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Saying goodbyeJoe Hermosa/Valley Morning StarLloyd Olson from Minnesota on last Wednesday inspected a Focker- Texas Air Museum of the Rio Grande Valley. The museum will closeWulf 190F-8, a German aircraft that is part of the exhibits at the its doors at 4 p.m. Monday.Decision to close air museum a hard one tor founder s widowjoe Hermosa/Valley Morning StarJohn Houston, founder of the Texas Air Museum, deplanes after flying an AT-6 Texan advanced trainer airplane during a fly-in at the museum. Houston was very instrumental in preserving historic aircraft and military aviation artifacts. Houston died in November 2002.Texas Air Museum to close its doors on MondayBy ALLEN ESSEXallene@valieystar.com956-430-6239RIO HONDO — The loss of the Texas Air Museum to the Rio Grande Valley will be felt by many.Bringing history lessons to life for future generations was the objective ofTAM founder John Houston, said people who knew him well.The museum will shut its doors forever on Monday, moving its collection to two other TAM museums, at Stinson Field in San Antonio and at Slaton, near Lubbock, TAM Director Lee Labar said.Despite his love for restoring and flying vintage aircraft, Houston was interested in preserving and teaching history, said longtime friend and fellow pilot Bill Godwin.The (Commemorative Air Force) was focused on World War II and he probably figured there was enough attention focused on that,” Godwin, a Harlingen businessman and CAF member, said of Houston. “He did a lot for the Korean War and Vietnam War.”Houston was genuinely interested in history,Godwin said.He just saved a lot of things and put them on display,” Godwin said. He had a rifle over there that dated back to the Mexican war. He was especially interested in Valley history.”There are several reasons why attendance and participation at the museum dwindled in the past few years, said Gilbert Alaniz, who was volunteer curator from 1996 to 2004.The retired Navy radioman said that, with the death of some of the most active museum members and the aging of many others, it was hard to find enough people to complete ongoing projects.It got really quiet in the summer,” Alaniz said.But expenses continued year-round, while admission fees from tours during the school year and visits by Winter Texans were not enough to cover the costs of running the museum’s lights and utilities year-round, Alaniz said.“It was just a combination of a lack of volunteers to do the everyday operations, such as yard work and maintenance on the aircraft, cleaning of the hangars and display areas,” he said.Volunteer Bob Newton said the museum's remote location hurt, too.''Geographically, it was in a poor location, he said.Sm GOODBYE * AllTimeline★1985: Texas Air Museum formed in Rio Grande Valley. Fly-ins held near Donna, aircraft restorations start at Texas Dusting Service, Rio Hondo.★ 1986: Remnants of five German Focke-Wulf FW-190s arrived from Norway, delivered by Norwegian armed forces in a C-130 Hercules, after the fighters were extracted from a glacier.★ 1990s: Monthly series of fly-ins, waffle breakfasts continue at Rio Hondo, with three-day festivals held in March for Winter Texans, with re-enactments of raid by Pancho Villa on Columbus, N.M., and other wartime events.★ 1994: Heinz Orlowski, a World War II German junior officer, visits the TAM and sits in the cockpit of Focke-Wulf FW-190 fighter plane “White One in which he was shot down In on Feb. 9, 1945 by British forces in a battle over a Norwegian fjord.★ 1996: Efforts begin to save the superstructure of USS Iwo Jima from being sold for scrap at Port of Brownsville. A PBY Catalina World War II Navy flying boat Is brought to Rio Hondo from Corpus Christi. A rare Grumman F9F-8 Cougar (modified Panther), the first American carrier-based jet fighter plane, is salvaged from the Corpus Christi city dump by the TAM.★ 1999: A second aircraft carrier superstructure, USS Cabot, is salvaged from the Port of Brownsville for preservation at the TAM.★ 2002: TAM founder John Houston dies, scheduled fly-in takes place on schedule a few days later, in tribute to Houston.★ 2005: Decision is made to close TAM at Rio Hondo, and to consolidate its collection of aircraft, vehicles and artifacts at TAM locations in San Antonio and Slaton.By ALLEN ESSEXailene@valleystar.com956-430-6239RIO HONDO — Texas Air Museum founder John Houston would never have willingly closed the air museum, his widow Jeannette Houston said.But the decision to do so was the right one.“I cried a lot over this decision, but 1 actually feel it is best for the museum,” Jeannette said.Reducing the locations to two — Slaton and San Antonio — makes the TAM stronger, she said.We can sell the land and potentially put it in some sort of a trust fund,” she said.“I’ve had people call about their artifacts they donated and I've told them, ‘The museum is strong and it’s going to continue.’Their artifacts will be displayed for people to see. It’s just not going to be in the Valley.”John built the TAM for both patriotic reasons and to teach history to young people, Bob Godwin, who owns a Harlingen sign company, said.“He was very adamant about supporting the United States,” Godwin said of John. He would get pretty upset if somebody spoke bad about the United States.”One of her husband’s early jobs was with (former president) Lyndon Johnson and wife Lady Bird, as the pilot of a large Beechcraft King Air twin-engine airplane,” Jeannette said.John came to the Rio Grande Valley when he gave up his work as a corporatepilot in order to spend more time with his family, Jeannette said. They had two children, John Jr. and Jennifer.It was then that John decided to buy Texas Dusting Service at Rio Hondo.It was also at this time that the air museum was holding periodic fly-ins near Donna, Jeanette recalled.That’s when we were looking for a home for the museum, to try to decide where to put it,” she said. “We drove all over the state,as far up as Fort Worth and over to Houston and over to Uvalde, trying to find where to put the museum, where it would survive.”Although he planned to have three to five museum branches around the state, she told him the museum would have to be close to home, Jeannette Houston said.“I told him, ‘John, if you’re going to make this work, you’ve got to live wherever the museum is.’ That’s when we decided to keep it here in the Valley.”
Newspaper Details
Valley Morning Star
Harlingen, Texas, US
Wed, Feb 23, 2005
Page 19
Full Page
Clipped by
Blake W.
NA, 09 Aug 2023
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