The Harold B. "Hap" Russell Photograph and Document Collection, consisting of 48 items, comes to us, literally, from that long-lost cardboard carton in the attic. Long story short, recent purchasers of the Hap Russell family home in California "found" the carton upstairs, recognized it as historically important, and contacted Mr. Ed Russell, Hap's son. The carton, about egg case-sized, was transferred promptly and carefully to its rightful and appreciative owner.

Ed Russell contacted me through this website (Google "Hap Russell" and www.dmairfield.org is the number one hit as of the upload date of this page).

I visited with Ed during October 2006. Image, left, Your Webmaster with Ed Russell (R). He was kind enough to let me scan the images embracing his father's career in aviation, with special relevance to his activities at the Davis-Monthan Airfield. We all owe him a debt of gratitude for letting us look in on this wonderful collection of images, documents and memorabilia representing his father's career.

And what a career it was! From barnstorming on the west coast during the 1920s, to Chief Pilot for the new and short-lived Standard Air Lines in 1929, to a 35-year career with American Airlines, Hap Russell flew consistently from Jennies to Jets.

An especially significant and poignant finding in the carton was the presence of a small wooden box. Imagine opening a small, hinged box to discover precious artifacts kept hidden for decades. Significant only to a veteran pilot of the line, inscrutable to others, we present the contents at the link "BOX CONTENTS", below.

The Harold B. "Hap" Russell Photograph and Document Collection contains 48 items. I have divided them into reasonable categories to make the collection easier to implement online, and to make it easier for site visitors to work through the material. Unless otherwise noted, the images were scanned at 200dpi. Please note also: except as noted, other than cropping, sizing and optimizing the images for web display, they are unretouched in any way. We should all be grateful to Ed Russell for allowing us to visit with his father's images taken mostly during the key years of the Golden Age.

THE COLLECTION

HAP RUSSELL IMAGES -- Presents nine images of Hap Russell at various times in his flying career, ca. 1920-1940.

AMERICAN AIRLINES IMAGES -- Presents nine images of Hap Russell and other entities relevant to his activities with American Airways and American Airlines. Included are two images of Russell's American Airlines hat, which shouldn't be missed for their insight into this prolific Golden Age pilot.

STANDARD AIRLINES IMAGES Presents eight images of Standard Air Lines pilots and aircraft.

BOX CONTENTS Presents 22 images of people, airplanes and artifacts and four PDF downloads of news articles contained in a small wooden box.

---o0o---