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Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Friend

Honored by:
Mr. Anthony G. Borra

Born in 1921 and raised in the Portsmouth, Virginia area.
Began building and flying model airplanes at age 12. This continued to be his hobby into old age.
B-26 pilot and instructor pilot in U.S. Army Air Corps 1942 – 1945
Model builder for NASA (NCAA at the time) at Langley Field building wind tunnel models.
Completed three years of university coursework at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Georgia Institute of Technology.
Tool and die maker on C130 Hercules at Lockheed Aircraft in Marietta, Georgia. Responsible for tooling the aft cargo door and ramp on the C130.
Turned his lifelong hobby of aircraft modeling and his adult hobby of building radio-controlled model airplanes into a profitable business.
He pioneered the development of escapement mechanisms which guided radio controlled planes.
Later, he invented (almost) ready-to-fly model airplanes. These “extensively” prefabricated models were factory-built of vacuum formed plastic and Styrofoam. He created numerous very successful radio control aircraft designs and produced them in ready-to-fly kits. His Lanier R/C manufacturing company sold Lanier models worldwide and revolutionized the radio control aircraft hobby. Because of his invention, enthusiasts could concentrate on flying and minimize the time spent building their model planes.
In the 1960s he built and flew a radio-controlled scale model of an amphibious C130 Hercules to demonstrate to the U.S. Navy the feasibility of putting the Hercules on Water (HOW). The model had a seven foot wing span.
In his elder years he scaled back to building model trains. He designed and built a modular, transportable layout in HO scale which is now on permanent exhibit at the SE Railroad Museum in Duluth, Georgia.
For his contributions, he was inducted in the National Academy of Model Aeronautics “Model Aviation Hall of Fame.”
He died in 2004 from complications associated with Parkinson Disease.