The Aero Club of New England (ACONE) will present the Godfrey L. Cabot Award to Richard VanGrunsven, Founder and CEO of Van’s Aircraft, on Friday, June 6, at the Harvard Club in Boston.
The Godfrey L. Cabot Award will be presented to VanGrunsven for his unique achievement in aviation changing homebuilding into a significant segment of general aviation. The RV series aircraft which he developed are an extremely successful line of experimental, kit built aircraft in general aviation. More than 8,500 RV aircraft have been built and flown.
A native Oregonian, VanGrunsven continues to lead the company he founded. He commutes from his home on a small residential airpark, to his desk in the engineering office of his company, usually in an RV aircraft.
On June 6, he will join a list of aviation legends, including Igor Sikorsky, Jimmy Doolittle, Chuck Yeager, Burt Rutan and Paul Poberezny, when he receives the 2014 Godfrey L. Cabot Award.
The Cabot Award, made in commemoration of Dr. Godfrey L. Cabot, now deceased, is presented each year by ACONE to an individual or team who have made a unique and unparalleled contribution to encourage and advance aviation and space flight.
The Aero Club of New England (ACONE), the oldest aero club in the Americas, was formally chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on Dec. 9, 1907. But aviation annals reveal that the organization predates that historic occasion by five years, when it was organized on Jan. 2, 1902, nearly two full years before the Wright brothers made their landmark flight of Dec. 17, 1903 at Kill Devil Hill, North Carolina.
For more information: ACONE.org