History buffs: Test your AOPA knowledge

1. This future AOPA president was the association’s first employee. He started out working in an office used for storage, surrounded by film cans and boxes of potatoes.
2. This popular course debuted at the 1963 AOPA Plantation Party in Palm Springs, California. It was attended by 143 women and one teenage boy.
3. This former AOPA president served in the Korean War in the 51st Fighter Group—a unit that suffered the deaths of all but two of its original members. He earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal with six oak leaf clusters, and sustained chronic back injuries as a result of ejecting from a fighter.
4. Who said it? “Mayor Daley has no honor and his word has no value. The sneaky way he did this shows that he knows it was wrong. We’re not going to allow the mayor to hide behind the fiction of homeland security for his reprehensible action.”
5. AOPA’s first president owned a regional airline that at one time employed a famous aviatrix. Name the president, the airline, and the aviatrix.
6. AOPA's first member was a prominent aviator of the late 1930s. What organization is he credited with starting?
7. Who said it? “I’m tired, and going to bed. I propose we call it what it is—the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.”
8. Before it came to be called general aviation, what was the umbrella term for various types of private flying?
9. What prominent entertainer emceed the giveaway of two airplanes to AOPA members on television in 1956?
10. AOPA’s effort to fight unreasonable fees today has its roots in AOPA’s earliest days. In the 1940s, an AOPA editorial wrote, “Exclusive aviation sales monopolies are threatening the existence of free airports…The airport is no exception to the rule that good business is built through competition.” What was this type of price-gouging then called?

Answers

1. Joseph B. (“Doc”) Hartranft Jr.
2. The Pinch-Hitter Course, offered by the AOPA Foundation (now the AOPA Air Safety Institute)
3. John L. Baker
4. Former AOPA President Phil Boyer, on the late-night destruction of Meigs Field
5. C. Townsend Ludington, Ludington Air Lines, and Amelia Earhart
6. The Civil Air Patrol. Gill Robb Wilson, AOPA member number 1 and the New Jersey director of aeronautics, is regarded as the founder of the Civil Air Patrol. He served as CAP’s first executive officer and also was the first editor of the “AOPA News” section of Flying and Popular Aviation magazine.
7. C. Townsend Ludington
8. Miscellaneous aviation
9. Arthur Godfrey, who was an AOPA charter member
10. “The bite”