Robin Olds, 1922-2007

[Fud]

This is awesome!!!!!

Read the article, and we also need a link on how to donate.

http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2009/06/...in_olds_060509/

I had not seen it mentioned here that the donations were to save his memorabilia, but this removes all doubts from my mind.

[Steve Davies]

Read the article, and we also need a link on how to donate.

I asked Christina today for permission to share the PayPal address.

Donations to the RRVA are also welcome, but bear in mind that they are actually buying parts of the Gen Robin Olds Memorabilia collection, so your donation to them is strictly speaking not a direct act of charity towards the Olds Estate. I don't think that Christina cares either way, but it is important that those making donations realise the difference.

[Fud]

I don't think any of us would mind helping buy some of Robin Olds' gear, because it needs to be in a museum.

[Guest Fuse]

http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2009/06/...in_olds_060509/

Ace’s collection spared auction block

Brig. Gen. Robin Olds made his name by shooting down enemy aircraft and conventional wisdom alike.Yet when the legendary fighter ace died at age 84 on June 14, 2007, it turned out there was one foe he hadn’t outmaneuvered — debt. Olds owed more than $70,000 in taxes and credit card bills despite getting paid for his public speaking engagements and appearances at aviation-related events.

Christina Olds thinks her father might not have had creditors knocking at his door if he had hired an accountant to handle his finances, but he was too independent to ask for help.

A week before he died, Olds told his daughter about his money problems.

“He said, ‘Honey, I’m sorry. I’ve left you a hell of a mess,’ ” Christina Olds recalled.

All that Olds left behind was a small life insurance policy and an enormous collection of memorabilia and documents related to his 33-year military career, which included 16 aerial kills during World War II and Vietnam and well-known disputes with Air Force leaders about the relative importance of tactical versus strategic air power.

In an appreciation titled “The Robin Olds Factor,” historian and retired Col. Walter J. Boyne described Olds as “big, tough, smart, and swaggering, not to mention brave and highly skilled.”

“He was a truly dynamic force, one who had a positive impact on the Air Force for more than 60 years,” Boyne wrote in the piece, published a year after Olds’ death in the online journal of the Air Force Association.

Olds’ collection includes more than 1,000 objects — plaques, signed books, uniforms, artwork, medals and thousands of photographs and documents, including battle maps, diaries, flight logs and citation paperwork. It fills about 800 cubic feet, to Christina Olds’ best estimation.

Christina Olds spent more than a year sorting through the collection and compiling her father’s memoirs, which he had written in pieces during his later years. The book, finished with the help of fighter pilot and aviation author Ed Rasimus, will be published next spring.

Olds wanted his documents donated to the Air Force Academy and Air University and his memorabilia given to aviation museums. But his creditors demanded that all the items be sold.

In March, Christina Olds began the heartbreaking process of putting her father’s collection up for sale through an online auction house. Just one of the objects — a lithograph signed by aviation legends including Olds, Curtis LeMay, Chuck Yeager, Neil Armstrong and Jimmy Doolittle — fetched more than $3,000.

Two months later, she sent an e-mail to about 300 of her father’s friends and associates, inviting them to bid on the items.

Immediately, phone calls, e-mails and letters started pouring in from Air Force veterans, historians and aviation buffs who wanted to help save the collection. Christina Olds received about 800 e-mails in the first two weeks after announcing the sale.

“The outcry from people who just were really upset that Robin’s stuff was going to go to the public rather than to museums just started this wave of support,” she said.

Along with some of the letters came checks.

Christina Olds turned to the Red River Valley Fighter Pilots Association, a group that her father played a role in founding, for help with the money. The “River Rats” are now on track to raise enough money to pay Olds’ debts and have enough left over to start a Robin Olds Foundation, which will provide scholarships and aid for wounded veterans.

In turn for their help, Christina will donate the collection to museums and archives in the River Rats’ name. Among the museums that probably will receive items are the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio; the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington; the Museum of Flight in Seattle and the Imperial War Museum in London.

Christina Olds is sure her father would have been touched by the tremendous show of support. He often felt underappreciated because of his controversial reputation, she said, and he had been surprised by the outpouring of well wishes when his battle with cancer became public knowledge.

“It was really amazing for him to realize how beloved he was,” Christina Olds said. “It was a deliverance of sorts. He started to realize that he had made an impact. When he passed away it was with that knowledge.

“I think he would be 100 times more overwhelmed by what’s happening now.”

[M2]

Update

From the Bentwaters list...

From: Christina Olds [mailto:<removed>]

Sent: Saturday, August 01, 2009 4:35 PM

To: undisclosed-recipients:

Subject: August 1st Update on Estate of Robin Olds - IMPORTANT

To all,

Much has happened in the past few months surrounding the probate challenges with my dad’s estate. As most of you know, I’ve been ordered by the Routt County Probate Court to sell all of Robin’s military memorabilia (deemed his only assets) to pay probate debts to the IRS and two other creditors, plus the attorney fees. I’d like everyone to know that I have NOT brought any executrix fees into the probate line-up, although as personal representative I’m entitled to administrative fees. Despite hundreds hours spent over the past year, it makes no sense for me to be paid PR fees that legally come in line before the IRS and the other creditors, when stepping out of the line-up brings the end of probate closer to being paid.

While sad at first about having to sell the collection, I soon realized this was an opportunity to get my father’s enormous collection of memorabilia (he kept EVERYTHING) into museums, out to pilots, aviation enthusiasts, Robin’s admirers and serious collectors of important memorabilia, where it all belongs.

The River Rats (Red River Valley Association, founded back in ‘Nam by Scrappy Johnson, Robin Olds and Larry Pickett) leapt into action like knights in shining armor and quickly formed the “Robin Olds Fund” within the RRVA 501©3 to collect tax-deductible donations to purchase the important memorabilia for donation to museums.

Two, independent appraisers with 30 years each of militaria collectibles experience traveled to Colorado in mid-June and spent three days with me in the storage area. Talk about kids in a candy shop! They were stunned at the extent of the collection and carefully examined each piece, assigning a range of value from low to high if sold in the collector’s market. We noted several dozen items as ‘museum-worthy’ and those have been set aside for later dispensation to museums. This includes the collection of Robin’s papers and military documents he intended to go to the Air Force Academy, which I will donate to USAFA in the name of the River Rats as thanks to their outstanding organization.

My heartfelt admiration and gratitude goes to the RRVA! Donations have rolled in by mail and online from around the globe and we are now working on a fantastic display of Robin’s important memorabilia next to his F-4 SCAT XXVII at the National Air Force Museum in Dayton. This is tremendously exciting and my sister and my daughter are thrilled at the thought of Robin’s personal items going home to rest beside his beloved Phantom.

The RRVA donation drive will end August 15th, so I encourage any of you who have not already done so to contribute to the RRVA fund by mail or online. Your tax-deductible donation will help get more of the museum-worthy items into the AF Museum display so the pieces don’t have to be sold at public auction. Please make any checks out to RRVA and put “Robin Olds Fund” or ROF on the memo line. Mail to:

RRVA

PO Box 1553

Front Royal, VA 22630-0033

Donations can also be made by credit card on-line at The River Rats website - http://river-rats.org, by clicking on the "Give Direct" logo and specifying "Robin Olds Fund" in the comments box.

POC John "Shadow" Hope at National HQ (540) 636-9798 or (866) 401-RATS (7287)

***********************************************************************

ALSO COMMENCING RIGHT NOW!! is the auction of Robin’s ‘lesser’ (non museum-worthy) memorabilia through Manion’s International Auction House at www.manons.com . Manion’s has been terrific to work with and I don’t think I could have found a better group of people or a more professional organization to handle this auction. There will be three separate auctions over the next three months, with deadlines of the last Sunday in each month, August 23, September 27 and October 25.

Collectors from around the world are going to jump into the fray on this Manion’s auction and it’s my first desire that pilots and fans of Robin’s be able to have a piece of his personal memorabilia. If it weren’t for the probate debts, I’d be giving all of these things away over the next many years, but this is what has to be done now.

Please know that Manion’s is NOT like EBay. It’s very important to read the Bidder instructions carefully. You must register to bid with a credit card but Manion’s does not share information with anyone for any reason and all transactions are absolutely confidential. If you are interested in owning a piece of Robin Olds history, please go to www.manions.com and register. You’ll see the first grouping of Robin’s items right on the home page. New items will appear in an ongoing basis through October. Stay tuned!

ALSO – currently there are four autographed items listed on www.RRauction.com , with a deadline date of midnight, August 12th.

Under the military section at left in www.rrauction.com you'll find item #361, Joe Foss book, signed on the first free page in pencil and ink by Shorty Rankin, inscribing the book to Robin Olds, and signed by Joe Foss, Bob Galer, Jim Swett, Ken Walsh, and Gunther Rall. Under the Space and Aviation Section there are three items: #403, #448 and #449 which are all stunning Gathering of Eagles lithographs accompanied by the commemorative book and 2 side lithograph panels signed by groups of top aviators (including Robin). These are from Robin’s personal Gathering of Eagles collection.

There’s a good chance that the value of all of these pieces of my dad’s memorabilia will increase after the debut of “Fighter Pilot; Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds”. Ed Rasimus and I spent a long and challenging 16 months pulling together Robin’s memoirs and researching the history behind each segment of his military service. We’re excited to have this book published by St. Martin’s Press/MacMillan near Memorial Day weekend, 2010. Can the movie be far behind?

Please send this out through your email chain. As usual, many people will receive this two, three or even ten times. Sorry about that! Several people outside the U.S. have requested the ability to contribute through PayPal. Anyone interested in this method can log onto www.paypal.com and send funds through robinoldsestate@gmail.com .

My thanks to all of you for bearing with me through this endeavor. The handling of my dad’s estate has been overwhelming, to say the least, but it has also been heartwarming and profoundly moving to see how much he was loved by people from around the world. When all is said and done, Robin’s memorabilia will end up exactly where it is all meant to be, and his legacy will rest in peace in its place in history.

Best regards and thanks to all,

Christina

[MKopack]

Just ahead of the release of "Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds" is this review from today's Wall Street Journal, by Dan Ford. The book, written by Robin, his daughter Christina, and former F-105 pilot - and noted military aviation author - Ed Rasimus, will be available nationwide tomorrow.

A Man On a Mission

A combat pilot remembers Vietnam—the MiGs, the flak, the high jinks and the target limitations.

By DANIEL FORD

We're familiar with photographs of triumphant GI's in World War II, manning a hard-won position in the Solomon Islands or entering a newly liberated French town. From the Vietnam War such photos are few and far between—but they do exist. The dust-jacket of "Fighter Pilot" shows Col. Robin Olds on an airfield in Thailand as he returns from his 100th mission of the war, the one that ends his combat career. (In truth, he had flown 152 missions, but he low-balled the count rather than be grounded before his year-long tour was over.) He is being carried jubilantly to the officers' club on the shoulders of the men who have followed him into battle. He is 45 years old and impossibly handsome, with jutting jaw, half smile, handlebar mustache, crow's feet at the eyes and of course a cigarette between his lips. It's 1967, and the man is a fighter pilot.

When Robin Olds flew his first mission, in World War II, a fighter pilot needed to be young enough to withstand high levels of G-force. It is not unusual in combat for a pilot to be jammed into his seat by six G's—six times the force of gravity—so that he suddenly weighs half a ton. The blood rushes out of his skull and his vision may dim to gray, then black. By the time of the Vietnam War a G-suit, with its inflatable bladders, could substitute for the suppleness of young muscles, and electronics went far to make up for reflexes that were no longer youthful and fast.

So the modern U.S. Air Force is routinely able to put majors and colonels in the cockpit—but it is so dominant at the moment that in the 21st century no American pilot has shot down an enemy aircraft. Who in his right mind would challenge the U.S. in the air? This turn of events makes Robin Olds—107 combat missions as a youngster, 152 missions as a full colonel and 16 aerial victories—one of a kind. His career couldn't have happened in the old days, when middle-age men didn't fly combat missions, and it is unlikely to happen again. The whole fighter-pilot ethos, from the cigarette to the mustache, from the rule-breaking to the red stars on the fuselage (each denoting, in Vietnam, a MiG fighter shot down), is a relict of the past.

In "Fighter Pilot," Robin Olds tells the story in his own words, more or less. He died in 2007, leaving what his daughter Christina calls "multiple boxes of diaries, military documents, films, letters, interviews, articles, and photographs," not to mention the notes that she took during their last hours together. Ms. Olds whipped this material into a first-person tale with the help of Ed Rasimus, himself a veteran of the Vietnam War and the author of "When Thunder Rolled" (2004), one of the best combat memoirs ever written.

There is no need to sanctify the fighter pilot. He isn't an easy man to be around: Robin Olds's marriage to actress Ella Raines (who died of cancer in 1988) was always rocky. They both drank too much, and by his own account he wasn't the most faithful of husbands. Such waywardness is fairly standard for the profession. The fighter pilot's job is to shoot planes out of the sky—with human beings inside them. Doing such work, at the risk of his own life, leaves him drenched with sweat and pumped with adrenaline, which he may exorcise with alcohol and high jinks on a scale that would leave a fraternity boy in awe.

Here is the colonel with his pet monkey, named for a certain 1960s activist: "I'd put Stokley down on the bar and that damned monkey would make one pass down the length, knocking over every glass in his path. Sometimes he'd stop to jam nuts into his mouth or stick his fist way down in a glass and fling beer in all directions. Then he'd jump on the back shelves and make one pass down behind the bottles, screeching the whole way. It was chaos: bottles breaking, guys yelling while protecting their drinks, Thai waitresses screaming, the bar manager shouting a stream of Thai curses, and me laughing. What was their problem?"

Funny, yes, but not what the U.S. Congress had in mind when it commissioned Lt. Robin Olds, in June 1943, as an "officer and gentleman." But then again, what gentleman, more than 20 years later, would willingly fly over and over into North Vietnam? "Missiles streaked past," he writes of one such mission, "flak blackened the sky, tracers laced patterns across my canopy, and then, capping the day, MiGs would suddenly appear—small, sleek sharks, cutting and slashing, braving their own flak, firing missiles, guns." A nearby U.S. plane disappears in an explosion, caught by a surface-to-air missile, "only small pieces of flaming debris marking the end of two young lives, but on we'd go, 20 miles yet to the target." He didn't have to go, remember. Few colonels did.

Col. Olds makes a point of lamenting the target limitations imposed by Washington. "Haiphong Harbor near Hanoi was the worst insult of all," he writes. "We should have closed it down . . . but we couldn't touch it. Ships came in and went, bringing in supplies, MiGs, trucks, ammunition, food, cement to fix the blown bridges, you name it. The Vietcong troops received their stuff within days—and we were letting it happen!"

In the dust-jacket photo, what can't readily be seen is that the colonel is weeping: "I couldn't stop the tears running down my face." His sorrow comes from the knowledge that he'll no longer be allowed to lead young men to war. With 100 official missions behind him, he will become a brigadier general and a commander of the Air Force Academy, never again to fly an airplane in combat. His memoir is one man's account of war and, in its way, a tribute to a vanished breed of men.

Mr. Ford is the author of, among other books, "Remains: A Story of the Flying Tigers," about young fighter pilots in World War II.

Salute Robin, and thank you to Christina and Ed for helping us to remember this true American leader. This true American Hero.

Mike

Edited April 12, 2010 by MKopack

[murdocjxx]

Still one of the best books i've ever read.