HOUSTON — Officials at The Lone Star Flight Museum (LSFM) have revealed the Class of 2019 who will be inducted into the Texas Aviation Hall of Fame: Christopher C. Kraft, H. Ross Perot, Jr., Dr. Peggy Whitson, and General Ira C. Eaker, U.S. Army Air Force/U.S. Air Force (deceased).
This group will be officially inducted April 12, 2019, at the museum, which is located at Houston’s Ellington Airport.
The Texas Aviation Hall of Fame was established in 1995 to honor Texans and Texas companies or organizations that have made significant and lasting contributions to the advancement of aviation. There are 76 individuals and groups in the Texas Aviation Hall of Fame, including trailblazers and explorers such as Bessie Coleman and Wiley Post; leaders such as Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush; World War II aviators Tex Hill, the Doolittle Raiders, Tuskegee Airmen, and Women Airforce Service Pilots; astronauts Alan Bean, John Young, and Gene Cernan; and entrepreneurs Howard Hughes, Gordon Bethune, and Herb Kelleher.
To be selected as a member of the Texas Aviation Hall of Fame, the individual or group must have a significant connection to Texas and have left an indelible mark on the history of aviation or be an aviator who made an extraordinary contribution to the world in another field.
2019 Texas Hall of Fame Inductees
Christopher C. Kraft
An aerospace engineer who graduated from Virginia Tech, Christopher Kraft was hired by the National Advisory
Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in 1944. He performed aerospace research for 14 years before being asked to join the Space Task Group, a group within the newly formed NASA that managed the program to put a man in space and later, on the Moon.
As part of the Flight Operations division, Kraft became NASA’s first flight director, overseeing flights in the Mercury and Gemini series of space missions. His efforts were responsible for shaping the culture and organization of NASA’s Mission Control, which remains in place to this day.
During the Apollo program he worked on mission management and planning before becoming the Director of the Manned Spaceflight Center (now Johnson Space Center) in 1972. He retired from NASA in 1982 but continued working as a consultant to many major aerospace companies. In 2011, the Mission Control Building at JSC was named in his honor.
H. Ross Perot, Jr.
A native of Dallas, Texas, H. Ross Perot, Jr. graduated from Vanderbilt University and shortly thereafter co-piloted the first around-the-world helicopter flight in 1982, at the age of 23.
Using a Bell 206L-1 Long Ranger II named the “Spirit of Texas,” he and fellow pilot Jay Coburn took off from Fort Worth and flew around the world in 29 days, 3 hours, and 8 minutes. Perot next spent over eight years as a fighter pilot with the U.S. Air Force.
As a real estate developer and chairman of the Perot Group, he was responsible for the development of the Fort Worth Alliance Airport among his many projects.
From 2002 to 2003, he chaired the Texas Governor’s Task Force for Economic Growth and has gone on to serve on many corporate and non-profit boards.
He was also the chairman of the US Air Force Memorial Foundation, which built the Air Force Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Perot is a recipient of the Smithsonian’s Samuel P. Langley Medal for Aeronautics for outstanding contributions to the sciences of aeronautics and astronautics, and his record-setting helicopter now is on display at the National Air & Space Museum.
Dr. Peggy A. Whitson
A native of Iowa, Dr. Peggy Whitson received her Doctorate in Biochemistry from Rice University before becoming a National Research Council Resident Research Associate at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. She next supervised the Biochemistry Research Group of a NASA contractor before becoming adjunct professor of Internal Medicine and Human Biological Chemistry and Genetics at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston.
Beginning in 1989 she worked on several biological and medical projects for NASA and was selected as an astronaut in 1996.
Chosen for the crew of Expedition 5, she spent six months aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in 2002 and became the first woman to perform a spacewalk from the ISS. Whitson returned to the ISS for another six months as Commander of Expedition 16 in 2007/2008, and then again for 289 days as Commander of Expedition 51 in 2017.
She has more total time in space than any other American astronaut and holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman and the most spacewalks by a woman. She retired from NASA in June 2018.
General Ira C. Eaker (1896-1987)
Born in Field Creek, Texas, Ira Eaker served as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army infantry before he was selected for flight training at Kelly Field. After three years of flying in the Philippines, he returned to the US to command the Fifth Aero Squadron at Mitchell Field.
In 1926 he was selected as a pilot on the Army’s Pan American Goodwill Flight, which took five Loening amphibian biplanes on a tour through Central and South America. Three years later, Eaker was a pilot on the “Question Mark,” an Army C-2 tri-motor that set a record by staying aloft for six days using aerial refueling.
During World War II, Eaker was sent to England to organize and later command the Eighth Air Force in the strategic bombing of Nazi Germany. He became Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces in 1944, then Deputy Commander of the Army Air Forces and Chief of the Air Staff before his retirement in 1947.
Upon entering civilian life, he served as a vice president at Hughes Aircraft for 10 years and subsequently a vice president at Douglas Aircraft for five years.
Eaker co-authored three books on airpower and beginning in 1962, was a national security columnist for 35 different newspapers. He was presented the Congressional Gold Medal in 1978.