He wouldn't take his butcher stepfather's beatings any longer, so Robert Dawson left home at 15 to live in one of the Bowles Air Service's hangars in Live Oak, Calif., located in the northern part of the state.

Dawson, who now lives in Henderson with his wife, Nancy, was born on the Oneida Indian Reservation in Vernon, N.Y. The lifelong aviator says he learned most of what he knows about flying during the years he lived in the Bowles hangar. In fact, the year he moved in, 1949, he earned his pilot's license and bought his first airplane -- a Piper Cub J2. He said it was a slow but maneuverable aircraft. "It could land on a tennis court, but took an hour to get up to 1,000 feet," he said.