Discover Vintage America — September 2011
TWA Museum planned at airline’s birthplace
Eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes bought controlling interest of Trans World Airlines in 1941. The airline was headquartered in an Art Deco-style building at the south end of the municipal airport in Kansas City, MO, now known as the Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport. Hughes often worked late, reportedly sleeping on a cot in the office of Jack Frye, TWA’s president.
A museum celebrating TWA history is moving into the building where much of the airline’s early history was made. The museum will be known as “The TWA Museum at 10 Richards Road.”
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| The entrance to the TWA museum’s new home. (photos by Ken Weyand) |
The historic building is occupied by Signature Flight Support/BBA Aviation. Bryan Orr, the firm’s area director, agreed earlier this year to offer display space for the museum.
Museum director, Pamela Blaschum, said the museum’s large collection of TWA memorabilia was once housed at the airline’s Overhaul Base at Kansas City International Airport.
“In the 1980s,” she said, “the museum was set up as a chapter of the Platte County Historical Society. For several years it was located at the CommunityAmerica Credit Union, formerly the TWA Credit Union, and later moved to the KCI Expo Center.”
I caught up with Blaschum at the museum’s old headquarters in the Expo Center. Part of the memorabilia had been moved to the new location. Still to be moved: a large display case filled with numerous examples of the airline’s colorful history, dating to its earliest predecessors. Nearby is a Link Trainer, developed in the early 1930s to acquaint new pilots with flight controls.
Pamela Blaschum, director of the TWA museum, with the museum’s Link Trainer.
“I think it’s interesting that Ed Link, the trainer’s inventor, was a builder of pipe organs,” Blaschum said. “The trainer uses an organ bellows to simulate pitch and roll.”
The museum began with a large trove of TWA memorabilia donated by Tom Perry, a TWA instrument shop mechanic. Perry began collecting in the early 1960s when he bought a box of junk. In the box was a pin worn by employees of Trans Continental & Western Air Express, a TWA forerunner. Blaschum said that over the years, other TWA employees and airline enthusiasts from around the world added to the collection.
TWA, once known as Trans Western Airlines, began in 1930 with the merger of Transcontinental Air Transport and Western Air Express to form Transcontinental and Western Air. It soon began the nation’s first all-plane service from coast to coast.
TWA was once known as “The Lindbergh Line.” Charles Lindbergh, an airmail pilot who became an international celebrity when he flew non-stop from New York to Paris in 1927, stopped in Kansas City on a national tour, and praised the city as an air travel hub. His remarks were recorded. When he headed a committee in 1928 to select a headquarters for Transcontinental Air Transport, his speech was replayed for him, leading him to persuade the committee to pick Kansas City as the headquarters for the airline, later to become TWA.
In its early years, TWA called itself the “The Airline Run by Flyers.” Jack Frye, president of Standard Airlines when it merged with Western Air Express, became president of TWA in 1934. Frye, a veteran pilot and respected aviation businessman, had pushed for a better aircraft when a Fokker Trimotor crashed in Kansas on March 31, 1931, killing Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne. The answer came from Donald Douglas, whose Douglas DC-1 prototype later became the DC-3.
TWA expanded during the war years as it served the needs of the military. It officially became Trans World Airlines in 1950 when it competed with Pan Am as an overseas carrier. A series of leadership changes and stock disputes followed, with Hughes finally selling his share of TWA in 1966.
“Kansas City’s Hometown Airline” had security issues with the design of KCI Airport that couldn’t be resolved. In 1982, TWA began moving its hub to Lambert International Airport in St. Louis.
TWA prospered during the next two decades, peaking in 1988 when it carried more than half of all trans-Atlantic passengers. But problems brought on by airline deregulation and profit-taking by corporate-raider, Carl Icahn, led to a series of bankruptcies in the 1990s. In 2001, TWA merged with American Airlines. In 2010, the last vestige of TWA’s presence in Kansas City ended when American Airlines closed the former TWA maintenance base at KCI.
The new TWA Museum at 10 Richards Road will have two large rooms of displays, plus a room recreating the office of Jack Frye. A hall leading to the museum will display additional photos. Visitors will see timelines of the airline’s history, many old advertising posters, photos of TWA pioneers, models and images of the airline’s early-day aircraft, several flight attendant uniforms, galley and food service items, and other memorabilia. The Link Trainer, a propeller from an aircraft flown by Lindbergh, and a large cut-away model of a Boeing 747 showing its cavernous seating area will greet visitors in the spacious lobby.
A large display case contains artifacts and photos from TWA’s earliest days.
Blaschum, who enjoyed a 31-year career as a TWA flight attendant, said the museum should be completed this fall. For more information, call Blaschum at 913-485-6325 or email twamuseumat10richardsroad@gmail.com.
Ken Weyand can be contacted at kweyand1@kc.rr.com
