March-April AACA Magazine!
2007 Vice President of Publications, Earl D Beauchamp Jr. has an interesting article in the March-April AACA Magazine just off the presses. It concerns the 2007 Ann S. Eady Award winner, Bob Hayward. Bob is the editor of the San Diego Region’s Foot Warmer newsletter. I was collecting a little research material from various 2007 Master Editor winners just before our AACA Annual Meeting in February when I finally caught up with Bob. Bob may be senior citizen, but he is still hard to catch up with, as I must have called his home three times before I could reach him. Since I knew that Bob had been the editor for a pretty long stretch, I was curious about his publication habits and styles. Bob related to me that he did all of the writing and typing on a word processor, but that his wife actually converted everything over with a PC for the commercial printing job. Bob said he was never happy that his beautiful color pictures, that were “cut and pasted” to the printed material, had to be converted into black and white pictures. He considered the $85.00 commercial color printing expense to be a little much for his region to consider paying for.

After talking with Bob a while, I got around to asking him what kind of career he retired from. He told me that he had worked for an aerospace company as a mechanical engineer. I have forgotten the name of the company, but it is still in business. Bob also told me that he had designed an aerospace emergency escape device. As he was explaining that the device was tested on a few planes at first before the entire industry decided that an explosive pilot’s cockpit seat was invariably better than the sudden stop on impact from a downed plane, I finally realized what he was talking about. I was completely amazed that this soft spoken gentleman had designed and built something that all pilots of today take for granted as normal.

After Bob told me that he would not be able to make the trip to Philly, I was really disappointed that another hero from my Dad’s generation would not receive another well deserved award under the lights at Philly.

Congratulations Bob! Your Ann S Eady Award is well deserved. Good luck to you.

Wayne
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R W Burgess, (just call me Wayne)
Editor-Northern Neck Region of Virginia
AACA #126352 Life Member