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Betty Overstreet remembers the C.R. Smith Museum before there was a building.
A volunteer for the past 23 years, she helped catalog thousands of items outlining American Airlines’ history before the structure along Highway 360 at FAA Road in Fort Worth was built two decades ago.
“I always wanted to be a pioneer in aviation,” said Overstreet, who worked for American in passenger service until she married in 1965. Her husband worked for the company as a pilot and then in flight dispatch.
“Now I’m looking around and thinking, ‘I’m one of the relics in the museum,’” she said, laughing.
While a new American Airlines is taking shape under a merger with US Airways, on Saturday the airline’s museum celebrated 20 years of chronicling the legacy of the company and the aviation industry.
The museum’s director, Jay Luippold, said its renovated History Circle soon will document the merger and reorganization with US Airways as part of American’s plan to emerge from bankruptcy.
“We really embrace the other airlines that have been a part of US Airways to come here,” he said. “It’s American. It’s US Airways. It’s everybody’s museum.”
In the last five years, the museum has focused on expanding its interactive children’s exhibits in an effort that aligns with schools’ attempts to raise interest in math and science, Luippold said.
The newest exhibit, Lego Travel Adventure, features Lego creations of various vehicles, including airplanes. The exhibit will continue through Sept. 8.
On Saturday morning, guests lined up to meet Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who signed copies of his latest book, Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration.
An advocate for further space travel, Aldrin plots a path to take humans to the red planet by 2035.
“We have made wonderful progress, but we’ve made a lot of mistakes,” he said. “Who’s ahead in the world right now? Not us. We have a golden opportunity, and we can screw it up. But I don’t want that to happen.”
Throughout the event, guests posed for pictures in front of the 1940 Douglas DC-3 Flagship Knoxville, one of the museum’s showpieces.
Originally housed on a patio, a $3 million campaign in the late 1990s raised money to build a hangar to protect the aircraft from damage.
Jock Bethune, a retired American Airlines employee, coined the phrase “Welcome to the house that Otto built” for the hangar, after his friend and former American Airlines executive Otto Becker, who led the fundraising for it.
“There’s a great fascination we’ve had as a culture of flying and aviation. We tried to do it flapping our wings like birds. That didn’t work. God made them, but we made these things,” said Bethune, pointing to the DC-3.
A volunteer for the past 23 years, she helped catalog thousands of items outlining American Airlines’ history before the structure along Highway 360 at FAA Road in Fort Worth was built two decades ago.
“I always wanted to be a pioneer in aviation,” said Overstreet, who worked for American in passenger service until she married in 1965. Her husband worked for the company as a pilot and then in flight dispatch.
“Now I’m looking around and thinking, ‘I’m one of the relics in the museum,’” she said, laughing.
While a new American Airlines is taking shape under a merger with US Airways, on Saturday the airline’s museum celebrated 20 years of chronicling the legacy of the company and the aviation industry.
The museum’s director, Jay Luippold, said its renovated History Circle soon will document the merger and reorganization with US Airways as part of American’s plan to emerge from bankruptcy.
“We really embrace the other airlines that have been a part of US Airways to come here,” he said. “It’s American. It’s US Airways. It’s everybody’s museum.”
In the last five years, the museum has focused on expanding its interactive children’s exhibits in an effort that aligns with schools’ attempts to raise interest in math and science, Luippold said.
The newest exhibit, Lego Travel Adventure, features Lego creations of various vehicles, including airplanes. The exhibit will continue through Sept. 8.
On Saturday morning, guests lined up to meet Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who signed copies of his latest book, Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration.
An advocate for further space travel, Aldrin plots a path to take humans to the red planet by 2035.
“We have made wonderful progress, but we’ve made a lot of mistakes,” he said. “Who’s ahead in the world right now? Not us. We have a golden opportunity, and we can screw it up. But I don’t want that to happen.”
Throughout the event, guests posed for pictures in front of the 1940 Douglas DC-3 Flagship Knoxville, one of the museum’s showpieces.
Originally housed on a patio, a $3 million campaign in the late 1990s raised money to build a hangar to protect the aircraft from damage.
Jock Bethune, a retired American Airlines employee, coined the phrase “Welcome to the house that Otto built” for the hangar, after his friend and former American Airlines executive Otto Becker, who led the fundraising for it.
“There’s a great fascination we’ve had as a culture of flying and aviation. We tried to do it flapping our wings like birds. That didn’t work. God made them, but we made these things,” said Bethune, pointing to the DC-3.
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