Reaching Lifelong Goals

This installment begins my journal of my History Major Dream Vacation series.   During the first two weeks of September, my wife and I went on a cross-country vacation to visit her brother in the Wash DC area, a sister in Oley PA and my daughter in Columbus OH.  Our first stop was in Ohio to visit my Daughter Heather.   She lives about an hour north of the USAF National Museum in Dayton, OH.   Of course, this air museum is near the top of my “bucket list” of places to see before I die.   This is one of the best air museums in the US and has many very significant, famous aircraft.   I was so excited when I walked through the doors of this facility that I kind of left everyone in my party behind.   The first gallery of the museum has the WWI collection as it’s center piece.   Spads and Fokkers and Jennys, oh my!!   There are some very important aircraft in this collection, one WWI fighter used by the Allies and flown by our US pilots both before we entered the war in the French Escadrilles and the fledgling Air Corps was this SPAD VII.   This early version of the SPAD is very rare and the restoration is absolutely wonderful.  I was spellbound by all of these WWI aircraft as this is my primary focus in my Historical research.   The collection also contains artifacts from WWI that were of great interest to me

for my goal of writing a Biography of the WWI Ace Ernst Udet.   Here we have a section of fabric off of one of the aircraft that he shot down.   It has his name and the date of the victory on it.   After the war he returned this fabric to the pilot, a Lt. Wanamaker and the family donated it to the USAF Museum.   More fodder for my book, just one of the many interesting stories about Ernst Udet and his WWI Service.   He survived the war and became quite a celebrity in Germany and in the USA, befriending his former opponents and other aviation pioneers like Charles Lindbergh.   Moving on to the “golden age” of aviation in the 20s and 30s, the collection contains some one of a kind remaining samples of significant aircraft.   I was very excited to see these aircraft. The P-26 Peashooter was an early fighter of the USAAF and during the 30s carried some very colorful markings.   This little fighter served right up until the beginning of WWII in the pacific and were exported to a number of countries.   Wow, I was really getting worked up over theses rare aircraft and I was only in the first main gallery.   In the WWII Hangar, a huge building that housed many great aircraft I was drawn to one of the most historically significant planes in the museums I would be visiting, namely, the  B-29 “Bockscar” that dropped the second Atomic Bomb on Nagasaki Japan to end WWII.   On this trip I was in the presence of both of the Atomic aircraft  when I visited the NASM in Washington which houses the “Enola Gay”.   The “rush” of history was more than I could stand and this aircraft moved me to tears for its major historical significance.    This of course was totally lost on my Wife and she did not have the same experience at looking at this airplane.    Maybe I’m just that much of a Geek…

I am not able to post as many of the photos as I would like, but indulge me for a couple more for this installment of the Dream Vacation.   There were so many important aircraft on display that I ended up taking hundreds of digital images.   I am still sorting through the 1600 or so pictures and I will update them onto my Flicker account and make them available through the Reaching Lifelong Goals.com blog.   The aircraft of the 1950s are also an area of interest to me and I was happy to see some of my favorites in this section of the collection.   One of the last few remaining B-36 Peacemaker Bombers is on display.   This aircraft is incredible.  Six props and 4 jet engines to get this behemoth into the air!   I was only able to get a nose shot!

The spaceflight collection of the museum was also a treat, seeing one of the Apollo capsules (Apollo 15 I think…) that had actually been to the moon and back was a very moving sight as well.   Being a child of the 60s, I watched the NASA flights and built all the Revell models of the Mercury, Gemini and Moon landing Apollo spacecraft.   To actually stand in the presence of one of the command modules that went to the moon was truly moving, again, I was a blubbering fool.    I guess history gets to me more than most folks, as I have been waiting 35 years to reach a lifelong goal of becoming History Major!  Tomorrow we will have another installment of the History Major Dream Vacation.   Washington DC!!

My wonderful wife has given me the perfect birthday present, (actually it is next Friday the 22nd) with a long overdue membership to the League of WWI Aviation Historians. After a lifetime of interest in the Great War, and 20 years of active research, model building and study I am finally part of a group of my “peers”.   I have known about the League for a several years, but it has always been one of those “things I need to do, someday”.   Being a History Major and a nontraditional student, memberships in professional organizations such as this are very beneficial to your college career.  Associations in your field of study are available for everyone.   Many have special student rates for membership.   I have been “shopping” around in the field of History Studies and have found over 20 different organizations that I would be a member of.   Maintaining that many memberships would be daunting, so it pays to be selective.   I am unique in the fact that I plan to specialize in one area of history so I can be selective in the associations joined.   The resources and networking possibilities of a membership in the League of WWI Aviation Historians will be invaluable to my goal of writing the ultimate book about WWI Ace Ernst Udet.   I have already made a connection with an author of WWI history through Facebook (there is a whole post in the works about this story…)   Putting together research about WWI history is challenging at best, but with new friends and associations with fellow historians in the field, the sky is the limit!   The league has biennial meetings with seminars and presentations of scholarly papers and books.   The next meeting will be in 2011 and my goal is to have a good part of my Ernst Udet book and research ready for presentation.   A lofty goal, but one that will drive my progress toward a real-time deadline! (continue reading…)

In America we know November 11th as Veterans Day. It is also known as Armistice Day, remembrance Day, Poppy Day, and Volkstrauertag in other countries around the world. On that day we observe the anniversary of the cessation of hostilities between the Allied nations and Germany that went into effect on the eleventh-hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, thus bringing to an end the carnage of what was supposed to be “the war to end all wars.” Being a WWI Aviation Historian, this day will always be known to me as Armistice day.  It is a little sad that there are few folks that remember the primary purpose of this day.   As a Veteran, I recognize the importance of this days new name of  “Veteran’s Day”.   It is of vital importance that the sacrifices of our fallen members of all wars have a day of remembrance.  I salute my fellow military members both of today and of years past.    God Bless them all.

I’m so excited!   I have just installed one of the best tools a Non Traditional Student could ever have – ENDNOTE – Bibliographies made easy.   This program is a must have for any serious research writing.   If you are a Non Traditional Student just getting started back in college, I whole heartedly recommend this program.   Go out and buy it today!!  Basically, Endnote  will allow you to SEARCH online bibliographic databases, ORGANIZE your references, images and downloaded PDF documents, and most important – CITE WHILE YOU WRITE!   I purchased the program Endnote 2.o, there are more updated versions available, but all will do everything you need when writing your research papers for college.  I am still in the learning curve…lots of features to master.   I did a cursory search of my probable thesis topic about WWI ace, Ernst Udet and was able to start locating some valuable resources.   And I have just scratched the surface of this program.   As an aside, I find that there has been very little written about Udet.   This is both a plus and minus for me.  One one hand, the available resources out there are few, but I don’t think my topic will have much competition out there.   I found just 17 references in the Library of Congress.   I will be digging into academic data bases when I get up to speed with Endnote.  One of the really fantastic features of this program is it’s integration with Office 2007.   Citation of references will be available with a single click, and the MLA foot note will be magically entered into the document I’m working on.   I’ll spend more time with the tutorials on Endnote and report my findings of the other spiffy features as I learn them.   If you are a Non Traditional Student that will be writing college level research papers over the next few years, this program is a definite must have.   I think there are a number of similar programs out there, but I had this one suggested to me by my History Professor.   He said if this program would have been available when he was writing his Thesis, life would have been sooooo much easier!!  I will update this post with more information about Endnote.  I will be diving into using it for my Non Traditional Student research paper for my WR123 class….Now that I mention this, I have a due date for my mid-term portfolio coming up soon.   Better climb that learning curve quickly!

I stumbled upon one of the most wonderful history blogs the other day.  WW1 Experiences of an English Soldier Being a history major, specializing in the Great War, I was drawn to this “real time” account of Private Harry Lamin from England.   This blog is written by Harry’s grandson and is taken from his letters home about his experiences in the trenches of WW1.   The blog has been around for a couple of years.  The letters home are very descriptive of his life as a British soldier.   The blogger printed the letters exactly 90 years after they were written on the actual days of the letters.   You follow Harry from his training through his wartime experiences on the western front.   I have been catching up on them as I got into this blog late.   Harry has quite a following out there in Internet Land.   People wait with bated breath for each new post as the letters home “arrive”.   This blog is very popular and has made the national news in England.   Harry Lamin was born in 1887 in the midlands of England and in 1917 at the age of 29 he joined up to fight in the Great War.   His letters home were mainly to his brother and sister.   They are reprinted just as they were received, grammar errors and all.   The blogger does give some context information to help with historical matters.    I have been enjoying reading these accounts and highly recommend this blog even if you are not a student of history. Harry even has a Facebook page of his own!!   The great-grand daughter of Harry has posted a page to follow on Facebook.   Harry is one of my Facebook friends!   Through this blog, the man’s life in the trenches of WW1 becomes real time, 90 years after the fact.   I feel this is one of the greatest ideas for a blog about WW1 I have found on the Internet.   The letters have also been published into a book that was available on Amazon a couple of years ago as well.    I have a communication with “Harry” to see if the book is still available.   I will update this post with more info as it becomes available.

Maybe I’m just a “History Geek”, but I felt compelled to post about this wonderful blog.   I will continue to follow Harry’s experiences and keep you all updated as I catch up with him.   Study of the History of WW1 is becoming more popular and I have found a great many wonderful websites available.