I became friends with Walter because of an article he wrote in Aviation History magazine on the Brewster Buffalo. His first job as a draftsman was at the Brewster plant in Long Island City, N.Y.
I have an R/C F2A Buffalo that was built by Ken Barr, a commercial artist who built C/L and R/C models that were works of art, literally. All the markings and decorations were hand painted. Google him, it's worth seeing his art work. Sadly, he's no longer with us.
So I contacted Walter and sent him pictures of Ken's Buffalo and my rubber scale Buffalo which began a great friendship through correspondence and phone calls. We met at the WRAM show (what an honor) where he saw the model. Walter was in his eighties and wanted to do one more model magazine article. His usual style was to write a history of a plane with drawings and it's pilot but the editors wanted a construction article with plans. So he decided on a Buffalo article covering R/C, C/L and FF using photos of my R/C and FF models and asked if I would build a profile C/L version. He sent a general drawing but as hard as I tried, I was out of my league in the designing of it and the project fizzled. I should have asked for help. As Walter grew older the correspondence stopped and we lost contact.
Rest in peace Walter, I grew up reading, over and over, your books on C/L scale models and model building,
Ara