Owen Gassaway III stands in front of model airplanes
that once graced the Lantana airport. They are being packed and ready to move.
2013 photo by Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By Jane Smith
The Lantana airport operator is a man on a mission.
“I’ve got a timeline, a deadline to meet, have to be out of here by March 31,” said Owen Gassaway III.
After more than 60 years at the controls of Palm Beach County’s aviation history, Florida Airmotive is packing up and moving out. The company did not bid to operate the airport, officially known as the Palm Beach County Park Airport. The new operator, Galaxy Aviation, takes over April 1.
Inside a back room in the terminal, a stack of flattened cardboard boxes awaited another shipment of packing peanuts. They were used to pack the plane models, carefully removed from the terminal’s ceiling and vacuumed because “we weren’t the best housekeepers,” Gassaway said. Then his wife, Kim, cleaned each one and packed each model, pouring the peanuts around it. All told, she expected to pack nearly 70 boxes containing about 100 models of various sizes, from 6 inches to more than 3 feet.
The boxes will be stored in a hangar until they are moved — possibly to a new home the Gassaways are building in Tennessee. “The new home has a walk-in basement,” he said. “I did not want to drive by every day and see what it (Lantana airport) would become.”
Or, perhaps, to Yesteryear Village on the South Florida Fairgrounds. When he contacted the historic village last summer, he didn’t know it was going through management changes. His sister, Becky, who lives in Lantana, kept in contact with officials there.
After the fair ended in early February, Yesteryear’s new manager, Paige Poole, visited the Lantana airport. “We’d like to take some benches and other memorabilia,” she said. She wasn’t more specific because she needed to talk with her supervisors to find out what the village could use.
The terminal, built in the style of an Old Florida farmhouse with a breezeway through the middle, was a veritable museum of the county’s aviation history. On the breezeway floor stood a 6-foot-tall radio tower used to communicate with pilots. “Now pilots can hold that communication device in their hands,” Gassaway said. He planned to donate that tower to the Boynton Aerospace Science Academy at Boynton Beach High School.
Inside the terminal sat a 1943 propeller and 1931-design engine built in late ’30s or early ’40s; both will go to the Boynton Beach program. Gassaway’s two sisters might want some of the original silverware used to serve meals aboard the DC-3s.
Florida Airmotive dates back to 1941 when Owen Gassaway Jr. started the company. He oversaw major changes at the Lantana airport in the late ’80s and early ’90s. He was instrumental in helping thousands of youngsters learn to fly. In 2007 when he died, his son took over operations at the Lantana airport.
“Florida Airmotive did it all — flight school, charter service with 35 planes, repairs, fueling,” the son said. “But that changed in the ’80s when my dad created a ‘marina’ for planes.”
Galaxy Aviation, based in Palm Beach County, is new to the Lantana airport community, Executive Vice President Jonathan Miller said. “We recognize there is a legacy here with the current owner and his dad; we want to respect that,” he said. “We don’t want to change the atmosphere, we are looking to be part of the community.”
When Galaxy takes over, it first will inspect hangars to determine which ones need repairs. It also will make the airport more secure by putting up fencing to ensure only vehicles with airport business can enter, and it will build a new self-service fuel farm. Galaxy plans to have a grand opening celebration sometime in April.
The county will redo the airport entrance, Miller said. The entrance contains a 6-foot-tall concrete and granite monument dedicating the airport to Gassaway’s dad. “I told Owen he could take the monument. If not, we will find a place for a part of it in the new terminal,” he said.
Gassaway is not certain whether all of that is progress, but he knows it’s a “done deal and I am not going back.”
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