Foil: 17 Panel: 1 Column: 2 Line: 45

Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Friend

Honored by:
Ms. Cheryl Reed

Born March 27, 1932: Starting around the age of five or six Roger had an interest in aviation. From his childhood neighborhood in Astoria he recalls watching aircraft for as long as possible as they arrived and departed from La Guardia Field. Before WWII he remembers scraping the wax from milk cartons to build small aircraft of all sorts, molding the wax with the warmth of his hands as he worked it into shape.

Around the age of ten he began making balsa wood models. Once painted his planes hung in the living room by sewing string. During WWII, cereal companies had light cardboard cut outs of planes printed on the boxes. After cutting them out and gluing them together they had a cylindrical body with curved wings and a tail. For weight a penny had to be glued to the nose before adding the nose cone. From his fifth story apartment Roger would drop his completed planes, waiting with held breath as they descended to the street below. They dropped straight down for three stories gaining flight speed then performed a marvelous swooping climb across the four-lane boulevard before stalling on the far side of the street and landing. Roger would rush down to retrieve his planes and begin again, thrilled each time to see it perform the same stunt all by itself time after time.

During his senior year he accompanied his father to Europe to visit family in Switzerland. Watching the men in white coveralls climb all over their Boeing 377 airliner during refueling stops he knew what he wanted to do with his life. Never figuring on flying, he decided to be a "grease monkey." Upon graduation from Long Island City High School his parents paid for him to attend the Academy of Aeronautics at La Guardia Field. The Korean War was on and he was given a deferment for the first six months and then had to stay in the top half of the class to continue on. Knowing that he would be drafted as soon as he left college, he decided to try for the Air Force Flight School or Aviation Cadets as they were then called. During his last six months at the Academy he took his physical and preflight qualifying exams, passing both to his surprise. Roger took the civilian mechanic Federal A & E exams and his final flight exams within two weeks of each other and then waited three weeks to see what his life would be like. In 1953 he joined the United States Air Force and trained to be a navigator. During his military career he flew B-17, SA-16, KC-97 and KC-135 in the Air Rescue Service and Strategic Air Command before retiring from the Air Force in 1973. Roger continues to have a love of flight.