Bill Bengtson
Aiken Standard, S.C.
(TNS)

Jun. 30—NEW HOLLAND — Wayne Miller, as an Air Force veteran who went on to have a career as an aviation mechanic, knows the importance of details and also has a solid appreciation for creativity in addressing the challenge at hand.

Model airplanes have caught his attention in the past several months, and some of his handmade creations — composed of such items as bottle caps, brown paper bags, Diet Coke cans, paper-towel tubes and plastic Diet Coke bottles — are on display in June in Nancy Bonnette Branch Library, in Wagener, with almost a century's worth of planes for viewing, starting in the Wright Brothers days of fame and continuing through the Gulf War, when American forces led the way in reversing Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

Miller's access to model kits was extremely limited as a kid growing up in rural New Mexico ("the middle of nowhere"), and his creations as an adult are based on his own research and things he can salvage from his own household, in New Holland.

"I started out with a biplane, and I made it out of cardboard, fishing line and papier-mâché," he said. "The colors, I took off of something I found on the internet, and actually I was trying to model the same airplane that an African-American that flew for the French in World War I used, and he flew a Spad VII, but his airplane was a different color, but I liked what I saw, and that's why I painted it the way I painted it."

Miller, who served as a radio operator in the Air Force, has a local background that includes managing a Wagener gas station and working at Kroger stores in Aiken. He developed a strong background in aviation, but dreams of becoming a pilot went by the wayside once he developed diabetes, so he moved to focus on the mechanical requirements for keeping aircraft aloft and under control.

As for the current generation of youth, Miller said he would like for his exhibit to spark imaginations toward considering work as mechanics, pilots or aeronautical engineers.

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