NOTE: Photos below are compressed, high-resolution images, and may take a couple of minutes to load completely. However, once loaded, you can click on them to instantly pop up a full-size version of the photo. Higher quality images, with captions, are available upon request.

In front of the last surviving building of his father's factory, 94-year-old Dr. William Lloyd Stearman (leaning on cane) shares childhood memories of his father's enterprise with Wichita Aviation Centennial chairman Richard Harris (left) and EAA executive Bob Blanton (right), while McConnell Air Force Base commanders, past and present, confer behind them. The building is now part of the secure base, and the visitors were guests of the Air Force and Kansas Air National Guard.

Dr. Bill Stearman autographs the Stearman Kaydet trainer, his father's last biplane design, in the storage hangar of the Kansas Aviation Museum, while KAM officer Bill Lindsay, local EAA chapter president, holds open the hatch.

Dr. William Lloyd Stearman is welcomed to the Kansas Aviation Museum operations director Melissa Duran. Stearman's father -- aviation legend, and pioneer of Wichita's aviation industry, Lloyd Stearman -- is enshrined in the Kansas Aviation Hall of Fame, here, and his aircraft and artifacts are key elements of the museum.

Kansas Aviation Museum board member Bill Lindsay, EAA chapter president, hold the slide rule (a mechanical calculator used by engineers) of legendary airplane designer Lloyd Stearman. It has just been presented to the Museum by Stearman's son, 94-year-old Dr. William Lloyd Stearman (right). Behind them is one of his father's most impressive biplanes: the mighty, rugged 1930s-era Stearman C-4, once cherished by commercial cargo airlines and wealthy sportsmen.

At the Kansas Aviation Museum, Dr. William Lloyd Stearman studies the only known replica of America's first successful commercial airplane, the Laird Swallow, with which his father's legendary aircraft manufacturing career began. The late Lloyd Stearman had helped build these, then designed the follow-on "New Swallow," which became the nation's most popular biplane of the early 1920s, before joining Clyde Cessna and Walter Beech to form Travel Air, soon the nation's most popular plane-maker of the 1920s. Stearman then started his own successful line of aircraft, before moving to California to become president of Lockheed.

Dr. William Lloyd Stearman rests in the driver's seat of one of his favorite automobiles -- his father's Mercedes-Benz sedan, which his father modified with aircraft instruments and seat belts (one of the first automobiles with seat belts). The family donated this car to the Kansas Aviation Museum, where it is prominently displayed.

At the Kansas Aviation Museum, 94-year-old Dr. William Lloyd Stearman (left) stands with board member Bill Lindsay, EAA chapter president, in front of the late Lloyd Stearman's biggest biplane design: the mighty, rugged 1930s-era Stearman C-4, once cherished by commercial cargo airlines and wealthy sportsmen. This was one of the planes that helped establish Wichita's retpuation as the "Air Capital City."