BOB POND, 83, COLLECTOR OF WWII-ERA CARS AND PLANES; FOUNDER, PALM SPRINGS AIR MUSEUM

Robert Pond, mechanical engineer, inventor, civic philanthropist, husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather, museum founder and car, truck, motorcycle and WWII-era US military aircraft collector, died December 14, 2007, at age 83 in Desert Regional Medical Center in his adopted hometown, Palm Springs, California. He had suffered a brain hemorrhage. (Photo --- Recent photo of collector, philanthropist, and museum founder Bob Pond).

Pond was founder, chairman and most-recently chairman emeritus of the world-renowned Palm Springs Air Museum. The museum houses one of the great collections of still-flying WWII-era US military aircraft, of which Pond owned between 25 and 30, and a vehicle collection numbering near 120 cars, trucks and motorcycles from that same era, most, if not all, of them still-running, which were also owned by Pond.

Known to all as "Bob",  he opened the museum on Veteran's Day, 1996, to "educate, promote and remember all the people during World War II that made great sacrifices, particularly airmen", according to a museum official. And because Bob Pond was a "Car Nut" as well as an "Aviation Nut", this particular written memorial will reflect his lifelong affection for all his many different vehicles, which had spent their "mechanical lives" doing their jobs, either on the ground or in the air ... and sometimes both! Pond was also a very important philanthropic figure in the area where we have lived for almost a decade, the Coachella Valley, which is home to Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Indian Wells, La Quinta, Indio and several more of the best-known desert resort cities in the world. We also hope readers understand that we have attempted, with sometimes too-long captions, to put the few posted photos of some of the museum's vehicles into an accurate historical perspective. Readers will also occasionally find printed asides which may provoke an irreverent laugh or two. As people with laughter, we've been told that Bob Pond would not object.

(Photo Below --- One of the 51Tucker cars ever made; 47 are believed to survive. This 1948 model, owned by Bob Pond, is shown on-display in the Palm Springs Air Museum. Preston Tucker, called, alternatively, a genius on the one hand, and a possible swindler on the other, designed a very advanced car, with a "Cyclops" single headlight that turned with the steering wheel, along with traditional fender-mounted twin headlamps. All Tuckers got their horsepower from a modified helicopter engine, mounted under the vehicle's trunk).

Bob Pond was chairman of the museum's board of directors since its 1996 opening, and named chairman emeritus in 2005. A non-profit educational institution which accepts tax deductible gifts, the Palm Springs Air Museum's "mission statement" says, in part, "(this museum exists) to exhibit, educate and eternalize the role of World War II combat aircraft and the role the pilots and American citizens had in achieving this great victory".

In addition to all the 'ready-to-fly' aircraft and the large number of important 'ready-to-roll' earth-bound vehicles, and related artifacts, artwork and library sources, are all utilized to perpetuate American history. (Photo Below --- One of the "Crown Jewels" of the Palm Springs Air Museum, a North American P51 "Mustang"; from bases scattered all over England, large Allied aircraft on bombing missions which took them deep into Europe, had for years served as the proverbial "sitting ducks" for Germany's Luftwaffe Messershmitt attack fighters, but "Mustang", a powerful long-range fighter, enabled Allied pilots to fly missions from England to Germany, where they dropped their bombs, and back to the UK, with fighter protection).

Pond started building model planes at the age of 10, and when his father let him take a plane ride during a trip to Chicago, that 10-year old kid became hooked on aviation. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1948 and soon bought his first airplane --- a Cessna 180.

He had joined the Navy in 1942, and during WWII, Pond become a Navy pilot, eventually flying PBM Martin Mariner twin-engine flying boats, and the Navy version of the B-24 Liberator, which was a four-engine craft called PB4Y Privateer, and the Navy's version of the B-26, the JM1 Marauder. Pond enjoyed regaling some of the museum visitors (over 100,000 annually), especially former US aviators, that in his last flying assignment his plane was painted a bright, bright yellow. Then Pond tells the punchline, which is true but still very funny and catches many veterans by surprise: "My plane's mission was towing targets for the ground troops who were learning to shoot planes down."

Pond was born in Edina, Minnesota. His father, Harold, owned a small, start-up business called Advance Machine Company, in Spring Park, MN. The company specialized in large-scale installations of terrazzo tiles, such as in shopping centers, hospitals, and all manner of large, sometimes very large, office and government buildings. When Pond returned from the War, he went to work for the family company as its #8 employee (the day before Pond joined the company, Advance Machine Company had 7 employees). Pond soon designed a machine for installing terrazzo tiles faster, safer and easier. Advance Machine customers next began asking for a better way to clean these large installations. Bob Pond got to work on those requests, and created new and improved versions of these highly-specialized machines.

Bob Pond sold the company in the early 1990s for close to (a rumored) $500-million. And the small, family-owned company Pond joined as its 8th employee, at the time of its sale, boasted more than 800 workers at its Minnesota factory alone. Today, Advance has over 3,000 employees, factories ranging from its US plant to facilities in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Singapore and China. Clearly, when Bob Pond sold this closely-held family company some 15 years ago, it was in good health and ready to grow more, the right time for the new owners to expand its manufacturing facilities.

(Photo Below --- Drive leading to the Palm Springs Aviation Museum; visitors are often taken aback by the size of the facility, more than 67,000 square feet total).

The museum facility consists of two large buildings,which are actually two aircraft hangars; there's also a large gift shop and a theater inside. The facility is just a few feet from the runway of Palm Springs International Airport. It has over 67,000 square feet of floor space, and since its opening, it has become one of the region's most prominent tourist attractions, and one of the Coachella Valley's busiest locations for special events, charity functions and big-band concerts. Over 3,000 people can be accommodated for almost any type of private or civic event.

We've had the distinct pleasure of not only seeing the museum's B-17, but we've also been allowed to crawl around inside it, and have seen it in action, too, flying in and out of Palm Springs International Airport, sometimes making 'touch and go' passes.

Something which for me is unforgettable is seeing, hearing, feeling and even smelling this huge Boeing bomber as this monster-sized plane quickly is brought to life. One by one, each of the four massive engines burble, smoke, spit, roar and right at the point where you're certain something 'big' is about to happen, and it's not necessarily a good thing, all four of the engines are now running with a smooth regularity, the entire operation taking less than 2 minutes. (Photo Below --- Boeing's B-17 "Flying Fortress", one of the museum's restored, flight-ready warplanes, and forerunner of a soon-to-come new generation of large and powerful American-designed and -built four-engine bombers; the first B-17s were delivered in 1935, but when WWII began with Germany's September 1, 1939 invasion of Poland, Lockheed and Douglas both joined Boeing in B-17 production, all these companies improving the plane over time, and ultimately over 12,000 B-17 bombers were delivered before the War's end. Only a handful remain in one piece, much less restored and pampered in its "middle age", like this one, with the ability to fly).

Before opening the local museum, Pond had established the Planes of Fame East Air Museum at Flying Cloud Field in Eden Prairie, Minn. It closed in 1997 as the collection was moved to Palm Springs.

The museum facility consists of two large buildings,which are actually two aircraft hangars; there's also a large gift shop and a theater inside. The facility is just a few feet from the runway of Palm Springs International Airport. It has over 67,000 square feet of floor space, and since its opening, it has become one of the region's most prominent tourist attractions, and one of the Coachella Valley's busiest locations for special events, charity functions and big-band concerts. Over 3,000 people can be accommodated for almost any type of private or civic event. He bought more aircraft over the years, including 14 World War II Warbird fighter jets that are on display at the air museum.

(Photo Below --- WWI flying "ace" and one of America's first "media superstars", Eddie Rickenbacker was a self-taught engineering genius who started a Detroit-based company which made about 11,000 cars betweeen 1922 and 1927. The company went under in 2938, and all its machinery and tooling were bouht by Audi and shipped to Germany, shortly before Hitler's rise to power. These cars had the industry's first four-wheel braking system and other technologically-advanced items, and was rather pricey for its time).

On any given day at the museum, a visitor will find approximately 30 aircraft on display, about two dozen of them Pond's own. There are also 30 - 40 cars on display, all +frenafrom Pond's private collection of near 120 vehicles. Every plane, car, truck and motorcycle on display is either in running condition or can be put there with only a little time and effort. During the year, there are many special occasions held which involve flights by many of the museum's aircraft, and planes are also flying in and out of the museum on fairly regular schedule, either from other museums or even other private owners. The museum's website can be found at: http://www.air-museum.org/.

Pond and his wife of 32 years, Jo Rose, moved to Palm Springs in 1989. Together, they supported many institutions in their new Southern California hometown, including the College of the Desert and Desert Regional Medical Center.

One of the biggest highlights of the museum, both literally and figuratively, are original murals personally commissioned by Bob Pond, depicting various aspects of the "lives" of military aircraft, designed, painted and completed by Stan Stokes, known worldwide for his photo-realistic aviation artwork. His two permanent murals at the Palm Springs Air Museum include: "Dauntless at Midway", 12 ft. by 34 ft., and, "Corsair on Approach", 19 ft. by 55 ft. (Photo Below --- Stan Stokes in front of his work, "History of the Flying White House", commissioned by and a part of the permanent collection at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, CA).

Stokes' work is also displayed at the Presidential Libraries of George H.W. Bush (two paintings on permanent display) and Gerald R. Ford (painting of the 'carrier of the future', "USS Gerald R. Ford"). In 1975, Stokes won first place in the Benedictine Art Awards, and in 1984 won first place in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's "Golden Age of Flight" art competition. In May, 2000 Stan was honored with the "R.G. Smith Award for Excellence in Naval Aviation Art" by the Pensacola Naval Air Museum. Stan's most-recent book is the just published Flying Aces. More of Stokes' impressive, incredibly-detailed works can be seen at his website, www.stanstokes.net, from which he can also be contacted.

Robert Pond, mechanical engineer, inventor, civic philanthropist, husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather, museum founder and car, truck, motorcycle and WWII-era US military aircraft collector, died December 14, 2007, at age 83 in Desert Regional Medical Center in his adopted hometown, Palm Springs, California. He had suffered a brain hemorrhage. (Photo --- Recent photo of collector, philanthropist, and museum founder Bob Pond).

Pond was founder, chairman and most-recently chairman emeritus of the world-renowned Palm Springs Air Museum. The museum houses one of the great collections of still-flying WWII-era US military aircraft, of which Pond owned between 25 and 30, and a vehicle collection numbering near 120 cars, trucks and motorcycles from that same era, most, if not all, of them still-running, which were also owned by Pond.

Known to all as "Bob",  he opened the museum on Veteran's Day, 1996, to "educate, promote and remember all the people during World War II that made great sacrifices, particularly airmen", according to a museum official. And because Bob Pond was a "Car Nut" as well as an "Aviation Nut", this particular written memorial will reflect his lifelong affection for all his many different vehicles, which had spent their "mechanical lives" doing their jobs, either on the ground or in the air ... and sometimes both! Pond was also a very important philanthropic figure in the area where we have lived for almost a decade, the Coachella Valley, which is home to Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Indian Wells, La Quinta, Indio and several more of the best-known desert resort cities in the world. We also hope readers understand that we have attempted, with sometimes too-long captions, to put the few posted photos of some of the museum's vehicles into an accurate historical perspective. Readers will also occasionally find printed asides which may provoke an irreverent laugh or two. As people with laughter, we've been told that Bob Pond would not object.

(Photo Below --- One of the 51Tucker cars ever made; 47 are believed to survive. This 1948 model, owned by Bob Pond, is shown on-display in the Palm Springs Air Museum. Preston Tucker, called, alternatively, a genius on the one hand, and a possible swindler on the other, designed a very advanced car, with a "Cyclops" single headlight that turned with the steering wheel, along with traditional fender-mounted twin headlamps. All Tuckers got their horsepower from a modified helicopter engine, mounted under the vehicle's trunk).

Bob Pond was chairman of the museum's board of directors since its 1996 opening, and named chairman emeritus in 2005. A non-profit educational institution which accepts tax deductible gifts, the Palm Springs Air Museum's "mission statement" says, in part, "(this museum exists) to exhibit, educate and eternalize the role of World War II combat aircraft and the role the pilots and American citizens had in achieving this great victory".

In addition to all the 'ready-to-fly' aircraft and the large number of important 'ready-to-roll' earth-bound vehicles, and related artifacts, artwork and library sources, are all utilized to perpetuate American history. (Photo Below --- One of the "Crown Jewels" of the Palm Springs Air Museum, a North American P51 "Mustang"; from bases scattered all over England, large Allied aircraft on bombing missions which took them deep into Europe, had for years served as the proverbial "sitting ducks" for Germany's Luftwaffe Messershmitt attack fighters, but "Mustang", a powerful long-range fighter, enabled Allied pilots to fly missions from England to Germany, where they dropped their bombs, and back to the UK, with fighter protection).

Pond started building model planes at the age of 10, and when his father let him take a plane ride during a trip to Chicago, that 10-year old kid became hooked on aviation. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1948 and soon bought his first airplane --- a Cessna 180.

He had joined the Navy in 1942, and during WWII, Pond become a Navy pilot, eventually flying PBM Martin Mariner twin-engine flying boats, and the Navy version of the B-24 Liberator, which was a four-engine craft called PB4Y Privateer, and the Navy's version of the B-26, the JM1 Marauder. Pond enjoyed regaling some of the museum visitors (over 100,000 annually), especially former US aviators, that in his last flying assignment his plane was painted a bright, bright yellow. Then Pond tells the punchline, which is true but still very funny and catches many veterans by surprise: "My plane's mission was towing targets for the ground troops who were learning to shoot planes down."

Pond was born in Edina, Minnesota. His father, Harold, owned a small, start-up business called Advance Machine Company, in Spring Park, MN. The company specialized in large-scale installations of terrazzo tiles, such as in shopping centers, hospitals, and all manner of large, sometimes very large, office and government buildings. When Pond returned from the War, he went to work for the family company as its #8 employee (the day before Pond joined the company, Advance Machine Company had 7 employees). Pond soon designed a machine for installing terrazzo tiles faster, safer and easier. Advance Machine customers next began asking for a better way to clean these large installations. Bob Pond got to work on those requests, and created new and improved versions of these highly-specialized machines.

Bob Pond sold the company in the early 1990s for close to (a rumored) $500-million. And the small, family-owned company Pond joined as its 8th employee, at the time of its sale, boasted more than 800 workers at its Minnesota factory alone. Today, Advance has over 3,000 employees, factories ranging from its US plant to facilities in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Singapore and China. Clearly, when Bob Pond sold this closely-held family company some 15 years ago, it was in good health and ready to grow more, the right time for the new owners to expand its manufacturing facilities.

(Photo Below --- Drive leading to the Palm Springs Aviation Museum; visitors are often taken aback by the size of the facility, more than 67,000 square feet total).

The museum facility consists of two large buildings,which are actually two aircraft hangars; there's also a large gift shop and a theater inside. The facility is just a few feet from the runway of Palm Springs International Airport. It has over 67,000 square feet of floor space, and since its opening, it has become one of the region's most prominent tourist attractions, and one of the Coachella Valley's busiest locations for special events, charity functions and big-band concerts. Over 3,000 people can be accommodated for almost any type of private or civic event.

We've had the distinct pleasure of not only seeing the museum's B-17, but we've also been allowed to crawl around inside it, and have seen it in action, too, flying in and out of Palm Springs International Airport, sometimes making 'touch and go' passes.

Something which for me is unforgettable is seeing, hearing, feeling and even smelling this huge Boeing bomber as this monster-sized plane quickly is brought to life. One by one, each of the four massive engines burble, smoke, spit, roar and right at the point where you're certain something 'big' is about to happen, and it's not necessarily a good thing, all four of the engines are now running with a smooth regularity, the entire operation taking less than 2 minutes. (Photo Below --- Boeing's B-17 "Flying Fortress", one of the museum's restored, flight-ready warplanes, and forerunner of a soon-to-come new generation of large and powerful American-designed and -built four-engine bombers; the first B-17s were delivered in 1935, but when WWII began with Germany's September 1, 1939 invasion of Poland, Lockheed and Douglas both joined Boeing in B-17 production, all these companies improving the plane over time, and ultimately over 12,000 B-17 bombers were delivered before the War's end. Only a handful remain in one piece, much less restored and pampered in its "middle age", like this one, with the ability to fly).

Before opening the local museum, Pond had established the Planes of Fame East Air Museum at Flying Cloud Field in Eden Prairie, Minn. It closed in 1997 as the collection was moved to Palm Springs.

The museum facility consists of two large buildings,which are actually two aircraft hangars; there's also a large gift shop and a theater inside. The facility is just a few feet from the runway of Palm Springs International Airport. It has over 67,000 square feet of floor space, and since its opening, it has become one of the region's most prominent tourist attractions, and one of the Coachella Valley's busiest locations for special events, charity functions and big-band concerts. Over 3,000 people can be accommodated for almost any type of private or civic event. He bought more aircraft over the years, including 14 World War II Warbird fighter jets that are on display at the air museum.

(Photo Below --- WWI flying "ace" and one of America's first "media superstars", Eddie Rickenbacker was a self-taught engineering genius who started a Detroit-based company which made about 11,000 cars betweeen 1922 and 1927. The company went under in 2938, and all its machinery and tooling were bouht by Audi and shipped to Germany, shortly before Hitler's rise to power. These cars had the industry's first four-wheel braking system and other technologically-advanced items, and was rather pricey for its time).

On any given day at the museum, a visitor will find approximately 30 aircraft on display, about two dozen of them Pond's own. There are also 30 - 40 cars on display, all +frenafrom Pond's private collection of near 120 vehicles. Every plane, car, truck and motorcycle on display is either in running condition or can be put there with only a little time and effort. During the year, there are many special occasions held which involve flights by many of the museum's aircraft, and planes are also flying in and out of the museum on fairly regular schedule, either from other museums or even other private owners. The museum's website can be found at: http://www.air-museum.org/.

Pond and his wife of 32 years, Jo Rose, moved to Palm Springs in 1989. Together, they supported many institutions in their new Southern California hometown, including the College of the Desert and Desert Regional Medical Center.

One of the biggest highlights of the museum, both literally and figuratively, are original murals personally commissioned by Bob Pond, depicting various aspects of the "lives" of military aircraft, designed, painted and completed by Stan Stokes, known worldwide for his photo-realistic aviation artwork. His two permanent murals at the Palm Springs Air Museum include: "Dauntless at Midway", 12 ft. by 34 ft., and, "Corsair on Approach", 19 ft. by 55 ft. (Photo Below --- Stan Stokes in front of his work, "History of the Flying White House", commissioned by and a part of the permanent collection at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, CA).

Stokes' work is also displayed at the Presidential Libraries of George H.W. Bush (two paintings on permanent display) and Gerald R. Ford (painting of the 'carrier of the future', "USS Gerald R. Ford"). In 1975, Stokes won first place in the Benedictine Art Awards, and in 1984 won first place in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's "Golden Age of Flight" art competition. In May, 2000 Stan was honored with the "R.G. Smith Award for Excellence in Naval Aviation Art" by the Pensacola Naval Air Museum. Stan's most-recent book is the just published Flying Aces. More of Stokes' impressive, incredibly-detailed works can be seen at his website, www.stanstokes.net, from which he can also be contacted.