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.

FMI: www.eaa.org