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KEN SMITH COLLECTION

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Ken Smith grew up on a farm in south Texas, where he and his friends regarded crop dusters pilots as heroes, but the farmers knew them to be highly skilled pilots performing an essential service. Ken worked as a loader and flagger as a summer job while in high school, and come to understand just how unique and highly skilled these pilots were. They left lasting impressions on Ken, so that many years later, in 1998, he decided to tell their story in, "Crop Dusters The Early Years 1921 thru 1955", a video his studio produced.

It took Ken over four years of phone calling and traveling to locate the people, planes, photos and films, some of these films show Stearmans and Cubs dusting the fields, this is something that most, if not all who view this video, have never seen before, that make up this video. Some of the photos go back 50 or 60 years, some were in such poor condition, that many hours were spent removing scratches, tears, watermarks and other damage. Much of the material collected is unique and never-before seen by the public. A good example of how unique these films are, is the rare segment that covers American Dusting's retrieving of fifty Stearmans from the Rattlesnake Bomber Base in Texas. This is shown with film and is narrated by Dwain Pittenger, who was there in 1948.