WICHITA STATE UNIVERSITY ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Fall 2015

Gateway to Wichita

Wichita's Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport opened with fanfare this past June 3. ICT's new gateway to the city has a strong Shocker presence.

BY CONNIE KACHEL WHITE | PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRANDON CHAUNCEY '00
Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport
Wichita has introduced into the aviation world many flight worthy people and manufacturers. On the new terminal’s public mezzanine, historical exhibits — designed by Shocker-led aviation marketing communications firm Greteman Group (Sonia Greteman ’82, president) — provide passengers and visitors an overview of aviation’s Wichita-based innovators. Also greeting travelers to ICT, Air Capital of the World, are two graphic displays about Wichita State, one of which is shown at the bottom, and another that showcases WSU’s National Institute for Aviation Research.

Designed to reflect Wichita’s aviation-rich history and prominence in the industry, the new state-of-the-art terminal has two levels and features 12 gates. As part of the building design, there are special public art and exhibits that document the city’s aviation tradition — which has always had a decidedly Shocker bent.

Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport

Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport

From Bill Snook ’21, who put his Fairmount College degree to use at, first, the E.M. Laird Co., which built the Laird Swallow, the first specifically commercial airplane ever built in Wichita, and then as factory manager at Travel Air, credited with creating the first aircraft assembly line; to Walter Innes fs ’24, who helped found Travel Air (motto: “Large or Small, We Lead Them All”) in 1925 with Walter Beech, Clyde Cessna and Lloyd Stearman; to Dwane Wallace ’33, a University of Wichita graduate of the new (1928) aeronautical engineering program who stepped up to reopen his uncle Clyde Cessna’s plant and went on to oversee the company’s rise to become the world’s largest manufacturer of general aviation aircraft — there are Shockers interwoven throughout Wichita’s aviation legacy.

Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport


WANDERINGS

Gateway to Wichita

Wichita's Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport opened with fanfare this past June 3. ICT's new gateway to the city has a strong Shocker presence.