The Greater Fort Wayne Aviation Museum

Started 1984

Course: The aviation museum began in the early 1980s with an empty display case: airport manager Jim Ross had lost the case's advertiser when International Harvester left town, and airline station manager Roger Myers filled it with United Airlines and Art Smith material of his own. The Greater Fort Wayne Aviation Museum was started in 1984 by local aviation enthusiasts, with Myers as its first president and longtime curator, and grew into some 6,000 square feet of cases on the second floor of the Lieutenant Paul Baer Terminal at Fort Wayne International Airport — 1,200 artifacts by its twenty-first birthday in 2005, by later accounts many more. Its subjects are the airport's own: Art "Bird Boy" Smith, the barnstormer; Lieutenant Paul Baer, the First World War ace for whom Baer Field is named; Margaret Ringenberg; and the field's Second World War life as Baer Army Air Base. Because the cases sit on the terminal's secured side, the museum since 2001 has been reachable mainly by ticketed passengers and prearranged tours; the airport's terminal expansion carries plans to digitize the collection and make it accessible from the landside.

Sources:

1. WPTA 21Alive, 30 September 2021 (via ACGSI) — the museum started in 1984 by local air aficionados, quoting president Greg Bosk; the second-floor museum and its subjects.
2. Waynedale News, 13 July 2005 — the museum's twenty-first birthday on 12 July 2005, over 1,200 artifacts, 6,000 square feet on the secured side of the second floor.
3. Journal Gazette, 10 February 2003, via Early Aviators — Roger Myers, the founding conversation of the early 1980s, and the collection's beginnings in a display case.
4. Fort Wayne International Airport / Wikipedia — the museum digitization planned with the terminal expansion.