WWII Veteran
Served in the US Navy after completing aviation machinist mate school, flight engineer and gunnery school at Jacksonville, Florida. He was transferred to squadron VP-74 at Floyd Bennett Field in NY to fly antisubmarine and convoy coverage in the North Atlantic. His squadron was transferred several times as it operated along North Americans Eastern coast extending to South America, Panama, and the Galapagos Islands.

Dream To Recover & Restore A "Black Widow"
After seeing photos of a crashed, but intact "Black Widow" in 1979, his second great adventure in life was his recovery and ongoing restoration of P-61B 43-39445. Gene learned about the plane from a friend at an airshow, who described a P-61 crashed in the mountains, and had faint photographs of the plane - xeroxes of another traveler' pictures.  From this lead, he launched an expedition to locate and recover this wreck.

One of the Last in the world
The restoration shop is filled with pieces of the P-61 "Black Widdow". The story of the plane encompasses a history that began when it crash landed into the Cyclops Mountains near Hollandia (today, know as Jayapura), in West Papua, on January 10, 1945. Only three P-61's are in museums today. The MAAM's is then the fourth black widow know to exist in the world. The others are: (1) Fragments in China from a plane that crash landed there. (2) at the USAF Museum at Edwards AFB (3) Smithsonian's Paul Garber Facilty in long term storage.