The Saga of the SR-71 and the Pacific Coast Air Museum

(Continued)

So I gave Mike a call and sure enough, the SR-71 parts were at Barstow and sure enough, he was in charge of disposing of them. I asked him what he had that might be of interest to put on display at our museum. He said he thought an SR-71 nose on it's dolly, an engine and an engine spike might make a great display. Just for the heck of it I asked him if he had a rudder, and he said "sure". He said he was putting my name on an engine, a nose, a rudder and an engine spike. I said we could mount a recovery team on fairly short notice and come get them. He said "good deal', all you need to do now is get the loan documents from the National Museum of the United States Air Force (which I will call AF Museum from here on out!). I said "whoa, how do I do that?" and he told me to contact the #2 guy at the AF Museum in Dayton, Tom Brewer, and gave me Brewer's phone number. I'm thinking this is going to be "no sweat."

So I call Brewer, nice enough guy, who is all enthused that I flew the SR-71 and that our museum wants to have some major SR-71 components to put on display. Then he says "I don't see your museum's name on the list of certified and approved museums". I told him we were on the Naval Museum's certified list, but he said that wasn't good enough. So I asked Brewer to authorize us the parts and we would get on their approved list. He said "no", that we had to get certified first. "Hhm, maybe this isn't going to be as easy as I thought".

So he put me in touch with the certification person and she sent me this huge package - - as daunting stack of paperwork to be filled out and policies to be followed as I've seen since I worked in the Pentagon! And I learned that the Pacific Coast Air Museum had taken a look at AF Museum certification before and decided not to pursue it because the requirements were so outrageous. This was a discouraging time.

As luck would have it, about a year ago the Forward Air Controller's Reunion was held at the AF Museum because we were dedicating a monument to our fallen Forward Air Controller comrades. So I made an appointment with Tom Brewer during the time when I would be there. I figured "what the heck, it can't hurt." And it didn't, as my meeting with Tom went quite well, and he took me and introduced me to Major General Charlie Metcalf, the Executive Director of the AF Museum (whom I promptly gave a Pacific Coast Air Museum challenge coin to!). We talked and he encouraged me to pursue certification, and introduced me to Sarah Sessions, the woman in charge of the certification program. She was not very encouraging, and handed me the same huge stack of paperwork to start working on. At this point things were getting more discouraging for me about getting the SR-71 parts that were already sitting in Barstow with my name on them. But I filled out the paperwork for the first step in the certification process called "Administrative Certification", and sent it in along with our By Laws, proof of our non-profit status, budget, financial documents, etc. Six months went by and we heard absolutely nothing.

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