Update on the Illinois Aviation Museum at Bolingbrook
By Brian Gilomen
Jim Chybicki, Restoration Co-Chair for the Museum has provided an update
regarding the T-2 restoration. Nick Selig and his crew are working
frantically on the wings, but his crew has dropped from 15 to about 3 so Jim
requested that everyone please make the effort to come back out. The
Fuselage is now on a maintenance trailer and is ready for everyone to come out and
sand his or her choice of a one foot square area. The plane will then be
ready to paint!
Please do what you can to help speed the T-2 project along! Working days are
still Thursday nights 6:30pm-ish and Saturday mornings starting around 8:30 am.
Kent Demuth forwarded his synopsis of the
May 27 meeting at Clow, at which Mayor Roger Claar, Mayor of Bolingbrook,
spoke. Kent sums up the Mayor's comments and goal thus: the Mayor
wants Bolingbrook's Clow International Airport to become the premier General
Aviation airport in the country. Claar is on his way to doing just that
with new hangers, a first-class pilots' lounge, a longer runway, automated
weather, a new facade for the airport and finally his support for the Illinois
Aviation Museum at Bolingbrook. A new site plan is being drawn up and an
architect is working on the pilots' lounge and the front entrance. And, the
Mayor gave the Museum full use of Hanger One, and put the museum on the site
plan.
Kent's Museum Update:
1. For a full update visit Charlie's where a display with a continually running
presentation supplies all the details.
2. 501c3 (IRS Not For Profit) filing is submitted. We are expecting approval
soon.
3. We have hanger one as our temporary home as noted above.
4. We have a stake in the ground at the front entrance for the museum site.
5. We have started discussions with an architect toward development of a 50,000
sq foot footprint two
story museum.
6. We have a two year plan drawn out with a goal of opening the museum July 4,
2006.
7. We only need $6 million dollars. To that end, a professional fund raising
effort is taking shape. We will be sending much more out on this as it
evolves. And with the use of hanger one from the Village, we have the
equivalent of a $35,000 donation against that $6 million. Not bad for the first
night of fund raising.
8. We have an educational plan that we expect to start in early summer.
9. The T-2 is well on its way to a July completion.
10. We have commitments for an F4F and Dauntless from the Navy.
For all of you that gave up on the Museum over the past several months, Kent
stressed that they we are alive and well and they want you back!!
Where To Now?
The End of an Era: Karl Finishes his Hangar!
Update on the Purchase of Clow by Bolingbrook