This will mark the first time in memory the glittering enshrinement, dubbed the “Oscars of Aviation,” has happened at the museum, said Ron Kaplan, enshrinement director.
“It attracts a who’s who of the air and space community,” he said.
Last year, the enshrinement was set to open at the museum, but a partial federal government shutdown scuttled that plan and forced a last-minute switch to the Hope Hotel and Conference Center at Wright-Patterson. A reception before the dinner will be inside the National Aviation Hall of Fame’s Learning Center, also inside the museum.
“Being here right now is fantastic and not having that worry” of another last-minute glitch, Kaplan said.
The enshrinement inductees include:
Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. James A. McDivitt, of Tucson, Ariz. and Rapid City, Mich., a former Gemini and Apollo astronaut who also was a fighter pilot in the Korean war and later a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
Emily Howell Warner, of Denver, Colo., the first female U.S. airline captain.
The late Bertrand “Bert” B. Acosta, one of the nation’s first test pilots and the first aviator to serve in both the Army Air Service and the Navy. The record-setting pilot built and flew his first airplane in 1910. He died in 1954 at the age of 59.
Alan and Dale Klapmeier, two brothers who founded the Cirrus Aircraft company in Duluth, Minn., in 1964. The airplane maker earned a reputation for innovation using new technologies in general aviation, such as “glass panel” cockpits and propeller-powered planes with built-in parachutes.
The late Sylvester “Steve” J. Wittman, a Wisconsin airport manager who was instrumental in convincing the Experimental Aircraft Association to locate their annual fly-in to Oshkosh. Wittman and his wife, Paula, died in an airplane crash in 1995.
East Hartford, Conn., school teacher Rachael L. Manzer will receive the 2014 Scott A. Crossfield Aerospace Educator of the Year Award.
The science teacher has received numerous education awards. She is one of seven selected for a program to fly a teacher aboard a commercial spacecraft.
“Her (students) were doing hands-on experiments that were flying on the (space) shuttle,” Kaplan said.
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