My friend Ed Maloney died this past Friday afternoon of complications from heart problems.
Very few people can say that they changed things single-handedly, but Ed Maloney did. As everyone at every air museum around the world I have ever spoken to has said at various times, “If it wasn’t for Ed Maloney, there wouldn’t be any air museums or warbirds.”
Ed was 19 when he watched the airplanes of the Second World War being turned into aluminum ingots, and decided he would save one of each and make it fly again. His first purchase was a Japanese Okha he found on the trash heap at Los Alamitos NAS, followed by the J8M Shusui (Japanese Me-163). For so many years, his airplanes were wrecks, and it really took a leap of faith to believe they would be restored to flight, but he did it, along the way attracting the involvement of people who would go on to spread the preservation movement around the world.
Just looking at the list of Only Ones In The World that one can see at Planes of Fame is remarkable testimony to Ed’s determination.
Ed wasn’t a pilot, he was a modeler with a life-long fascination for the hobby and how it could lead it other interests for anyone involved with it.
I first “met” Ed when I was a teenager and bought one of his books. 15 years later we met and I was fortunate to know Ed for 40 years. Yeah, that’s me in the back seat of the P-51 - the oldest continuously-licensed privately-owned P-51 in the world, the first airplane in Ed’s museum that could fly.
Everyone who ever knew Ed has an "Ed Story."  Mine goes back to October 2001, when my friend Phil Treweek, one of the first people I got to know when I got on the internet, got stuck in the USA after 9/11 and couldn't go home.  He was here in Southern California, and we arranged to go out to Planes of Fame to show him around.  I let Ed know he was coming.  Ed met us at Flo's for breakfast, went around the museum with us all morning, had lunch at Flo's, and finally we were leaving mid-afternoon.  As we drove off, Phil said "I'm sorry I didn't get to meet Ed Maloney."  The car came to a halt.  "Who do you think you were with all day?"  "That was Ed Maloney?  I thought he was just one of the volunteers!"
That was the truth about Ed Maloney.  He really was "just one of the volunteers." Unlike a few other air museum owners and a myriad of warbird owners I can think of but won't name, Ed was the most down-to-earth guy I ever met in my life.  Anyone could walk up and talk to him and when they did he treated them like they were the only other person on the planet. And his dream was infectious.  Anyone who talked to him came away from the conversation wanting to do something for aviation preservation, and many of us did.
Knowing someone like Ed Maloney, someone who really changes the world by his presence in it, is a rare gift.  He encouraged everyone he knew to follow their dream as he followed his.  I know for a fact I wouldn't have the career I do today without his telling me every time I told him an interesting aviation story, "Tom, they'll never make that into a movie. Why don't you write a book?"  I finally listened, Ed.
Thanks, Ed

Tom Cleaver