This article was posted with written permission from Kathleen E. Moore, Communications Manager, School of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology.
The perfect gift
It’s your favorite aerospace engineer’s birthday – so what do you get him?
If the birthday boy is Harold “Skip” Bowling, Alpha Nu/Georgia Tech 1958, you have your work cut out for you.
By the time he retired from Lockheed Martin Aeronautics International in 1997, the Sparta, Georgia native had already packed an awful lot of adventure into his life – traveling the world to boost Lockheed’s business profile while rising swiftly through the company’s ranks to become president.
A long way from the humble co-op job he took as an engineering undergraduate in 1953.
A family and demanding job didn’t slow him down Skip Bowling had served in the U.S. Army as an artillery officer and a helicopter pilot, attaining the rank of captain before joining the Georgia National Guard where he served for 20 years. And, oh yeah, he earned more than 3000 flight hours.
Even in retirement, Skip Bowling was hardly the type to take it easy. He served on the boards of the Kaiser Holdings Group and the St. Joseph Hospital Foundation, and never missed an opportunity to play golf.
So, on Feb. 1, 2015, when Harold Skip Bowling turned 80, his wife, Linda, had to get creative.
“Linda did not know what present fit the circumstances,” Bowling writes us.
“So she thought what would an octogenarian/aeronautical engineer/army helicopter pilot like? And she got it right. She got me a drone. Fabulous machine, easy to fly, with a great camera.
Which only goes to show: when aerospace engineers grow up, they don’t give up their toy airplanes
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