EAA Sport Aviation

JOHN PARISH
The original log cabin is still part of the museum. One room is an
office; the other houses Louise Thaden’s papers and memorabilia.
TOP: The museum’s entrance hall, where couches seem more predominant than
airplanes. ABOVE: The setting and design of the museum are as graceful and beautiful
as the classic Beechcraft designs it houses.
Thaden was famous for winning the first Women’s Air Derby in
1929 and the prestigious Bendix Air Race in 1936, besting all the
men in a race from New York to Los Angeles in a brand-new Beech
Staggering C17R. At the fly-in, she told the club that they ought to
organize a museum to preserve the history of the Staggerwing and
offered to donate her papers, trophies, and other aviation memora-
bilia. The museum was formally incorporated later that year, and
there are still photos of Dub Yarborough, John Parish, Glen
McNabb, Jim Gorman, and a few others of the founding group
standing in front of a log cabin, moved to the site of the Parish
Aerodrome specifically for that purpose, with a sign proclaiming
“Future Home of Staggering Museum/Foundation.”
Any museum with an honest-to-goodness, historic Tennessee
log cabin at its center is bound to have a down-home flavor to it, I
suppose. But the museum has also remained a grassroots effort. The
Tullahoma Bunch—which was always dominated by antique air-
plane aficionados—became the original core group of volunteers for
the museum, and most of the improvements in the museum’s facili-
ties have been funded by donations from the ever-growing family of
members, starting with those first Staggerwing club pilots.
Ironically, Olive Ann Beech, Walter Beech’s widow, declined to
give her blessing to the museum at first, despite the fact that she
knew Thaden and Dub Yarborough well. She said volunteer
museum projects tended to be underfunded and the initial enthusi-
asm didn’t last. Eventually, however, the museum’s success won her
over, and there is now a second log cabin
incorporated into the museum that houses
the Olive Ann Beech Gallery and Chapel.
Olive Ann Beech also donated many of the
company’s historical papers to the museum,
as well as some of her own furniture and art.