Proud to be home of the
HOURS:
Thur., Fri., Sat., Sun. &
Legal Monday Holidays:
Memorial Day, Labor Day, Veterans Day:
10 a.m. - 4 p.m.
ADMISSION:
Pricing and Special Group Tours (Minimum of 10 or more): Full Information Here
4251 Dry Creek Road
Paso Robles, CA 93446
Gary's Last
Fundraiser
June Dinner
No Host Bar 5:30 p.m., Dinner 6:30 p.m.
Dinner is catered and open to the public,
reservations are required prior to 6 p.m.,
Monday prior to dinner, either
On-line HERE or call 805 296-1935
Dinner price: $25/pp.
On behalf of Estrella Warbirds Museum, Woodland Auto Display and the Corippo family we are announcing a Celebration of Life on behalf of Gary Corippo to be held on Wednesday, 6/5/24 in Hangar One from 5:30 to 8:00 PM. This Celebration will take the place of our regular monthly dinner so you need to sign up for the dinner by making reservations at ewarbirds.org and scroll through events to monthly dinners and pay the usual monthly dinner price.
The Corippo family would like this to be an opportunity for those who knew him (or knew of him) to come out and spotlight what he did to make this museum become a success. There will be no keynote speaker that night, it will be Gary in the spotlight!
The Corippo family would like for those who knew him to come out and help spotlight what he did to make the museum a success. During the event there will be an opportunity to bid on some personal historical artifacts of Gary's to benefit the museum and maybe have something to keep Gary's memory with you. The Corripo family will also be allowing Gary to buy your first adult beverage for which they are generously paying for. You can also make a financial donation to the museum in Gary's honor.
Gary, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, was one of the founders of our museum and played an integral role in collecting most of what you see displayed. His passion for collecting and preserving military artifacts is unparalleled. He truly believed that displaying artifacts to tell the stories of those who sacrificed for our freedom and way of life really matters.
The Monthly Dinners are catered and reservations are required not later than 6 p.m. the Monday evening prior to the dinner so as to allow the caterer sufficient notice of how many are attending. Dinner cost $25/pp and reservations should be made at this link.
Betsy's Buiscuit Bomber Celebrates With The Triple Nickel
May 2024 will mark 80 years since Operation Firefly started the legacy of the group eventually named the Triple Nickles.
The 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion was established to target balloon bombs in the Pacific Northwest that were sent by the Japanese military. As the first all-black airborne unit in the U.S. Army, the paratroopers were kept in the states and also fought wildfires from Pendleton.
In December 1944, at the onset of the Battle of the Bulge, the 555th came close to being sent to reinforce the Airborne units fighting in Belgium. But then orders came for what was a “truth is stranger than fiction” assignment.
More information the 555 can be found here.
Betsy's Biscuit Bomber and crew headed off to Eastern Oregon the third week of April to fly and host paratroopers commemorating the 80th Anniversary of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, the “Triple Nickles”, the first all-Black Parachute Infantry Unit in the US Army.
Yes, that is Scott Stelze, EWM Chief Operating Officer, giving the paratroopers last minute instructions.
New At The Woodland Auto Display
Sometimes, the most comprehensive and labor intensive items at the museum are what goes on "behind the scenes." With that being said, the following is a list of what you can expect to see in the distant and not so distant future. Dick and Claudia Woodland have been hard at work putting in as many hours as they could fit in on various WAD projects. One of the projects is in regards to the 60 to 85 year old "personal" family scrap books of Indy racecar drivers Johnny Boyd and Bill Vukovich. These do no good if they are not available to be seen by the visitors but, at the same time, they are very fragile and irreplaceable. Claudia and I have been making page protectors for everything to help preserve them and this has been very time consuming.
As an example, the Johnny Boyd scrap books are newspaper size and cover his early days of racing midgets out of the Fresno area to his climbing the ladder to race at Indianapolis numerous years from the mid 1950's through the mid 1960's. Another thing that is unique in that there are approximately 100 telegrams sent to him prior to the Indy 500s from well wishers. (How many young visitors have ever seen a telegram or no what one is?)
The Vukovich family scrap books, from Bill Vukovich's brother Mike, are more standard size but they consist of about a dozen separate scrapbooks covering his early midget days and his climb to Indianapolis 500 champion.
The other project which has taken a tremendous amount of time has been adding the display of the Jim Naylor donated die cast cars and Halmark collection to the Ken Clapp Annex of the WAD building. That part of the project has been completed. Some of the Halmark surplus collector cars etc., have been donated to the EWM gift shop so they can be sold to help raise some additional funds for WAD.
While we gathered automotive books for our library, many of the book donors also had a significant amount of aviation books. For those we set up a table at WAD and asked for donations to EWM for the books. So far, I believe we have moved approximately 10 "cases" of books.
We finally found time to move some cars around a bit plus the Erin Crocker Evernham sprint car was shipped back to Charlotte where Erin will be among the "Women in Racing" to be honored at the NASCAR Stock Car Hall of Fame.
Oh yes, we finally got started on the restoration of my newest addition, my 1953 Hudson Hornet "Twin Power". The completion date is anybody's guess.
As you can see, a lot goes on and a lot of hours are spent that really don't reflect changes on the floor of the WAD building, at least not up front but we hope to have most projects in place in time for the Warbirds Wings & Wheels car show.
