Thursday, February 24, 2011

The Days Are Just Packed

Yesterday we had a couple of special visitors at the air park, John "NAIL 16" Johnston and Gary Bain.  Gary was a Marine F-4 driver back in 1969 when he was shot down by AAA over South Vietnam.  Gary had been conducting a close air support mission under the control of an Air Force OV-10A Bronco flown by forward air controller NAIL 16.  After Gary's ejection, John stayed on station overhead for over an hour until his fuel became low.  John passed off his role as on scene commander to a "Playboy" TA-4J fast FAC, who stayed with Gary another two hours until he was picked by a Jolly Green Giant rescue helicopter.  John and Gary visited us so John could, "sit in an OV-10 one more time."   Gary had contacted us a few weeks ago to see if he could arrange this wish for his now lifetime friend.  We made that happen for both of them. 

While we were  walking around the museum, Gary asked for a membership application and asked if we had a newsletter.  My short answer was yes, but then had to admit that with all our day-to-day activities, I hadn't gotten around to a newsletter in several months.

That got me to thinking.  There is seldom a day that something isn't happening at the museum; normal business day, collection archive meetings, centennial events, work on the airplanes in the petting zoo, something, and maybe our membership would like to know about it.  The process of putting the newsletter together is often just too time consuming to get it done and in a timely manner.  Then it dawned on me, how about a blog?  So, we will give this a try.  Let us know how you like this and what you would like to know about.


Regards,
Jim

2 comments:

  1. Blog idea makes sense, so long as you don't let the occasional or frequent "down day" create too much pressure for posting. And since blogs are still new for much or most of your mature audience, then try for a quarterly or semi-annual newsletter...something hard copy to keep schedules, calendars, and other things handy.
    R. Means

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  2. Thanks Randy. Good points. Actually starting this is taking some of the pressure off.

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