Statues proposed to honor aviation pioneers
Troy projectwill be on site adjacent to original Waco airfield.
The project would honor 3 Troy aviation pioneers with 8statues to be placed on property adjacent to theoriginalWaco airfield.
A proposed project will TROY — honor three Troy aviation pioneers with eight-foot statues to be placed on property adjacent to the originalWaco airfield north of the Great Miami River.
TheTroyAviationHeroes Statue Projectwould recognize Clayton Brukner, Robert N. Hartzell and Nancy Currie-Gregg with sculptures by Mike Major of Urbana.
BruknerandHartzell areinductees in the National Aviation Hall of Fame while Currie-Gregg is a Troy High School graduate and a NASA astronaut who flew on the space shuttle.
The statues would be placed on city park land immediately north of the senior citizens center andwest of North Market Street.
Robert Hartzell founded the Hartzell Walnut Propeller Company in 1917 and served as president until his passing in 1968.
Bruknerwas one of the founders of the company that became theWaco AircraftCompany. Waco was by the late 1920s the largest commercial builder of aircraft in the world.
Currie-Gregg still works with NASA in safety.
The presentation wasmade by local attorney BillMcGraw; Tom Hartzell, son of Robert Hartzell; and Steve Bruns of Bruns General Construction during a joint meeting of the city park and recreation boards on Tuesday, Oct. 3.
“We hope this will serve as an inspiration to others,” McGraw said.
The project is being privately funded by the Acorn Society of the Troy Foundation along with other foundations.