A fascination with flight
Michael Ciminera holds a model of the F-14 Tomcat, an aircraft he helped design. Photos courtesy of Michael Ciminera Lots of children are interested in aircraft, though most dream of flying them rather than designing them. A boy in Long Island named Michael Ciminera was one of the few who was obsessed with the engineering details, even as a teenager, and he still sounds surprised that two major aircraft companies took him seriously. “At 12, I had a fascination with airplanes, and I started designing them, sketching my ideas, and building models. As I got older, I sent the designs to both Grumman in New York and to Douglas Aircraft in California. They actually marked them up in red, and said, ‘This is not right, that’s not right, you should do this, you should do that.’ I didn’t know much, didn’t completely understand aerodynamics. But you know, you go to the library, find the books and just follow your interests.” Following his interests led to a career in aerospace, a move to California, and more recently a new calling as an author and as president of the Western Museum of Flight in Torrance. First, though, he had to do something almost all students wrestle with – working while…
Read this story on easyreadernews.com