Not everyone gets the chance to fulfill their destiny, but Roger Freeman certainly did. His story, which is far from over, is filled with events that inevitably landed him in sleepy Kingsbury, Texas, a long way from his hometown of Torrance, California — about an hour away from the bright lights of Hollywood.
The owner of the Pioneer Flight Museum in Kingsbury, Freeman fell in love with the area surrounding Guadalupe County when he was a recent high school graduate working on the 1975 Robert Redford movie The Great Waldo Pepper, which was partially filmed in this part of Texas. Freeman, who soloed at age 16, was hired to help with the movie by legendary Hollywood stunt pilot, Frank Tallman, who was a friend of his father’s.
“I grew up around vintage aircraft my Dad restored as a hobby,” Freeman explains, which began his love affair with the history of flight. He began to fly at an early age and became a career airline pilot. The entire time, Freeman had the desire to collect and restore old planes. During a furlough from his pilot job, he accepted a contract offer to restore a pre-World War II plane for a museum, and that was the beginning of hisnew career.
“Instead of going back to the airlines, I bought a 75-acre farm which we call the Old Kingsbury Aerodrome, which houses the Pioneer Flight Museum and my business, Vintage Aviation Services. I already had some of my dad’s old planes and parts, and over the years, I’ve added a lot to that collection. In the meantime, I’ve hired several employees to work on restoration projects for other museums, and we stay busy,” he says.
Freeman’s Vintage Aviation Services restores old planes, which are housed across the country at other museums, including military flight museums.
Pioneer Flight Museum owner Roger Freeman and his partner alongside a classic airplane.
“When people think about old airplanes, they think about World War II-era aircraft. But the real history of flight began a lot earlier than that. And that’s the story I want to tell, that’s my passion,” he said.
Freeman’s “passion” is scattered throughout three hangars on the airport grounds — not only are there numerous vintage aircraft, but also World War I military trucks, cars, and motorcycles. From ground to ceiling in all the hangars are huge shelves filled with thousands of old parts and countless memorabilia dating back to the early 1900’s. Each piece has its own story, and Freeman can talk for hours as he guides you through each hangar.
With the help from his partner Charlotte Parker, the two have spent days and weeks organizing all the hangars. He even has an extensive personal library of photographs and books about vintage aircraft and World War I era documents. He is so consumed with the time period, he named the road to the Aerodrome ‘Pershing Lane,’ named after General John J. Pershing, the commander of the American Expeditionary Force on the Western Front in World War I.
The Pioneer Flight Museum hosts two Fly-in’s a year, attracting hundreds of pilots and history buffs.
To make the Pioneer Flight Museum better, Freeman acquired the frame of a historic World War I hangar — which was originally part of Dodd Army Airfield, which pre-dates Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. The 66 x 120-foot hangar will become the centerpiece of the museum, allowing for more formalized exhibits of all of Freeman’s collections. (The steel frame has already been erected, and Freeman is accepting donations to finish the construction project.)
“There has been a fair share of obstacles along the way as I have built up my business and collected all these things for the museum, but when you have a passion for something as strong as mine, things seem to always fall in place,” Freeman says with a smile.
For more information on the Pioneer Flight Museum, visit their website at http://www.pioneerflightmuseum.org/.