Celebrate Freedom Foundation Wants Memorabilia As It Renovates Hangar

A group dedicated to rebuilding the Curtiss-Wright hangar at Owens Field in Columbia, SC, says it needs more information. Specifically, the Celebrate Freedom Foundation wants a few memories.

The hangar was built in 1929 by Glenn Curtiss and the Wright Brothers. Amelia Earhart stopped there, as did President Franklin Roosevelt.

But the foundation says it doesn't have much to go on as it contemplates a $1 million renovation of the facility. So it's asking Columbia residents to go through their mementos in hopes of finding more information.

"We want to collect the stories as well as the mementos that are in the attic," said Jim Prater of the Curtiss-Wright Hangar Association, an affiliate of the Celebrate Freedom Foundation. He was quoted by Knight-Ridder newspapers.

Photographs unearthed would be displayed in a Memory Mural to hang inside the restored hangar. The group is also looking for people who can lend their stories about the hangar to an oral history project.

The whole renovation project began about five years ago -- but was sidetracked by the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on 9/11.

"We just started fund raising, and [Sept. 11] knocked the legs from under the airlines," said Owens Field Manager Jim Hamilton.

FMI: www.celebratefreedomfoundation.org