I do not stock extra copies of any of these publications for sale or other distribution. My wife and I once attempted this with the Sixth Air Force book, at the suggestion of the publisher, and we quickly amassed some 2,000 pounds of books in our family room and consequent shipping, special handling, countless trips to the post office and failed sendings. We swore we would never do that again! That is why we have publishers, to deal with not only the mechanics of the preparation and layout, but the distribution and stocking chores as well! Long may they prosper.

As with sending books, this is likewise impractical for me to undertake for various reasons. In many instances it comes down to honoring the copyright of the original photographers.

"When I was a kid, living in very rural New Concord, Ohio, the closest grocery was Kroger's in Cambridge, about 15 miles distant. Whenever my mother would make her monthly sojourn there for provisions, I would invariably go, as just up the street was the monolithic Carnegie Cambridge Public Library which, as of the 1950's, miraculously it seems in retrospect, had a grand total of one aviation book: the 1940-41 issue of the annual "JANE'S All the World's Aircraft." I practically memorized that hefty tome and, indeed, it reached the point that when the librarian would see me heading up the street towards the library, she would greet me at the circulation desk and say, "Here's your book Danny!"

I was mesmerized by the, then, state-of-the-art aircraft detailed in that well-worn volume. But three of the designs, in particular, turned out to be my all-time favorites: the North American NA-16 - which evolved into the immortal AT-6 Texan series - the Curtiss-Wright A19R and the Stinson Model "O". To me, they just "seemed right".

Fast forward 40 years.

While on staff at the National Air and Space Museum, I aided Debbie Bootstrom of San Antonio, Texas, in convincing the FAA that the type, in fact, had been issued a full Approved Type Certificate and then in recovering a complete A19R from La Paz, Bolivia, where it had been on a plinth for nearly 50 years, and, against all odds, she returned it to airworthiness - the solitary flying example in the world. We also had an inquiry from an enthusiast in Oregon, as a result of one of my books, about the elegant Stinson Model "O," three of which were exported to Honduras in 1936. Somehow, he managed to locate some surviving parts of one of those and, incorporating these bits, built an exact replica to airworthiness, which (what are the chances?) now resides in a place of honor in The Museum of Flight collection.

When I retired from The Museum of Flight, I was honored with a flight into the sunset in John Sessions North American AT-6A Standard, a veteran of the Argentine Navy. The second owner of the A19R arranged for me to have a truly memorable flight in the aircraft at a Merced, California airshow. And when the Stinson Model "O" was flight delivered to The Museum of Flight, I was in the back seat and made a full-throttle, high speed run down the primary at the Paine Field airshow at Everett, Washington. It is possible that I may have made several gentle aerobatic maneuvers in the AT-6A and A19R and lazy figure eights over a departing cruise ship in Puget Sound in the Model "O". My childhood favorites had fulfilled my every fantasy. Only in America."