Daily News, March 21, 2005

GLENDALE-Glendale Community College officials voted Friday (3.11.2005) to drop the campus's 60-year-old aviation-mechanics program. Citing declining enrollment and rising costs, the college's board of trustees voted unanimously to discontinure the FAA-certified two-year program that teaches students how to repair aircraft engines.

March 30, 2005-Sent to Daily News, etc.

RE: Aviation Mechanics classes at Glendale College cancelled; Daily News, March 12, 2005

Glendale has a history of aviation beginning with Roy Knabenshue flying dirigibles over Glendale in 1906, L. C. Brand flying from his front lawn in 1917 and the opening of Glendale airport in 1923. When war clouds were gathering in 1938, the U.S. Government organized training facilities to prepare our country for the coming hostilities. The Curtiss-Wright Technical Institute was established at Grand Central Air Terminal and Glendale College began it aviation maintenance and ground school programs. Thousands of pilots, designers, mechanics and technicians were trained in Glendale and they went on to win WWII and to establish Southern California as a major center of aviation development.

At the very least, Glendale College has a contract with the current students in its aviation mechanics program and they should allow currently enrolled students to finish their courses and graduate from Glendale College like the thousands who have before them.

If the College decides to discontinue the program in the future, they should realize that they are killing the last connection with over 60 years of aviation development that includes the Army Air Corps, Major C. C. Mosely, Jack Northrop, Glenn Martin, Howard Hughes, Burt Kinner, Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh, the birthplace of the scheduled airlines and the beginning of rocket propulsion development. (See John Underwood’s book, “Madcaps, Millionaires and “Mose”, Heritage Press, 1984)

As the Walt Disney Company commits to preserve the historic Grand Central Airport Terminal building, Glendale College votes to discontinue the other half of that history; the aircraft maintenance program and ground school. Glendale College is following the same path that the City of Burbank has taken; disconnection from its aviation history and destruction of the historic equity of its citizens, past and present.

If the Glendale College Aviation Department has to close, then its history should be well documented and preserved. If you don’t want to do that in Glendale, let me know and I’ll do what I can to bring it over here to Burbank where we know what we’ve lost.

J. Ron Dickson Burbank, CA www.GoDickson.com/ahsfv.htm (Aviation History of the San Fernando Valley)