Earlier this week I visited the Kalamazoo Air Zoo with a few family members. This was not my first visit, and it will certainly not be my last.

My previous visit was last October during the Michigan Museum Association Conference. I went to the Air Zoo for a restoration workshop, then again for one of our evening receptions.

The restoration workshop was an absolute blast and gave me a renewed appreciation for aircraft and flight. I got to learn about restoration techniques and practice a few of them on an SBD-1 that crashed into Lake Michigan in 1942. It was recovered from the lake in 1994, and after over 50 years submerged underwater, it was in need of a lot of work. It passed through several museums before arriving at the Air Zoo in 2021. It is currently being restored by a large number of volunteers and experts.

One of my favorite things that I got to do was riveting. Rivets are kind of a “bolt without a nut” that are used to bind the sheets of aluminum that make up the body of the aircraft together. Rosie the Riveter is a famous figure from the WWII era who was used to encourage women to work in the factories manufacturing aircraft for the US military.

I learned recently that my great-grandma Olga (Northrop) Crivea was a Rosie the Riveter during WWII. Grandma says that she remembers waiting at the front gate of the farm for her mother to come home from the factory every day. She would see her walking down the road wearing the classic coveralls and bandana on her head. Grandma Crivea passed away in 2007 at the age of 92.

After a long day at the museum, we finished up with some spaghetti and a movie, the 1965 film “Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines”.

I loved this movie as a child and finally managed to find it on DVD.

It holds up to my memories of it. It is a fun romp with some fun slapstick comedy, a sprinkle of racial stereotyping, impressive stunt work, and some very cool aircraft.

Though I hadn’t seen it in over 20 years, I still apparently know all the words to the theme song, a real testament to the power of music.