EAA 292 Taps for Buz

Experimental Airplane Wimpy, built in old Cummins store, was pushed down Boones Ferry Road for takeoff and national history

Hooked on airplanes at age 9 Myron Himes Buswell was born to Guy and Mildred Buswell, October 20, 1918 in Portland. His grandfather, George Himes, walked the Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City, Oregon. He co-founded the Oregon Historical Society.

At Christmas, when Myron “Buz” was 9 years old, he was given a model airplane. From that time on, he was enthralled with airplanes. The Wright brothers had flown the first experimental airplane in 1903. In 1927-29, Lindberg was his hero. It was so unusual at the time and so thrilling to see that Myron spent hours lying in the grass at the Frog Pond family farm while watching Bud Peters fly his Waco biplane from Wilsonville doing acrobatics and spins.

1936:

In 1936, Buz graduated from West Linn High School. He traded his Model A Ford and $250 to purchase the Wimpy, an open-cockpit, low-wing airplane, built in Cornelius. In 1938, he learned to fly, and in 1939, at the age of 20, he obtained his pilot’s license. On New Year’s Day, 1940, he flew the Wimpy from Beaverton Airport to Tualatin, where he landed in an open field across from his dad’s filling station on Boones Ferry Road. He pushed and moved it among fences to old Tualatin and through the double doors of the old vacant Cummins store located at the intersection of Tualatin Road and Cherokee Street by the Southern Pacific railroad tracks.

This was directly across the street from his friends, twins Leonard and Stella, and Margie Pohl. He got all of them plus Don Sunde to help dismantle and rebuild it. Stella and Margie (“good looking girls” according to Buz) brought cakes and snacks and helped sew and recover the plane with a new certified cotton fabric.

When the Wimpy was finished, Buz and the Pohls pushed the airplane down Boones Ferry Road and turned east to a baseball field where Tualatin-Sherwood Road is now. It was necessary to rev the engine up to full power before it would take off. Because the Wimpy had no brakes, Buz had the three Pohls hold it back until it was at full power, then let go for takeoff. He flew it to Beaverton and back, over Pennington’s barn, and landed it on the eastern five acres of his parents’ farm located at Boones Ferry Road and Norwood Road. His brother Bob also learned how to fly airplanes.

1942: World War II

In 1942, both Myron and his brother Robert volunteered for the Army Air Corps for experience to work later as commercial pilots. Buz served as a pilot on a B-24J Liberator with the 5^th Bomb Group of the 13^th Air Force in General MacArthur’s Far East Air Forces. Lieutenant Buswell was copilot on one of the longest raids in history: 16 hours round trip. He flew 42 combat missions in the Philippines and New Guinea. He was awarded the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters and was discharged as a captain in 1945.

In 1947, he married Jean Briscoe. For 32 years, they managed the fixed based operation (FBO) at the Lakeview Airport where daughters Lisa and Annette were born, raised, and taught to fly. They provided 24-hour service for airplanes, cars and service for forest fire bombers. He became a certified master mechanic and instructor. Buz’ wife Jean and brother Robert, a former state policeman, have since passed away. Buz was a member of Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) Chapter 292 at the Independence Airport and was one of the founding members of the national organization; his EAA number is 571. “Along with Les Long and George Bogardus, Buswell was in a group known as “the Beaverton Outlaws” who were extremely influential in making homebuilt light sport aircraft popular with the general public,” according to Mike Pongracz, secretary of EAA Chapter 292..

Now: 2005 Daughter Lisa Buswell Dahl owned and operated Buswell Air Service at Salem Airport, was an instructor, and now flies as a corporate pilot for Entek, located at Lebanon. Daughter Annette Buswell Whittington lives in Creswell, and is on the Board of the Oregon Aviation Museum.

“There is so much to tell about pioneering in the private experimental aviation industry,” Buz said while having lunch with Mike and Betty Pongracz and Yvonne Addington on March 3, 2005, in the Starduster Café at the Independence Airport, where he enjoyed celebrity status and a special reserved “Buz Buswell” table.

The pioneering that has allowed individuals to build and fly their own aircraft continues at an accelerated pace these days. While the group was having lunch that day with Buz, Steve Fossett landed his custom-built Global Flyer in Salina, Kansas, becoming the first person to fly solo around the world alone without stopping or refueling. Earlier in 2004, Mike Melville piloted the first manned non-government space craft, SpaceShipOne, designed by the legendary Burt Rutan and financed by Paul Allen, cofounder of Microsoft, more than 62 miles high at more than three times the speed of sound to the edge of space. “There is no stopping…it is beyond belief,” Buz said.

Yvonne Addington for the Tualatin Historical Society Newsletter (Interview March 15, 2005) First published April 2005 and reprinted here with permission of the author.

Good Bye, My Friend (A Remembrance of “Buz”)

When I was about 15 years old (I’m 57 now), I rode my bicycle 25 miles from where I lived south of Lakeview, Oregon, up Highway 395 and into Lakeview and then 5 miles on a gravel road out to the airport. I went into the hangar and was looking at the airplanes and talked to a guy working on a really nice Piper Tri-Pacer. “Would you like to go for a ride?” he asked. Of course I said yes. so we went for a 20 minute ride. Buz let me fly a bit and we did a slow roll or two then it was in for a landing. I was totally hooked on flying from that day forward.

It was another year before I got to fly again, but I managed to get a job working for Buz during the summer pumping gas and helping out around the place in exchange for lessons. Usually whenever the weather was bad or his other students thought it was bad and canceled, I would get a lesson. At every chance to fly a different plane or when a new one came along, Buz would wangle a ride for me. I think I was checked out in over 25 different planes before I got my private license. My first solo was in Buz’ Shinn, and probably half of all my time was spent in that airplane.

During WWII, Buz had been a B-24 pilot. He told of airplanes on both sides of his being shot down, but the only time he came close was one time his windscreen was shattered by a piece of flak. I think he had something like 44 missions during that conflict. He taught lots of people to fly, and I don’t know of any who ever wrecked an airplane. Some had emergencies like I did, but his basic teaching would kick in and we would get the airplane safely back on the ground.

I went off to college at Northrop Tech and got my A&P rating, came back to Lakeview, and went back to work for Buz--still pumping gas and helping out as well as doing A&P work. I worked for him off and on for 3 or 4 years altogether. I got my commercial license from him one winter between really bad weather and pumping gas. We would fly every chance we got, and he taught me to always be ready for the engine to quit no matter what we were doing or where we were in your flight. This served me really well later when an engine quit on a Bellanca I was test flying at 100 feet off the ground at 175 mph airspeed just past the end of the runway. Converting airspeed to altitude, I managed to turn around and land safely on the runway.

When Buz got the Shinn, his daughter Lisa really got the flying bug. She and I took turns flying and learning from the master. I went into the Navy in the summer of 1970 and got out 4 years later to go

back to work for Buz pumping gas and flying some short hop charters when he was out on a long one himself, and I still did some mechanic work. While in the Navy, I arranged for Buz, Jean and Lisa to be on a one-day cruise on the aircraft carrier I was on out of San Francisco. We did some carrier qualifications with several of the planes on the ship so the visitors could see how a carrier operates. Buz was amazed at how it all worked. He always enjoyed telling that story to friends.

He moved to Independence and I went to Burns and then back to Lakeview, and I got married and finally moved to the Corvallis area. Every time I stopped in to see him, we would fly either the Shinn or the Lance. Buz was the happiest when he was off the ground, I think. Once we added up his hours and he had something like 5 years in the air!. ***His first federal pilots license was signed by one of the Wright brothers as administrator of the CAA as the FAA was known then.*** He would tell of working on his plane all week so he could fly on the weekend and would usually have at least one sometimes several forced landings due to engine failures. Then do it all over the next week.

Buz loved sailplanes also and had one at Lakeview for a while. When I was first learning in the Tri-Pacer we would ridge soar on the hills behind Lakeview so I could learn slow flight and how to control the airplane in the mountains. One time coming back to Lakeview from a charter to Reno in a Comanche, Buz saw a beautiful lenticular cloud and said “Let’s go see how much lift there is under it.” It was pretty much right in line with our flight path so we went for it. At one point we were climbing over 2500 feet per minute with flaps down, wheels down, engine idling and nose pointed way down and airspeed at the bottom of the green arc, and we topped out at over 13,000 feet. Buz talked about that for days.

I will always remember him as a friend and how he loved to fly. To him flying was fun even when he was earning a living at it. He hated to see all the regulation come in that limited where you could go and what you could do on the way. He hated the commercialism of aviation. He hated the fences and locked gates at airports, always saying flying is supposed to be about fun. He really enjoyed Independence and the EAA chapter and what it has accomplished. In his mind, that was as close to what flying was supposed to be about.