Tue, Sep 23, 2003
First-Ever Combs Award Presenters on Opening Day
Astronauts Neil
Armstrong and Eugene Cernan will join business aviation legend
Harry B. Combs in presenting the first annual Combs Award to
photographer Dan Patterson during the Opening General Session of
the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) 56th Annual
Meeting & Convention on Tuesday, October 7 in Orlando (FL).
This award, sponsored by the National Aviation Hall of Fame (NAHF)
and 1996 NAHF enshrinee Combs, honors Patterson for his
photographic preservation of America's air and space heritage.
The Combs Award grew out
of a 2001 donation by Combs to the National Aviation Hall of Fame.
As part of his generous $1.3 million gift to the NAHF for the
creation of a Research Center, he stipulated that the Combs Award
would support and encourage continuing aviation heritage research
and preservation efforts. Combs' illustrious career includes
accomplishments as an aircraft designer, fixed base operator,
flight instructor, entrepreneur and author. A former aviation
executive who helped devise the modern air traffic control system
and pulled LearJet from the brink of bankruptcy in the 1970s, he
also is the author of the acclaimed book Kill Devil Hill:
Discovering the Secrets of the Wright Brothers.
Award presenters Armstrong and Cernan are, respectively, the
first and most recent men to set foot on the surface of the moon.
Patterson's submission was selected for the $20,000 research and
preservation award by a panel of judges that included not only
Combs and Armstrong but also aviation historian and author C.V.
Glines; best-selling author and executive director of the Astronaut
Scholarship Foundation, Howard Benedict; and executive director of
the Whirlybirds International, Jean Tinsley.
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