[Blindtlk] Co-Founder of Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation Dies

[David Andrews]

>
>Charles Kaman, 91, Helicopter Innovator. By MOTOKO RICH. Charles H. 
>Kaman, an innovator in the development and manufacture of helicopter 
>technology and, following a wholly different passion, the inventor 
>of one of the first electrically amplified acoustic guitars, died on 
>Monday in Bloomfield, Conn. He was 91.
>
>Mr. Kaman, who had suffered several strokes over the last decade, 
>died of complications of pneumonia, his daughter, Cathleen Kaman, 
>said. He lived in Bloomfield.
>
>Mr. Kaman  (pronounced ka-MAN) was a  26-year-old aeronautical 
>engineer when he founded the Kaman Aircraft Company in 1945 in the 
>garage of his mother's home in West Hartford, Conn. By the time he 
>retired as chairman in 2001, he had built the Kaman Corporation into 
>a billion-dollar concern that distributes motors, pumps, bearings 
>and other products as well as making helicopters and their parts.
>
>Within the aerospace industry, Mr. Kaman is best known for inventing 
>dual intermeshing helicopter rotors, which move in opposite 
>directions, and for introducing the gas turbine jet engine 
>to  helicopters. The company's HH-43 Huskie was a workhorse in 
>rescue missions in the Vietnam War.
>
>Mr. Kaman, a guitar enthusiast, also invented the Ovation guitar, 
>effectively reversing the vibration-reducing technology of 
>helicopters to create a generously vibrating instrument that 
>incorporated aerospace materials into its rounded back. In the 
>mid-1960s he created Ovation Instruments, a division of his company, 
>to manufacture it.
>
>The Ovation allows musicians to amplify their sound without 
>generating the feedback that often comes from using microphones. It 
>was popularized in the late 1960s by the pop and country star Glen 
>Campbell, who played it on his television show, 'The Glen Campbell 
>Good Time Hour,' and who appeared in advertisements for the company. 
>A long roster of rock and folk music guitarists began using it as well.
>
>With his second wife, Roberta Hallock Kaman, Mr. Kaman founded the 
>Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation, which trains German shepherds as guide 
>dogs for the blind and the police. Since 1981, Fidelco has placed 
>1,300 guide dogs in 35 states and four Canadian provinces, said 
>Eliot D. Russman, the foundation's executive director.
>
>It came down to the helicopters, guitars and dogs,' Mr. Kaman's 
>eldest son, C. William Kaman II,  said in a telephone interview.
>
>In addition to his daughter, Cathleen, an artist who is known 
>professionally as Beanie Kaman, and his son William, Mr. Kaman is 
>survived by another son, Steven; four grandchildren; and two 
>great-grandchildren.
>
>Born on June 15, 1919, in Washington, Charles Huron Kaman was the 
>only child of Charles William Kaman and Mabel Davis Kaman. As a 
>teenager, he loved building model airplanes from balsa wood and 
>tissue paper and flying them in indoor competitions. He had once 
>hoped to be a professional pilot but abandoned that ambition because 
>he was deaf in his right ear.
>
>He received his bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering from 
>the Catholic University of America in 1940. After graduating, he 
>went to work at Hamilton Standard Propeller Corporation, a unit of 
>United Aircraft. He soon met Igor Sikorsky, another pioneer in 
>helicopter design, who ran United's helicopter division and who 
>inspired Mr. Kaman to begin developing his own parts.
>
>One of his first inventions was the 'servo-flap,' which could be 
>added to the edges of a rotor blade to help stabilize a helicopter. 
>But one of his greatest contributions was to introduce jet engines 
>to helicopters.
>
>It gave them more power,' said Walter J. Boyne, chairman of the 
>National Aeronautic Association and the author of numerous books on 
>aviation. Helicopters really moved into their own.
>
>Terry Fogarty,  who worked closely with Mr. Kaman for nearly a 
>decade developing the K-MAX 'aerial truck,' said Mr. Kaman, who 
>developed the first remote-control helicopter in 
>1957,  envisioned  an unmanned  cargo helicopter that would take 
>over the 'dull, dirty and dangerous missions.
>
>The company is developing such a helicopter, based on the K-MAX, and 
>has a contract to deploy it to the Marine Corps for use in Afghanistan.
>
>Mr. Kaman married Helen Sylvander in 1945; they divorced in 1971. 
>Later that year he married Roberta Hallock, who died last year.
>
>Ms. Kaman recalled her father strumming different versions of the 
>Ovation in a studio at home, trying to figure out how deep or 
>shallow to make the rounded back to produce the best sound.
>
>That was his big gift to the three of us,' she said. When he would 
>come home, he would play guitar.
>
>PHOTOS: Charles H. Kaman, top, an engineer, invented the roundedback 
>Ovation guitar. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY KAMAN CORPORATION, VIA BUSINESS 
>WIRE; OVATIONGUITARS.COM)  .