Airshow Career Honored by a Grateful Industry

Gary Ward has won the prestigious airshow honor of being the 2022 recipient of the Bill Barber Award for Showmanship. 

Ward's career has brought him into the aerobatics and airshow fold, getting his start in the USAF as a jet engine mechanic before moving onwards and upwards into Aerospace engineering. After a brief stint at Cessna as a design engineer on the first generation Citation, he moved home to Lincolton, Georgia to work in the family lumber business where he spent the rest of his working career. Out of the industry, but not out of the hobby, Ward obtained a wrecked Pitts S2-B in the mid 90's, rebuilding it with a friend and discovering aerobatics and honing his skills in private. A friend pushed him to get involved and join an airshow, flying his first in North Carolina at age 57 in 1998. 

His trusty S2-B didn't stick around forever as his go-to aircraft, as he quickly built a Giles 202 monoplane which became his show plane for nearly a decade. Then, the all-carbon MX2 made its way into Ward's hands, making him the first performer to put the model to use, leveraging its super lightweight build to do things he said planes "weren't supposed to do". Ward has performed routines throughout North and South America, retiring his career in his 80th year to gathered crowds at Sun 'n Fun 2022. He now flies a more laid-back fleet including a Piper cub, Super Cub, and Robinson R44 (for now). 

The Bill Barber Award for Showmanship arrived on the airshow circuit in 1986, and has stood as an award to recognize those performers or teams that demonstrate great skill and entertainment. World Airshow News magazine, along with the friends and family of the late Bill Barber, act as the presenters every year, though 2022 will be the first award presented since the onset of the pandemic in 2020. The Bill Barber Award for Showmanship will be presented at this year's EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, scheduled for July 25-31, 2022.

FMI: www.airshowmag.com