Charles Raymond Howard (1937-1998) was an architect at HOK where he wrote the construction specifications for the museum you are now visiting. His hobbies reflected his special interests in nature, steam locomotives, the Civil War, the C & O Canal, but most of all in airplanes. In 1989 it was his delight to fly with Don Lopez, currently Deputy Director of NASM, to Dayton, Ohio to do initial research for this building at another air museum. This entry, so typical of Charles, was found among his notes on the size and layout of that structure:

/ was surprised to see mounted in glass cases, the Charles Kettering collection of model airplanes displayed here. They were featured in an illustrated chapter in The Model Airplane Annual for 1944, a copy of which I bought for 50 cents at a used book sale at a W. T. Grant in Bangor, Maine, in 1947, when I was a fifth grader. The collection was still privately held then, and the Air Force Museum probably didn't even exist. I still have that book.

Charles, born in Montpelier VT, graduate of Cornell and Rice Universities, Member of the American Institute of Architects, Secretary of the Construction Specifications Institute, 14 years with Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum (HOK) in Dallas TX and Washington DC, Hamilton VA homeowner, Harmony United Methodist Church parishioner, and our friend; your colleagues acknowledge your role as an Air and Space Sponsor.