Model Airplanes

Cress Funeral and Cremation Service

3610 Speedway Road, Madison

608-238-3434

Article source: https://madison.com/news/local/obituaries/vogelsang-dr-william-f/article_933706a0-4712-5d5d-a545-8a157caefd84.html

When one of your childhood buddies grows up to become one of the most famous people of the century, you hear a certain type of question a lot.

“Did we think he was special?” said John Blackford, responding to a Monitor query by looking back on his Boy Scout days in Ohio alongside Neil Armstrong two decades before Apollo 11 landed on the moon. “No, not really. He was just one of us. It turns out he was really smart – but I thought we were all smart!”

Blackford, 89, who lives in a retirement community in Exeter with his wife, Pamela, is hearing that question more as the 50th anniversary of the moon landing approaches. “It is coming up now, but it’s not a big part of my life. I’m proud of it, don’t hesitate to tell people, but it’s not something I talk about,” he said.

The Blackfords were part of Greater Concord for half a century. They moved to Hopkinton in 1956, where he first helped start HMC Corp. in Contoocook, which still manufactures machinery for the lumber industry. In the early 1980s, he became a management counselor to CEOs of small manufacturing companies. During this time the family raised their three children here, living first in Hopkinton and then on Auburn Street in Concord and then in Hopkinton again, before leaving in 2010.

Prior to New Hampshire, however, John Blackford lived in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, and in 1942 as a seventh-grader, he joined the Wolf patrol in Boy Scout

Article source: https://www.concordmonitor.com/neil-armstrong-apollo-11-concord-nh-26889524

New statues of astronaut Neil Armstrong were unveiled and an education center was dedicated in his name on Sunday as his Ohio hometown continued celebrating its native son’s history-making moon mission 50 years ago this month.

Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and other officials gathered at the Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Wapakoneta for the unveiling Sunday of a bronze life-sized statue of Armstrong as a test pilot. Another statue of him outside the museum as a boy sitting on a bench while holding a model airplane also was unveiled Sunday.

There was also a ribbon-cutting to dedicate the Armstrong STEM Inspiration Center at the museum. That center is intended to promote science, technology, engineering and math learning.

The governor told those gathered at the museum that they were there to honor a courageous Ohioan “who inspired us 50 years ago and a man who continues to really inspire us today.”

DeWine said the events were not only about honoring the past, but also about looking to the future.

He said the hope and belief is that the new education center “will inspire young people, maybe future Neil Armstrongs, young people who have an interest in science and math, and maybe that will spark something special in them when they come in here.”

One of Armstrong’s sons, Mark Armstrong, also talked of the importance of inspiring young people.

“You’re just looking to make one connection with someone, a little boy or a little girl that starts to dream, and those dreams carry them throughout their entire lives.”

Armstrong

Article source: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/statues-education-center-honor-neil-armstrong-museum-64329321

Brigadier General Dennis Sullivan poses with an A-12 Oxcart in Area 51, Lincoln County, Nev. Sullivan holds the altitude and speed jet engine records, flying from Okinawa, Japan, to Area 51 in Lincoln County, Nev. in four hours and 58 minutes. 

Article source: https://chippewa.com/news/local/stories-of-honor-brigadier-general-dennis-sullivan-an-ace-of/article_9871143c-9bc6-5f25-85df-21cd7cab2f72.html