In the mid sixties, I attended Blacow Elementary School in Fremont California for the second and third grade.
Our principle was Mr. Ed Childress, one of the nicest gentleman I have ever known.
He would come out during recess and lunch and umpire our baseball games (remember when you could actually play with a real baseball and bring a bat to school?) he interacted with the students and everyone loved him.
During this time frame, my dad was seriously involve in stunt and was a WAM member (Western Associated Modelers). He competed in local contest and I of course, went to every one of them and pitted for him.
At a contest in Castro Valley, I happened to see Mr. Childress and ran to him to say hello. He was happy to see me and asked what I was doing there.
I told him that I was there with my dad who was competing. Turns out Mr. Childress was a modeler himself and flew scale.
I introduced him to my father and they hit it off big time.
Back at school, I would always go out of my way to say hello to him and chat about model airplanes. Turns out Mr. Childress was a big shot in the scale community, as you will see at the end of this story.
A couple of months ago I got the itch to build a Top Flite Peacemaker, as I had the kit stashed away in a closet. My dad had built a couple of them from plans, as Top Flite had yet to kit it. So I ordered a set of plans and found that the plans were published in Model Airplane News, April 1960, along with the article by George Aldrich. I just had to have it. I got lucky and found the magazine on e-bay. So I buy the magazine and didn't pay too much attention to the cover as I went straight to the Peacemaker article.
The more I looked at the cover, the more familiar the gentleman seemed.
The guy on the cover, holding a seven foot wingspan B-29 is none other than my elementary school principle, Mr. Childress!
Pretty cool.
Larry, Buttafucco Stunt Team