Paul E. Garber - San Diego, CA
Posted by: Groundspeak Premium Member Metro2
N 32° 43.598 W 117° 09.234
11S E 485579 N 3620992
This bust is located in the San Diego Air & Space Museum.
Waymark Code: WMPY3J
Location: California, United States
Date Posted: 11/08/2015
Published By:Groundspeak Premium Member Dorcadion Team
Views: 2

This life-sized bronze bust depicts Paul Garber as a middle aged man, wearing a suit and tie and sporting a mustache. The artist is A. Wasil...but there is no date provided.

Wikipedia (visit link) adds:

"Paul Edward Garber (August 31, 1899 - September 23, 1992) was the first head of the National Air Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C. Through his work and effort, the most complete collection of historical aircraft in the world was gathered and preserved. It contains the sole survivors of many interesting historical aircraft types.

Biography

Garber was born at Atlantic City, New Jersey, but spent his childhood in Washington, D.C. and had clear memories of the Wright Brothers flight trials at Fort Myer in 1909. At the age of 18 joined the Army. During World War I he was transferred from the D.C. National Guard to Aviation Service in the Signal Corps. During World War II he was a Commander in the US Navy and later was in the Naval Reserves.

World War I ended before he had started the planned flight training. After the war he took a job as a ground crewman and messenger with the Postal Airmail Service. About that time cleared his desire to help the development of aviation by preserving its past. In 1920 he joined the Smithsonian and for the next 72 years worked for the preservation of the world aviation heritage.

In 1946 President Harry S. Truman created the National Air Museum as a separate entity of the Smithsonian. Garber played a key role in the process and was assigned as a Curator to the Museum.

The present National Air and Space Museum building opened in 1976. Most important, Garber, as first curator and devotee, helped to assemble the most impressive collection of historic aircraft in the world for the Institution.

The storage of that collection was not much of a problem prior to World War II - virtually everything that Garber collected was on display at the Arts and Industries Building or on loan to another museum. But when he returned from service as a naval officer, he faced an entirely new set of problems. Gen. Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces, presented the Smithsonian with a collection of U.S. and enemy aircraft. When Paul Garber accepted responsibility for this vast collection, it was stored in an abandoned airplane factory in suburban Chicago, now the site of the O'Hare Airport. The U.S. Navy had a similar collection of historic aircraft in storage for the Smithsonian at Norfolk, Virginia. The crisis came with the Korean War, when the U.S. Air Force needed the factory and began to force the Smithsonian out the door.

Determined to safely relocate the treasures to the Washington area, Garber searched in vain for empty warehouse space in the vicinity of the nation's capital. He then persuaded a pilot friend to assist him in conducting an aerial survey of the Maryland and Virginia suburbs from the cockpit of a Piper J-3 Cub. His search revealed 21 acres (85,000 m2) of woodland in Suitland. The National Park and Planning Commission, which controlled the land, was more than pleased to turn it over to the Smithsonian in 1952.

"When I first went out there and walked around," Garber later commented, "my only companions were the bullfrogs and mockingbirds." There was no budget for this project. "I had to scrounge," he recalled with pride.

His powers of persuasion were legendary. Army engineers at nearby Fort Belvoir provided a bulldozer to clear trees and brush from the site. Garber persuaded a local contractor to donate any excess cement remaining aboard his trucks at the end of the workday. Navy officials agreed to provide, at cost, the first of the prefabricated buildings that would soon dot the site."
URL of the statue: Not listed

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Metro2 visited Paul E. Garber  -  San Diego, CA 08/25/2015 Metro2 visited it