Walter G. Horais, born in St. Paul Minnesota in 1921 had a lifelong fascination and affiliation with aviation. As a young enlisted Marine in Korea he built and flew gasoline powered model airplanes and won an award for a MIG-15 he carved from balsa wood. He obtained his private pilot's license in the mid 1950s and progressed through a number of single-engine aircraft including a Piper Cub, Piper Tri-Pacer, Navion, Cessna 172, Beechcraft Musketeer and Beechcraft Sundowner - the last three of which he owned. Walter was directly involved in the early days of military tactical rocket development in the U.S., beginning with the early V-2 Rocket tests at White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico in the late 1940s. As a Senior Master Sergeant involved with communications, he worked on some of the first telemetry hardware to return data from the U.S. V2 rocket tests. He was later commissioned as an officer in the Marine Corps and worked on early tactical missiles with the U.S. Army, including the Lacrosse missile in the early 1960s. Walter passed his love of aviation on to his two sons, Alan and Brian. Alan went on to design and patent unique windsurfing catamarans. Brian went on to become a Naval aviator, piloting the A-6 Intruder off the USS John F. Kennedy in the late 1970s. Walter G. Horais passed away in February of 2003.