Maurice Eugene Tyler known to his family and friends as Mort, has had a life-long love of flight and flying. His flying career spans over 70 years, if you count the precision paper airplanes he was folding when he was just a youngster. We, his children, feel he belongs on the Smithsonian National Air and Space Exploration Wall of Honor because he has created and attained his vision of flight, and has inspired others to achieve the same.
He began his journey on August 5, 1928 as the son of Claire and Betty Voss Tyler. Most of his childhood in Las Vegas, Nevada, was spent taking things apart, attempting stunts that he later did his best to prevent his three children from doing, loving his little bay mare, Bonita, and thinking about flight. In his teens, he moved to Riverside, California where he graduated from Riverside High School. He talked his Mom into letting him enlist in the Navy at the end of WWII at the tender age of seventeen. Mort spent three years on the submarine, USS Bumper (SS 333), as an electronics technician solidifying his love of technology. He has fond memories of readiness drills and having to leap through the hatches with a full cup of coffee without spilling a drop. It did nothing for his love for cooked cabbage, or bunking over torpedoes. After his stint in the Navy, Mort returned to Riverside and married Ninon Bamping. They moved to Berkeley, California, and started a family while he worked for Stauffer Chemical in Emeryville, and then for John Lindberg Labs (JLL) in Berkeley, California.
Mort continued to work for Systron-Donnor, Safety Systems Division as a mechanical engineer after they bought JLL, working his way to Senior Engineer during his more than thirty-year career. He is known for his broad knowledge of chemicals and metals, and vast understanding of mechanical, electrical, and electronic systems. He drafted his own designs, and could often be found building and testing his ideas in the engineering shop. He holds eleven patents, many for designing various temperature sensors and fire protections systems for jet aircraft. In 1990, Mort was honored at Chicago's Air and Space Museum for the Linear Fire Extinguisher, voted one of R & D Magazine's Top One Hundred Developments of the Year.
Mort's formal flying career actually began in 1957 when he earned his first pilot's license. He began building his first experimental sailplane in General Henry Harley "Hap" Arnold's (USAF, Ret.) barn in Hayward, California. The teal and white experimental sailplane, the Cherokee Tomahawk, was finished in much of the living space of their Orinda, California home. Over subsequent years, the entire family spent countless hours at Nelson's Hummingbird Haven in Livermore, California, crewing when needed. Mort arranged for many people to go flying in the Clubs' sailplanes whenever they expressed the slightest interest, including three of his children's teachers. Though he eventually sold the Cherokee, he soon became involved in the refurbishing of a Piper J-3 Cub, affectionately renamed "Happiness is Oil Pressure." Ever the adventurer, after the J-3, Mort became a partner with Hal Ross in an innovative motorized glider called the Taifun.
Concurrently, Mort became known for his uncanny and innate ability to fix anything. In later years, absolutely nothing broken was thrown out without the adage, "It isn't broken if it's Mortable!" It would probably be appropriate to note that there were also times when broken things were sometimes over-fixed. One could not recount the memories of our life with Mort without mentioning the oft-repaired toaster which suddenly began propelling toast about eight feet into the air, but that is altogether another story.
Mort began building and flying remote-controlled (RC) scale-model aircraft in the 1980's. We would be remiss not to note several of his innovations of aircraft, one if his most memorable being the "Flying Fiddle", an operational RC airplane actually built around a 3/4 scale violin. Always known for fostering children's interests, all grandchildren have spent countless hours in the company of "Pops" and his fellow flying buddies adhering fervently to the mantra, "We buy, we build, we fly, we crash, we buy, we build, we fly, we crash...."
Mort Tyler has enriched so many peoples' lives with the fascination and reality of flight, given his lovingly and meticulously built planes to the young and old, suffered through their initial flights, thankfully been on a buddy-box when land was fast approaching, and been there to pick up the pieces. His RC students range from the young to retired judges. He has instilled in so many the love of flight: the anticipation of the take-off, the technical aspects of flying, and the heart in the throat moments of landing. We know that there are countless others out there that foster the dreams of others, but we know in our hearts that there will only be one, Mort Tyler.
With ALL of our Love and Admiration, Mitchell Eugene Tyler, Cathleen Tyler Hackler and Cheryl Lynn Tyler.