Aviation Scholarship

Don and Carol Bedford were a team. Don had earned his Airframe and Power license and was well on the way to a degree in aeronautical engineering when he felt impelled to join the workforce at Lockheed Aircraft at the outbreak of WW II. Don later joined the Army Air Corps where he eventually joined the Aviation Cadet program. He was transitioning to fighters when the war ended. He returned to Lockheed where he rubbed shoulders with the likes of Tony LeVere and Howard Hughes and worked on the P-80 program. In 1947 Don took a job with Alaska Coastal Airlines in Juneau where he stayed through a series of mergers to retire from Alaska Airlines in 1993. Carol was from the Chicago area where she attended business school. She traveled to Alaska on a whim took a job at Alaska Airlines where the two met. Don was one of the first authorized inspectors in Southeast Alaska, an area where he remained active throughout the rest of his life. He also flew and restored small aircraft. Carol supported Don in all his endeavors, kept up with the billing and paperwork and tended the home fires.