John Abaray was born on April 24, 1936 and passed away on April 7, 2014 at his home in Moscow Hills, Missouri. John was raised and educated in Carteret, New Jersey. He had wonderful memories of flying airplanes with his father.

He entered stunt at the 1952 Mirror Meet but crashed; this gave him a great desire to try again. The next year he won the youth stunt division of the Mirror Meet. He used an aircraft of his own design powered by an Atwood Champion .63.

Jim Walker had given John two Walker pressure tanks and a regulator. This allowed the airplane to fly much longer than usual. John told the judges that he would fly all the maneuvers in the Mirror Meet flight plan in one flight. There were 30 maneuvers in the original Mirror Meet pattern. This was changed in the late 1950's to the pattern we fly today.

John received an engineering degree and worked in that field until his wife grew ill with cancer. He quit work for two years to care for her until her death. Finding an engineering position was difficult, so he went to work in the health care field for 5 years until he retired. He was keenly aware of the needs of others, and had a very caring sensitive spirit.

John got back into controline flying around 2005. He was in a hobby shop in St. Louis where Dan McEntee worked, and overheard Dan and another customer talking about the Mirror Meets. John was amazed that anyone remembered or knew about the Mirror Meet. Dan mentioned that the Tulsa Gluedobbers were going to hold a Mirror Meet stunt event, and John got ahold of the Gluedobbers.  We invited him down for the first Mirror Meet, and he came down and experienced it with us. He was an invaluable source of information on how the original Mirror Meet was run. John flew controline with the Lafayette Escadrille for awhile, but dropped out. I guess he missed the way controline used to be back in the 1940's and 50's.

John loved designing and flying his controline airplanes, building computers, (He had four) fishing, target shooting, and going to plays and concerts.

He is survived by his fiancée, Marilyn Post. John was a good man and he is missed.

It is sad when I hear of another modeler leaving this world.  Too bad we couldn't get him to right about his experiences when he could.   I think Bigiron(aka Marvin Denny) should be working on a book.  Even your self De,  it would be great reading of the modeling you have done in your life time.