Wisconsin Aviation Hall of Fame

I wanted to share some exciting news.

October 20, 2018 I will be inducted into the Wisconsin Aviation Hall of Fame.  This is a great honor and my family and friends will be on hand as will be colleagues from Wisconsin Aviation to help me celebrate.

I was also employed by Wisconsin Aviation Inc. which is a full service Fixed Base of Operations and is totally separate from the Wisconsin Aviation Hall of Fame. 

Here is the article from the Midwest Flyer Magazine.

From the Midwest Flyer Magazine, August/September 2018:

Madison, Wisconsin-Don Winkler of Madison, Wisconsin, will be inducted into the Wisconsin Aviation Hall of Fame on October 20, 2018 at ceremonies to be held at the EAA AirVenture Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Winkler worked for Wisconsin Aviation, Inc. at Dane County Regional Airport as the company's public relations chair from 1996-2014.  He remains involved with fundraising for the company's hangar dance and Madison's Honor Flight.

Winkler has worked with the media to promote Wisconsin Aviation, aviation careers and aviation in general by coordinating school tours at Dane County Regional Airport.

As an employee of Wisconsin Aviation, Winkler has also coordinated special appearances of warbirds and aircraft groups flying to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, and television coverage of EAA AirVenture Oshkosh by KIDS4TV cable television program in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.

Prior to joining the staff at Wisconsin Aviation, Winkler was an air traffic controller the U.S. Air Force from 1951-1955, and later with the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) in Madison.  For the majority of his career, Winkler was a sales manager at Sears, Roebuck and Company, in Madison.  He is a long-time pilot and passionate photojournalist and has been an active member of the Civil Air Patrol beginning in 1971.

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation Bureau of Aeronautics presented Don Winkler with it's "Carl E. Guell Aviation Education Award" in 2005 in recognition of his efforts to provide tours for more than 1,000 children at Dane County Regional Airport.  Guell, who was a senior staff member with the bureau, founded the Wisconsin Aviation Hall of Fame in 1985.  In 2015, Winkler received the Wisconsin Airport Management Association (WAMA) "Lifetime Service Award" for his dedicated service to aviation in Wisconsin.

HANGAR

HANGAR

Talking with my granddaughter, the subject of a Spelling Bee came up. I asked her, “How do you spell the word that identifies the building where an aircraft is stored?” She said, “I think it is Hangar.” I was pleased to say the least.

Over the years, actually 60, I have heard it spelled like something that you hang your garment on, Hanger. This misspelling is common not only with the general public but journalists, teachers and even aviators. Realizing this, I decided to incorporate it into the tours I held while working at Wisconsin Aviation Inc., Madison, Wisconsin. 

Over a period of some 16 years I hosted an average of 800 children a year at the Dane County Regional Airport. The tours were held on the east ramp of the airport, more notably known as the “General Aviation” side. The average age of the children on the tours ranged from 5 to 7 years old, as well as some requests from day care centers for some as young as 3 years old.

 As school budgets dwindled, I then went to the class rooms of various area schools. No matter where I held them, school or airport, the tours all started out the same. “How many of you know where an aircraft is stored when it is not flying and how do you spell the name of that place?” Depending on the age and reading experience, less than 10% knew. At this point I would tell them how to spell the word. I would tell them if they remembered it by the end of the tour, or movie if at the school, they would receive a balsa wood glider, a cookie and a coloring book about the airport. 

At the airport, they got to sit in a Cessna 152 and fly on an imaginary flight to wherever they dreamed up. When returning to the terminal building I could hear them reciting, “HANGAR”!

My hope is that with the early exposure to Aviation, youth would be more inclined to pursue careers as pilots, mechanics and in customer services.

My next Blog will be remembering 16 years of HANGAR DANCES, with an amusing, but embarrassing situation.