Aero-Views OPINION by Kevin R.C. "Hognose" O'Brien
Maybe it was the airplane noise. Or the inconvenience of having
hundreds and hundreds of people descend on their small city in
annoying, buzzing airplanes. Whatever it was, the town fathers of
Rockford, IL made it clear to a small organization of pilots
and amateur airplane builders that they'd worn out their
welcome.
Meanwhile, another city wanted the conventioneers. Badly.
Oshkosh, WI wooed and won the Experimental Aviation Association,
first by bringing the EAA Convention -- no one called it Airventure
yet -- to Oshkosh beginning August 1, 1970, and then, before the
seventies were out, bringing EAA's headquarters, programs, museum,
and many of its followers to the industrial city on the shores of
Lake Winnebago.
"Oshkosh was at a crossroads in the 1970s when EAA looked for a
permanent home for its convention," the city paper, the Oshkosh
Northwestern, editorialized on Sunday, July 23rd. The paper's point
was that the city could use a similar effort today -- in the light
of the money -- and fame -- that EAA has brought to Oshkosh. There
are 600,000 pilots in the United States, and every one of them
knows the name "Oshkosh."
The EAA puts it mildly in its official publications.
"Continued growth prompted EAA to move to its current location in
1970," the history page on EAA'S website says. But it was almost
that simple: it was a move away from a community where light
aviation wasn't welcome, to one where it is.
The town fathers of Oshkosh have never regretted their decision,
as EAA has grown to be a national powerhouse. But it wasn't always
this big: when the organization was founded in Paul and Audrey
Poberezny's basement, there were 36 members. Counting Paul. And
Audrey.
When they outgrew other, less visionary locales, Oshkosh was
ready.
The initial convention relocation was made simple by Oshkosh's
airport manager, Steve Wittman (on his birth certificate,
"Sylvester J." Wittman, but no one called him that), a longtime EAA
member and supporter (and an air racing legend in his own right).
Around the same time, the airport was renamed for local hero
Wittman.
EAA's history notes that after the convention was relocated to
Oshkosh, several possible locations pitched the organization on the
much more significant HQ relocation, but again it was Oshkosh that
made the best pitch. The Northwestern calls this "bold and
innovative." The paper's editors remember that "[t]he community
responded with a unified recruitment effort by a group of civic
leaders known as the Red Carpet Committee."
EAA strolled right down that red carpet and built a 150,000
square foot, multi-million dollar headquarters and museum in
Oshkosh.
Rockford, IL? Pilots who were
involved in EAA during the period from 1959 to 1970 when the EAA
Convention was there, before its great growth years, might dimly
remember the city. Or not. I never heard about it until I bought a
gigantic stash of vintage Sport Aviation and Experimenter magazines
from a guy on the Internet.
They have peace and quiet in Rockford now. They don't have
12,000 airplanes flying in this week. They don't have 700,000
pilots and aviation enthusiasts coming to town, filling lodgings to
bursting and straining campgrounds, but never straining the genial
midwestern hospitality that will always be the soul of Oshkosh to
me.
And then there's jobs. In the most recent statistics available
from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, from May 2006, the
unemployment rate in the Rockford, IL area is 5.3% -- an even 1.0%
higher than the unemployment rate in the Oshkosh-Neenah area of
Wisconsin.
Of course, that doesn't prove that the EAA move is responsible
for the difference. It doesn't have to be; we just have to note the
many full-time and part-time jobs that EAA has created in Oshkosh.
And the money that the people aboard those 12,000 planes will
spend. And the money that the other 600-odd thousand people who
arrive by ground transportation.
If they knew then what we know now, would airplane noise have
sounded a little better to the town fathers of Rockford, IL?
Because I'm listening to it here in Oshkosh, and it sounds like
cash registers chiming.