TRAVERSE CITY -- As a youngster Wallace McKim dreamed of being an aviator. While his career path led in another direction, flight still intrigues him more than seven decades later.
That interest is what drove 83-year-old McKim of Traverse City to take on a multimedia art project celebrating the history of flight in northern Michigan through words and pictures. He unveiled the piece, that took him nearly five years to complete, during the Northwestern Michigan College aviation program's July 4th celebration last week.
"This all started with the building of the new airport terminal. I got interested in it and that led me to finding out more about the history of the airport and aviation in the Traverse City area," said McKim who dedicated the project to local aviation pioneers John Parsons and retired U.S. Navy flight surgeon and NASA astronaut Jerry Linenger.
"Parsons was a technical pioneer who revolutionized manufacturing at his Traverse City helicopter-blade plant and Linenger is a valiant pioneer who took on space," said McKim whose design is meant to replicate the sparkle of a gem.
Layered sections representing the facets of a perfectly cut precious stone are encased in a wooden frame, complete with backlighting and ventilation to keep the art piece cool.
"It took a year and a half to design the base, the frame, and to make a model of a corner of the project," said McKim, noting that he enjoyed the process of building the piece as much as researching the history he sought to include.
From the first glider flight in northern Michigan on October 17, 1909, to the inaugural flight at the newly expanded Cherry Capitol Airport on June 9, 2005, McKim poured over hundreds of archived documents in search of the complete story of northern Michigan aviation.
"He came to us looking for photos to use for the piece and that is how we found out about it," said Aaron Cook, director of aviation at Northwestern Michigan College's M-TECH center where the piece will be on display through the end of the month.
"You can stare at it for hours and come back and see something that you missed. It has a significant amount of historical information," Cook said.
McKim's extensive research turned up a few facts that he was surprised to discover.
"One little thing that I found particularly interesting was about the present Airport Access Road and that it was not originally built for automobiles, but for float planes coming in from East Bay," said McKim who plans to continue pursuing his interest in history and aviation.
"There is no specific written history of the airport alone or of the history of aviation in northern Michigan, I would like to see that," McKim said.
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