A Little Proof Reading for Historians, please...

Please see: http://alexisparkinn.com/the_iowa_city_airport.htm

Here's why:

Mary and I have been researching the history of the huge, old Boeing/United
Airlines/US Post Office air mail hangar, located just across Rwy 25 from the
Inn here in Iowa City. According to Bill Tinkler, one of our summertime
guests (and a retired United Airlines pilot), this hangar is one of just
seven original air mail hangars still standing in the country.

Because of this, we are looking into petitioning to have the hangar put on
the National Historic Register of historic buildings. Unfortunately, in
order to petition for this placement, you need to outline the history of
your proposed building in pretty good detail. So, to this end Mary and I
spent a few hours at the library, the courthouse, and the register of deeds,
trying to find any early records of this amazing structure. Much to my
amazement, we discovered three things:

1. There is no "official history" of the Iowa City Airport, in print or
on-line, despite Iowa City's pioneering position in early commercial
aviation.
2. Once land is purchased by the City, the register of deeds no longer
"tracks" what goes on there. Thus, there are no records of when Boeing
built the United hangar, because it happened on city-owned land. (Luckily
other records survive...)
3. What history IS available is sketchy at best. Much of it is verbal, and
cannot be easily verified.

This lack of a written record bothered me all summer, and I kept searching,
thinking that there surely MUST be something written down, somewhere. I
eventually located a brief history of the first 70 years, written as a
class-project by four U of I journalism students back in the 1980s. While
useful, it hardly qualified as a comprehensive history.

It finally dawned on me that no one was going to bother writing a history of
the airport, given the current anti-airport stance within the City. And
even if they DID write one, it might be slanted in a way that made the
airport sound redundant at best, and hazardous at worst. So, I decided to
write one myself, and have added a webpage to our website entitled "The
History of the Iowa City Airport".

Please see it at http://alexisparkinn.com/the_iowa_city_airport.htm .

I compiled most of the information over the last few weeks, and wrote it in
the last couple of days. I'm sure there are factual and timeline errors,
and probably outright falsehoods there, but -- to the best of my ability --
I've tried to make it as accurate as possible.

Knowing that many of your are true aviation history buffs, steeped in the
lore of the early days of flight, I thought it would be good to ask you
folks to critique the page, soliciting suggestions for additions and
deletions. Please have at it, remembering that this is "Version 1.0", and I
expect to make many changes.

Sadly, despite this effort, I STILL know very little about the origins of
the United Hangar. Any information any of you may have is appreciated!

Many thanks in advance!
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:Vfdpb.87457$Tr4.224035@attbi_s03...
Please see: http://alexisparkinn.com/the_iowa_city_airport.htm

Here's why:

Mary and I have been researching the history of the huge, old
Boeing/United
Airlines/US Post Office air mail hangar, located just across Rwy 25 from
the
Inn here in Iowa City. According to Bill Tinkler, one of our summertime
guests (and a retired United Airlines pilot), this hangar is one of just
seven original air mail hangars still standing in the country.

snip
1. There is no "official history" of the Iowa City Airport, in print or
on-line, despite Iowa City's pioneering position in early commercial
aviation.
snip

Jay,

I'm sure the U of I has a history department with graduate students looking
for some topic to research and write a thesis. I don't know if you can
find anybody there, but why don't you try getting with the department
chairman and see if they're interested? You know they (the grad students)
have the time to do a good job because that IS there job lol. Maybe they'd
be interested in doing a thing on trans hubs during the airmail days and the
birth of the industry yada yada.

Worth a try unless you're into it yourself for the fun of it.

Jim
History major

What about the newspaper library, once the "morgue"?

Old newspaper files might be found either at the newspaper itself, or
microfilms at the local library or the U, but the actual newspaper
library data will have the best cross-index, probably entered on file
cards by diligent librarians who long ago wrote -30-

Don

I'm sure the U of I has a history department with graduate students
looking
for some topic to research and write a thesis.

Great idea!

My only concern is that it be written in a neutral, "just the facts" way. It
is the "university crowd" that is in many ways behind the movement to close
the airport -- so going to them for help could either be a stroke of
diplomacy -- or the kiss of death.
--
Jay Honeck
A History Minor
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

What about the newspaper library, once the "morgue"?

Duh. Can't believe I didn't think of that.

Thanks!
--
Jay Honeck
22 Years in Newspapers
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay,

Good piece, well researched.

I'd forgotten Iowa City had a United hangar. I recall the one in Des
Moines from when I was a kid and my cousin told me about the DC-3s
taxiing in to load and unload pax. (I'm assuming that one is gone.)

I don't have any additional information, the piece looks good.

Warmest regards,
Rick

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message news:Vfdpb.87457$Tr4.224035@attbi_s03...
Please see: http://alexisparkinn.com/the_iowa_city_airport.htm

Here's why:

Mary and I have been researching the history of the huge, old Boeing/United
Airlines/US Post Office air mail hangar, located just across Rwy 25 from the
Inn here in Iowa City. According to Bill Tinkler, one of our summertime
guests (and a retired United Airlines pilot), this hangar is one of just
seven original air mail hangars still standing in the country.

Because of this, we are looking into petitioning to have the hangar put on
the National Historic Register of historic buildings. Unfortunately, in
order to petition for this placement, you need to outline the history of
your proposed building in pretty good detail. So, to this end Mary and I
spent a few hours at the library, the courthouse, and the register of deeds,
trying to find any early records of this amazing structure. Much to my
amazement, we discovered three things:

1. There is no "official history" of the Iowa City Airport, in print or
on-line, despite Iowa City's pioneering position in early commercial
aviation.
2. Once land is purchased by the City, the register of deeds no longer
"tracks" what goes on there. Thus, there are no records of when Boeing
built the United hangar, because it happened on city-owned land. (Luckily
other records survive...)
3. What history IS available is sketchy at best. Much of it is verbal, and
cannot be easily verified.

This lack of a written record bothered me all summer, and I kept searching,
thinking that there surely MUST be something written down, somewhere. I
eventually located a brief history of the first 70 years, written as a
class-project by four U of I journalism students back in the 1980s. While
useful, it hardly qualified as a comprehensive history.

It finally dawned on me that no one was going to bother writing a history of
the airport, given the current anti-airport stance within the City. And
even if they DID write one, it might be slanted in a way that made the
airport sound redundant at best, and hazardous at worst. So, I decided to
write one myself, and have added a webpage to our website entitled "The
History of the Iowa City Airport".

Please see it at http://alexisparkinn.com/the_iowa_city_airport.htm .

I compiled most of the information over the last few weeks, and wrote it in
the last couple of days. I'm sure there are factual and timeline errors,
and probably outright falsehoods there, but -- to the best of my ability --
I've tried to make it as accurate as possible.

Knowing that many of your are true aviation history buffs, steeped in the
lore of the early days of flight, I thought it would be good to ask you
folks to critique the page, soliciting suggestions for additions and
deletions. Please have at it, remembering that this is "Version 1.0", and I
expect to make many changes.

Sadly, despite this effort, I STILL know very little about the origins of
the United Hangar. Any information any of you may have is appreciated!

Many thanks in advance!

BTW, I read the piece and it's very well done. Not too "in depth" but with
a good timeline and some interesting characters for human interest/humor.
Just right for the casual visitor. All in all, well done.

Jim

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:38gpb.88685$Tr4.230279@attbi_s03...
I'm sure the U of I has a history department with graduate students
looking
for some topic to research and write a thesis.

Great idea!

My only concern is that it be written in a neutral, "just the facts" way.
It
is the "university crowd" that is in many ways behind the movement to
close
the airport -- so going to them for help could either be a stroke of
diplomacy -- or the kiss of death.
--
Jay Honeck
A History Minor
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

BTW, I read the piece and it's very well done. Not too "in depth" but
with
a good timeline and some interesting characters for human interest/humor.
Just right for the casual visitor. All in all, well done.

Thanks, Jim. That's exactly what I wanted to start with, and then start
adding hyperlinks off of the main piece, linked to pages with more in-depth
information. I can see this little page eventually branching off into a
monstrous production -- but it'll be fun, if nothing else!

How do the pix look? Do they load fast enough? Believe it or not, I
actually took pictures OF the pictures using my Canon S400 (from the two
books I was able to find about Iowa City), and they naturally lost a lot of
quality. It took a lot of "Photoshopping" to get them back into a viewable
condition.

BULLETIN: Our airport manager has contacted me to tell me that he has two
boxes of records at his office. One is marked "Old Airport Records", and
the other is marked "Ancient Airport Records"! He's going to let me dig
through them next week, and I'm looking forward to some "break-through"
discoveries...

(I hope they're not just old T-hangar receipts... :-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck wrote:

Please see: http://alexisparkinn.com/the_iowa_city_airport.htm

Ok, grammar corrections.

1. Delete the sentence "Who was Jack Knight? Read on.."
2. In the Jack Knight section, don't highlight "Iowa City, Iowa".
3. Perhaps it's my browser, but the line "The plane was piloted by Ira A.
Biffle of Lincoln, Nebraska, who was Charles Lindbergh's first flight
instructor." is in a different font than the rest of the text.
4. I would remove the note about the 2003 tour. At the least, make it the
same color text as the rest of the piece, but it really doesn't belong in
this section. It might perhaps make a good footnote. And the PT-17s, which
are usually what someone means by a Stearman, were not airmail planes -
they date from nearly a decade later. The Super Stearman was definitely
not used for mail runs.
5. In your list of postwar "breakthrough aircraft", you have "1949 - First
Non-Stop Flight Around the World". This is not an aircraft. Either remove
this or change the list title.
6. The sentence "But the seeds of trouble were quietly being sewn" should
read "But the seeds of trouble were quietly being sown."
7. In the paragraph that reads "Soon, however, their lack of capital and
aviation business background conspired against them, and the city decided
it wanted an FBO that would attract and support more charter business.
Soon the city opened bidding up to find a new FBO, and Jet AIr, Inc, from
Galesburg, IL, won the business over Iowa City Aero.", remove the word "Soon"
from the second sentence. I would also reword the first sentence a bit,
since inanimate objects don't "conspire". Perhaps something like "their lack
of capital and aviation business background began to hamper them".
8. In the next paragraph, "sewing" should be "sowing". I would also make this
just a part of the previous paragraph.
9. I would also concatenate the two paragraphs immediately above "Conclusion".

In general, however, it's nice work. As far as the United hangar is concerned,
you might contact Boeing to see if any of their records still exist. Another
place you might look is Cheyenne. They have a hangar with similar history, and
they've managed to get historical status for it. Maybe they can give you tips.
See http://wyoshpo.state.wy.us/boeing.htm

George Patterson
You can dress a hog in a tuxedo, but he still wants to roll in the mud.

Wow -- thanks, George! As always, your help is appreciated.

Let the revisions begin...tomorrow!

In general, however, it's nice work. As far as the United hangar is
concerned,
you might contact Boeing to see if any of their records still exist.
Another
place you might look is Cheyenne. They have a hangar with similar history,
and
they've managed to get historical status for it. Maybe they can give you
tips.
See http://wyoshpo.state.wy.us/boeing.htm

Cool! Their hangar is actually newer than ours, so it gives me hope that
ours will be considered "historic", too...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"


George Patterson
You can dress a hog in a tuxedo, but he still wants to roll in the
mud.