Insight

,

Remember
When • • •

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nYing High

From the pages of the Jewish News for
this week 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50
years ago.

Handlemans host reception benefiting new
National Air and Space Museum center.

ALAN ABRAMS
Special to the Jewish News

1991

An American bodybuilding maga-
zine named Israel's prime Minister
Yitzhak Shamir man of the year.
Plans to open a supermarket
near the site of the Ravensbruck
concentration camp in Germany
have been scrapped.

4,10, 01?'

T

op brass of the Smithsonian
Institution's National Air
and Space Museum flew
into Oakland County last
month to announce plans for the muse-
um's new Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.
The site they chose for the July 25
event was the Oxford Township "Sky
Ranch" of author Philip Handleman
and his wife Mary. The Sky Ranch
long has been a mecca for the high
number of aviation enthusiasts in the
area and is home to one of the world's
leading private aviation art and litera-
ture collections.
Handleman, of Birmingham, is the
author of 15 published books and an
Emmy-winning documentary produc-
er, as well as a pilot and a photogra-
pher whose work appears on a U.S.
postage stamp honoring the Air Force.
The Handlemans hosted a private
reception and dinner for museum
director retired Marine Corps Gen.
John R. Dailey and deputy director
retired Air Force Lt. Col. Donald S.
Lopez. Among the 60 guests were
Dollie Cole, a Smithsonian trustee and
widow of former General Motors
President Ed Cole, and members of
the legendary Tuskegee Airmen.
"Special occasions like the
Handleman party give us the chance
to share information about the muse-
um's exciting plans for expansion,"
Gen. Dailey said from Washington
this week.
The event, which also served as a
fund-raiser, featured a landing by a
1941 Vultee SNV-1 piloted by Bruce
Koch of Flint as well as fly-overs and
landings by other aircraft. The ranch
has two grass runways.
The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center,
named for the project's major donor,
will be located at the Washington
Dulles International Airport in north-
ern Virginia.
When it opens in December 2003
to coincide with the 100th anniversary
of the Wright Brothers' flight at Kitty

1981

The Italian Olivetti Co. won the
bid to install computer terminals in
Bank Leumi's 330 Israeli branches.
Detroiter Irene Alpiner was
named administrative assistant to
Rabbi Norman Kahn, executive
vice president of Yeshiva Beth
Yehudah in Southfield.
Shlomo Glickstein, Israel's top
ranked tennis player, won the
Mutual Benefit Life Open in New
Jersey.

1971

Ret. Marine Corps Gen. John Dailey, a Vietnam War combat pilot; Dollie Cole, vice
chair of the museum's board of trustees; Philip Handleman and his wife Mary; Ret. Air
Force Lt. Col. Donald Lopez, a World War II fighter pilot. The open-cockpit biplane
is a recently restored WW II vintage Boeing-Stearman PT-17 primary trainer, one of
several antique aircraft that flew into the Handleman Sky Ranch for the occasion.

Hawk, N.C., the 760,000-square-foot
facility will be home to more than 180
aircraft and 100 spacecraft currently in
storage.
Handleman, 50, is president and
chief executive officer of the
Birmingham-based media firm,
Handleman Filmworks.
As a filmmaker, his Remembering the
Holocaust was shown on PBS and
earned him a Michigan Emmy.
Another production, Our Missing in
Action, dealt with American MIAs.
His interest in aviation stems from
his parents. His mother, Sonia
Kriegmont, grew up near the
Cleveland Municipal Airport. She told
her son about seeing legendary aviators
at the National Air Races during the
1930s. His father, Paul Handleman,
had served in the Army Air Corps and
regaled his son with tales.
When Handleman turned 12, he
had his first airplane ride in a Piper

Cub and was hooked. He now owns a
restored 1943 Boeing-Stearman N2S-3
open cockpit training plane used by
the Navy and a 1964 Cessna 180H.
Handleman's books also have avia-
tion themes. They include "Mid-East
Aces: the Israeli Air Force of Today"
(1991) and the just-published "Air
Racing Today," which focuses upon
the National Championship Air Races
in Reno, Nev.
A photograph by Handleman
appears on the 1997 stamp issued to
honor the United States Department
of the Air Force. The image shows the
U.S. Thunderbirds flying the F-16
Flying Falcon. Handleman said he has
hosted pilots of the Thunderbirds at
the Sky Ranch.
He also served with the Israeli
Defense Forces as a volunteer during
the Yom Kippur War in 1973. And he
is currently president of the Friends of
the Detroit Public Library. ❑

Twenty Jews were arrested in Kiev
and Wilna when they tried to com-
memorated Tisha b'Av by visiting
Jewish mass graves.
Israel registered a formal protest
against the opening of an Al Fatah
Information Bureau in Geneva.

Israel Technion at Haifa established
a special Russian-language course
for post-graduate students.
Former Detroiter Dr. Joseph H.
Levin was named director of
Minneapolis-Honeywell's
Programming Systems Division.
Anne X. Alpern became the first
woman appointee to the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

1951

Syria banned import of all
American Kaiser-Frazer cars as part
of the blockade against Israel.
Detroit's Yetz-Cohen Post of the
Jewish War Veterans sponsored a
mobile TB unit for free chest X-rays.
Children of Detroit's United
Hebrew School presented a play in
Hebrew honoring the late Fred Butzel.

— Compiled by Sy Manello,
editorial assistant