During the 1970s, my schooldays, I became interested in military aircraft.
I lived on cycling-distance of Soesterberg AB and often went there; often skipping school lessons.
When this interest developed into an intiative to spend a vacation cycling in the UK, from one air base to another, I gathered sufficient stock to start trading with a few correspondents.
One of these correspondents was Terry Waddington.

Mr Waddington worked with McDonnell-Douglas and I stood in awe of a professional ! I gathered he worked as a sales representative and made trips abroad when a particular airliner had to be delivered to a foreign airline. But while the exchange of slides did include a letter, there was little exchange of personal details (to my regret).
Terry Waddington lived in Mission Viejo, California and his slides showed always the most glorious weather; I had a much harder time shooting in decent weather and air shows in Europe always had a lot of clutter (e.g. fences, people) around the displayed aircraft.
My paper route paid for my aviation hobby and Kodachrome slide fil was expensive; I was definitely on a budget and was lucky if I had a hundred slides to exchange over four batches a year.
Terry Waddington was one of my first correspondents I traded slides with and he was an inspiration for me.
Through him I had my first plane pictures published in the US, in an issue of the AAHS Journal; he took me seriously and I treasure the memories.

From Ken Marsh I received the following feedback, in May 2017:
"You don't know me, but I just came across your webpage of the outstanding photos you posted of Terry Waddington's photo shots.
I met him briefly again in about 2007, on my return from Tucson, AZ to Seattle. He and I were at school together in England in the 1950's.
Just wish to congratulate you on the photos that you selected.
Terry was an aviation enthusiast from his early days as I recall. Interesting that he went to Douglas Aircraft, and I moved to Boeing!"
Ken

Somewhere late-1970s we must have ceased trading, for I started a job (1977) and my social life became more important than searching for military planes. At times, in the 1980s and early 1990s my interest flickered and I continued collecting on a very modest scale, even traded slides with other correspondents but during the 1990s my interest in military aviation ceased altogether.
Not long after that I became more interest in civil aviation, which was a logical change of events as I lived and worked near an international airport while military aviation became too far to drive.

During the early internet days I did exchange a few emails briefly with Mr Waddington; by then he had moved to Oregon and was somewhat struggling with his health. I did not get the impression he liked to email, but I regret we lost touch as I have visited Oregon on a few occasions but we never had a chance to meet.

I dusted some of my books with military slides and I hope you like the ones I selected, all photographed by Terry Waddington.
Unfortunately I have only a flatbed scanner to my disposal, this Epson V500 works quite well but it did have great difficulty scanning some of the black lettering on the aircraft.

Oh, well it is the thought that counts..
In July 2012 I was told that Terry Waddington passed away in October 2009.
If I remember correctly it was of a heart attack; quite a few years earlier he'd had a heart transplant. R.I.P.

For more correspondents and noteworthy authors, see my Dossier Index

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