whose ashes can be laid to rest there, and even tighter rules spell out who is eligible for 2 in-ground burial, which place a greater strain on the cemetery's capacity. Harmon's family says the WASPs aren't asking for anything beyond what they earned: eligibility for placement of ashes. And they say the impact on cemetery capacity would be minimal, given that so few World War II veterans remain. Harmon's granddaughter, Erin Miller, said her grandmother, a Maryland native, had specifically requested her ashes go to Arlington. "My grandmother is from here," Miller said. "Arlington is kind of our local national cemetery." In an interview archived with the Library of Congress, Elaine Harmon recalled she needed permission from her skeptical father to begin training as a pilot while a student at the University of Maryland. "Back in those days, women weren't expected do things like this, and so many people were against the idea of women flying, endangering their lives," she said in the interview. Deadline for news and information for the Febuary, 2016 newsletter will be January 27. EAA 585 Minutes Dec, 2015 Bill Greenley, Secretary No meeting because of the Christmas Dinner EAA Chapter Officers Gary Heuser-President 269-539-0102 garyheu@gmail.com Brooks Payne-Vice-President 269-944-6351 brookspayne@gmail.com Ken Straw Treasurer 269-208-3294 legrandmuzzy@gmail.com Bill Greenley-Secretary 269208-1533 wgreenley@gmail.com Terry White- Newsletter Editor 269-449-8852 warbabies1946@sbcglobal.net Board of Directors Jon Salnoske 269-849-2320 jonlonsal@sbcglobal.net Hal Bundy nonnienat@tampabay.rr.com Dovie Downey 269-463-5532 Some photos from the Christmas Dinner. Food was good and there wasn t enough left over for a good food fight. The Cake was excellent and the programs put on were very interesting. Happy New Year to all and impatiently waiting on good weather for our summer time flying sessions. At the time of this writing we had only 71 days left till Spring.
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EAA Chapter 585 P.O. Box 26 Watervliet, MI 49098 Santas New Sleigh 4
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