I first met Jake in 1953. That would have made me twelve years old, but I still remember meeting Jake and the circumstances under which we met. My Uncle Dan owned the airport just east of Harrington. This airport was my flying site for t 1 to 1 scale and models. My Uncle Dan (more like my brother) and I were going to the airport to fly models and upon entering the airport lane, there stood in the field a rather portly black man with a large black box at his feet with a fifteen foot antenna coming out of it. This was something to investigate. And when we stopped and parked the car, got out and hard a model engine running above the airport. We assumed this plane was a fly away but could not figure out who launched. We watched this plane flying above the airport and could not figure out how it was staying upwind and near the area (remember free flight or fly away was all we knew except for control line). Then this plane came down on the airport near this black man and he walked over and picked it up. Well, that was enough because in 1953 black people did not fly models (wrong!). Jake did.

We walked up to this man and introduced ourselves and he did likewise. Of course the topic of conversation was his plane. How did you keep it upwind! How did you keep it on the airport property! How did you get it to land so close to you! I can't say radio control was not heard of but it was mostly experimental. Jake showed us his model and the radio equipment. All of this was built by Jake. Jake flew the model again and taught us how to fly this new type of control. More explanation is in order. It was easy to learn to fly early RC - all you had to do was push buttons - push once for a right turn - push twice for a left turn - that's it. We were expert RC fliers. After we had become expert at RC, Jake let us fly his plane till dark. Something else you younger flyers need to know, we had two types of RC planes in '53 - RIFF (Radio Interfered with Free Flight) and RAFT (Radio Activated Free Flight) - and we flew them both and Jake taught us. We flew with Jake for many years of RC advancement and Jake loved every new thing that came along. He was like a child in a candy store. Jake never tried of talking about, learning about or teaching about radio control. If he learned something he made sure you knew it. I could never say Jake was one of the best RC pilots but I would say Jake was one of the best men I ever knew.

Lee Messick - April 2005