Phew! Spent the last two days looking through BOXES of material on Steve Wittman at EAA's archives. I'm beat! Lots of cool stuff, some of which isn't useful in writing a book but is amazing to look at anyway. I essentially went through about three boxes (maybe 10% of the material) doing "triage" on what may be useful. Sometimes it was hard to know. Ended up making over 300 copies of documents ranging from the applications to the patent office for the infamous spring steel landing gear to letters from people he taught to fly who then went to fight WWII to correspondnace from companies who he used products from on his racers wanting endorsements from him, etc. And a whole lot more. Looking through that stuff was like the infamous drinking from a firehose quip. I'll need to go back. What a fascinating experience. First photo shows my workspace in the EAA library... boxes of Witt stuff are on the cart. Second shot is a very interesting metal lock box that had inside... well, I can't tell you.
Last but not least is stuff in one of the boxes. The rolled items you see are diplomas, including Steve's high school diploma from 1924. His FAA certificates were also in that box; the bottom holds scrapbooks that hold hundreds of photos (some from the 20s which unfortunately aren't labeled) and a zillion newspaper clippings.
Wanna go back...
TM
Topic: Life Through Your Camera (Read 926763 times)
