Delford Smith, who founded a major international aviation company but who may be most remembered for his determination to preserve the mammoth seaplane known as the Spruce Goose — built in the 1940s by the wealthy recluse Howard Hughes — died on Friday at his home in Yamhill County, Ore., near Portland. He was 84.
His family confirmed the death, giving no cause.
In 1960, Mr. Smith started a small company in the Willamette Valley, in northwest Oregon, that used helicopters to spray seed, douse wildfires and perform other commercial aviation tasks. The company grew to become Evergreen International Aviation, which flew cargo and passenger planes for the federal government and provided baggage, cleaning, aircraft towing and other ground services at dozens of major airports.
Evergreen delivered aid to Africa, flew military support missions during the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars and, in 1979, flew the shah of Iran to safety.
In recent years, Evergreen ran into financial trouble and its dealings prompted an investigation by the Oregon Department of Justice. The company filed for bankruptcy late last year and is no longer operating. But across from its old headquarters in McMinnville, the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum is still open.
The museum, which Mr. Smith opened in 2001, includes a water park with slides that start inside a Boeing 747 perched on the roof. But its main attraction for flight buffs is the Spruce Goose, also known as the Hughes H-4 Hercules. The world’s largest flying boat, it has a wingspan of 320 feet, more than the length of a football field.
The plane was conceived with the help of Henry J. Kaiser, a shipbuilder, as a way to ferry supplies and troops during World War II. Partly paid for by Mr. Hughes and built out of wood — mostly birch, not spruce — because of wartime restrictions on materials, it was completed too late for its task.
But it did fly, once. On Nov. 2, 1947, with Mr. Hughes at the controls, the Spruce Goose took off from a harbor near Long Beach, Calif., and traveled for about a mile, reaching an altitude of about 70 feet before landing back in the harbor. For the next three decades, Mr. Hughes paid a staff of dozens to maintain the plane in a hangar.
He died in 1976, and the Goose later became a tourist attraction in Long Beach, leased by the Walt Disney Company. In 1992, when Disney canceled the lease (as well as its lease on the Queen Mary ocean liner, which operated as a hotel nearby), Mr. Smith and his son Michael, a former Air Force pilot who became an Evergreen executive, agreed to buy the Goose from its owner, the Aero Club of Southern California.
Over the next 10 years or so, the plane was taken apart and sent by barge, train and truck to McMinnville, where it was reassembled and put on view at the museum. Mr. Smith opened the museum in its current location in memory of his son, who was killed in a car accident in 1995.
Mr. Smith was born Michael King on Feb. 25, 1930, in Seattle and placed in an orphanage. At 20 months old, he was adopted by Emory and Mabel Smith, who gave him the name Delford Michael Smith. He grew up poor in Centralia, Wash., and attended Centralia Junior College before graduating from the University of Washington in 1953 with bachelor’s degrees in business and psychology. During the Korean War he was a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division.
His survivors include his wife, Maria; a son, Mark; a stepson, Nicholas Stanley; a stepdaughter, Tina Stanley; and six grandchildren.
Evergreen’s headquarters buildings are for sale, and the company’s planes and helicopters are being sold off. In March, the Oregon Department of Justice found “significant interrelationships between the museum and Evergreen companies controlled by Delford Smith, the primary benefactor of the museum,” calling them “problematic.” The department said the museum was making changes to address the state’s concerns.
The museum plans to remain open. Officials there have said that the Goose is not going anywhere.
(The New York Times)
