A Cradle with links to history

Joye Brown

March 23, 2006

Kathy Wojcieszak left her long white scarf at the Cradle of Aviation museum in Mitchel Field almost three years ago. It was still there yesterday, streaming behind a pilot in a plane hanging from the lobby's ceiling.

John Berryman left something, too. It's a grappling hook that doubles quite nicely as an anchor hanging from the museum's hot air balloon exhibit.

Did you know that two of the four aircraft hanging from the museum cafeteria's ceiling are creations of fancy? (Look closely: One has snow skis for landing gear and ski poles jetting from its wings. The other, which would fit into any "Star Trek" episode, is supposed to belong to a woman who makes her living as a mechanic in space.)

The museum is filled with enough of these and other fascinating things to fuel multiple visits. But they're easy to miss, unless you know whom to ask.

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The Cradle of Aviation is like Sudoku. The exhibits (like the numbers one through nine in the aforementioned puzzle) usually don't change. But put Wojcieszak, Berryman - or any of the museum's unusually talented pool of volunteers - in the right spot, and the place becomes a wonder.

The museum has a legion of retired mechanics, engineers and pilots who actually built, designed and flew the types of aircraft on display. That's a combination most museums would envy. Too bad most visitors - incidentally, the museum should be getting more of those from Long Island, too - waltz by without stopping to ask questions or hear stories.

Volunteers wear badges. But they ought to be wearing ones that say:

"I Built the Lunar Module. Yeah, The One on the Moon."

Or: "I Restored This Plane, And That Includes Rebuilding Seven Feet of This Monster From Scratch."

Or even: "I Rediscovered and Rebuilt This Kids' Helicopter Toy ... And I Played With It as a Kid Myself When It Was at LaGuardia in 1955 and 1956."

These guys (and Wojcieszak is an exception only because she lovingly followed her father's footsteps in becoming a restorer) take pride in knowing it all.

"Was Lindbergh ever in this plane?" one visitor asked a restorer, Mike, who would give his last name only as D., as they stood near a replica of "The Spirit of St. Louis." (Restorers, who build, sand, rivet and otherwise prepare aircraft for display, usually don't deal with visitors.)

"Yes," came Mike D.'s swift reply. "He and Jimmy Stewart went in it when the movie was filmed."

A little while later, however, it was Berryman, at 88, the museum's oldest volunteer, who was asking questions.

"Do you know where Mitchel Field got its name?"

"Uhh, no," was a visitor's honest, if sheepish, response.

Berryman, whose tag notes that he's logged 7,000 hours as a museum volunteer, then launched into an eyebrow-raising tale about a young New York City mayor, John Purroy Mitchel, and the fateful day he fell out of his plane after drinking cognac to counter the effects of the castor oil he carried in his fuel tank.

Berryman also, with unbridled glee, told how the Cradle managed to snare a Thomas Moore Scout plane that was supposed to go to the Smithsonian's famed Air & Space Museum.

"The owner gave it to them on one condition," Berryman said. "He wanted to fly it from Republic to Washington. We got it because they wouldn't give him permission to make the flight."

"Why not?" his visitor asked.

"Because of his age," Berryman replied.

"How old was he?"

"Somewhere between 80 and 90," Berryman said, dryly, noting that the man, another Cradle volunteer, died at 101.

You can't find stuff like that on a museum wall.

You can reach Joye Brown at joye.brown@newsday.com