The Aerospace Legacy Foundation was founded in 1994 and incorporated as a California Public benefit (501c3) corporation in 1997. The original genesis of the organization was to provide to the local community educational outreach efforts to share education and public literacy about technology.  With the closure of the Rockwell/Boeing NASA site in Downey in 1996 a new imperative became the preservation of the historical heritage of the Downey Site. Through a concerted effort with NASA, the City of Downey, the local community and our organization, a Memorandum of Agreement was established to assure a significant portion of the site and any new development to honor this legacy.  Since then the Aerospace Legacy Foundation has become a caretaker for not just Downey but the broader communities of California to assist in assuring that future generations will not forget the contributions of thousands of men and women who launched us to the stars.

"...We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

Aerial view of the Downey NASA Plant, Downey California 1950's.
Now, Downey Studios, many movies were shot here in the "Cradle of the Cosmic Age."
All Buildings Demolished Fall of 2012.

Gerald (Jerry) Blackburn - President    (alfdowney@gmail.com)
ALF founding member, Author, Boeing Project Manager (Retired) 40 years Aerospace (NAA-Boeing)
Larry Latimer - Vice President     (alfdowney@aol.com)
Owner, Computer 1 Solution, Author, Vice President, Downey Historical Society
Robert (Bob) Sechrist - Treasurer    (rdsdmt@aol.com)
North American Rockwell/Boeing (Retired)
Katherine (Kathy) Blackburn - Secretary      blackburnkathy@yahoo.com)
Procurement Agent, Kirkhill Rubber (Retired)
James (Jim) Busby - Director     (apollo.busby@yahoo.com)
Aerospace Historian
Stan Barauskas - Director     (avizienis@aol.com)
Boeing Project Engineer 48+ years (Retired)
Jaycee Cruz - Director      (translunrsta@earthlink.net)
Exhibit Specialist and Event Coordinator
Andy Monsen - Director     (translunrsta@earthlink.net)
Engineer, Southern California Edison, San Onofre Nuclear Power Station, San Clemente
George Redfox- Director      (redfox113@yahoo.com)
Photography Teacher Warren High School, Downey Historical Society
Bob Thompson- Director    (ret7272@gmail.com)
Retired, Boeing Corporation. Director, Downey Historical Society Director

Not all Directors are pictured. More to follow.

Founder- Jeanne Claire Dowd 1921-1998

Founder- Ed Dowd 1921-2011

President- Jerry Blackburn

Director- Kathy Blackburn

Director- Robert Sechrist

Advisory Director- Gene Myers

Vice President- Larry Latimer

Advisory Director- Scott Pomrehn

Director- Jim Busby

Director- Stan Barauskas

Dr. Nelson Arnstien M.D.- Advisor
Nuclear Medicine, Kaiser Hospital, Downey CA, Space Enthusiast/Collector
 
Dr. Mary Stauffer- Advisor
Education activist and philanthropist. President, Stauffer Foundation
 
Scott Pomrehn- Advisor
Executive Director, City of Downey's Columbia Memorial Space Center
 
Gene Meyers- Advisor
CEO Space Island Group
 
Robert J. "Bob" Gilliland- Advisor
Lockheed Corporation (Retired), Fellow in the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, SR-71A Test Pilot   

Aerospace Legacy Foundation Director's meeting in 2008 at Downey Studios. Dr. Stauffer, Dr. Busby, Andy Monsen, Jaycee Cruz, George Redfox and Stan Barauskas.

Charlie and Ed Dowd in 2008. Ed passed away on 2-24-2011. He is survived by his loving wife Charlie. Ed and Jeanne Dowd started the Aerospace Legacy Foundation n 1994.

Pioneers in Aviation: The Race to the Moon                 
"The men who carried American aviation from the era of the Wright Brothers to the frontiers of space."
Sponsored by the Aerospace Legacy Foundation  (2006/2012).
Continuing our part in supporting aerospace and aviation history, the Aerospace Legacy Foundation is proud to assist again with the release of Pioneers in Aviation: The Race to Moon in HD. Many thanks to PBS, Boeing and the families of the Pioneers for making this possible. Right: Donald Douglas with President Franklin Roosevelt receiving award. President John F. Kennedy with James "Mac" McDonnell. Now showing on PBS stations across the United States and Canada. NOW PLAYING 9-2012

Click here to view a teaser video

William Edward Boeing 1881 - 1956
Perhaps the greatest visionary among the pioneers of the aviation industry, William Edward Boeing foresaw a national air transportation system a full decade before any of his contemporaries--and promptly set about creating it. In 1903, Boeing left Yale University for the Pacific Northwest to make his mark in the timber business. Emerging from the woods in 1908 with his fortune intact, he became smitten by the new science of aviation. By 1916, William Boeing had founded his own company and had begun manufacturing seaplanes for the U.S. military. Following the aviation industry's collapse at the end of the First World War, Boeing kept his employees busy building furniture and speed boats. His perseverance paid off. By the late 1920s, Boeing was carrying thirty percent of the nation's airmail and the majority of U.S. airline passengers across the western United States. The company was no longer simply building planes. William Boeing was now running a thriving air transport service and maintaining a fleet of airplanes--along with a school for pilots and maintenance crews.
At the height of the Depression, the government ordered the aviation holding companies to break up--leaving Boeing's corporation in pieces and his vision of a national transport system dashed. In 1935, he sold all his stock in the company he had built and left the industry. As the '40s dawned, however, President Roosevelt called upon the captains of his aviation industry to become "the arsenal of Democracy"--and William Boeing returned to lend his counsel and expertise to American military and aviation leaders as they scrambled to prepare the country for World War II.

Donald Wills Douglas 1892 - 1981
In 1908, at the age of sixteen, Donald Douglas witnessed the Wright Brothers' famous U.S. Army Signal Corps demonstration at Fort Myer, Virginia--an event that shaped his life. In the following year, as a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy, Douglas began building model planes and testing them secretly in the Academy armory. By 1912, he had transferred to M.I.T., becoming the country's first graduate student in aeronautical engineering. In 1915, he accepted the position of Chief Engineer at one of America's foremost aviation companies. By 1917, Donald Douglas had been appointed to direct America's aviation manufacturing effort in World War I. He was twenty-five years old. Moving to Los Angeles in 1920, Donald Douglas founded the Douglas Aircraft Company. In 1924, U.S. Army aviators electrified the world as they piloted four Douglas World Cruisers in the first "Around-the-World-Flight." In the 1930s, Douglas produced the legendary DC-3, the most popular commercial airliner of the 20th Century. In the 1940s, as the recognized leader of American aviation manufacturers, Douglas organized a coalition of American plane builders--whose extraordinary production of warplanes ultimately gave the Allies air supremacy in World War II. In the 1950s, Douglas's DC-8 battled head-to-head with the Boeing 707 for leadership as the world's premier commercial jetliner. And in the 1960s, it was Douglas engineers who built the upper-stage of the massive Saturn V rocket that carried the Apollo astronauts to the Moon. In a moving reminiscence, captured on film in the 1950s (see Episode I), Donald Douglas recounts the moment in 1908 when Orville Wright climbed into his fragile craft in the fading afternoon light, started the engine, and sent it down its wooden launching track.

James Howard ("Dutch") Kindelberger 1895 - 1962
James Howard Kindelberger was born in Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1895, the son of a German-American steelworker. In 10th grade, he quit school and followed his father into the Wheeling steel mills--then immediately began plotting his escape. Working by day and studying at night, Dutch managed to pass the entrance exams to Carnegie Tech. From 1917 to 1918, he served as a World War I pilot. At the end of the war, Kindelberger was hired as a draftsman for the Glenn L. Martin Company--and found himself working under the country's foremost aviation expert, Donald Douglas.
Forging a lifetime friendship with Donald Douglas, Kindelberger served as Vice President of Engineering at Douglas Aircraft--where he led the development of the DC-1 and DC-2. In 1934, North American Aviation asked him to take over as president--and Dutch rapidly built the company into one of the world' leading aircraft manufacturers. In the 1940s, North American Aviation produced two of the Second World War's most storied warplanes: the B-25 Mitchell bomber and the P-51 Mustang. Following the war, Dutch built America's first swept-wing jet fighter, the legendary F-86 Sabre Jet--which overwhelmingly defeated the Russian-built MIGs as they battled in the skies over Korea. But it was Kindelberger's visionary foresight that distinguishes him as one of America's greatest aerospace pioneers. Reshaping his company's mission in the post-war era, Dutch pioneered U.S. rocket research in the 1950s. In 1958, North American Aviation rolled out the X-15 Rocket--the critical step between the domain of jet aviation and manned space flight. And in July 1969, under North American leadership, the Apollo Moon Landing was successfully achieved.

James Smith McDonnell 1899 - 1980
James Smith McDonnell was born in 1899, in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he delivered copies of the Arkansas Gazette on horseback every morning before school. In 1917, he enrolled at Princeton University--and promptly traded his money for a winter coat for his first ride with a barnstormer in a rickety biplane. His passion for aviation was kindled at that moment.
By 1925, McDonnell had earned a Masters Degree in aeronautical engineering from MIT and enlisted in the Army Air Service to learn how to fly. He was awarded his pilot's wings at Brooks Field, Texas, and was one of six volunteers to make the first airplane parachute jump--leaping off the wing of a DeHavilland biplane.
By 1939, James McDonnell was ready to start his own company. Settling down in St. Louis, he founded McDonnell Aircraft on the 2nd floor of a building at Lambert Field. Surrounding himself with first-class engineers, McDonnell proceeded to develop a series of the finest jet fighters in the world--with names like Phantom, Voodoo, and Banshee. At the same time, McDonnell plowed more than 80% of his company's profits back into research & development. By the late 1950s, when NASA officials announced competitive bids for the first manned space capsule, McDonnell engineers already had one on the drawing boards. Mr. Mac personally oversaw every element of the Mercury and Gemini Space programs--superintending the critical early stages of America's Race to the Moon.

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