In January of 2007, San Diego's James and Kim Keeline received a life-changing series of e-mails. The first one was from James' friend, informing him that a certain John Jankowski saw photos of an airship painting online and was looking for the owner. James assumed Jankowski simply wanted to buy it. “We do have the painting, but we're not selling it,” he wrote Jankowski. “Why do you want to know?”
His eyes widened when he read the reply: “I have the airship.”
James showed the e-mail to Kim. They were stunned. Excited. Even frightened. It had been 19 years since they first heard about the airship. They had all but given up hope of ever finding it, much less owning it.
“Please don't sell it before checking with us first,” was all James requested. Two weeks later, the Keelines—still unsure if this was all real—found themselves driving toward Boulder City, Nev., to inspect the airship for possible purchase. It turned out Jankowski was eager to get it off his hands.
It wasn't an ordinary airship. In fact, it wasn't even built to fly. And there were actually two of them. The ships were made in the late '60s for 20th Century Fox's Tom Swift and his Wizard Aeroship, a film based on the popular Tom Swift books, a juvenile science-fiction series first published in 1910. The airships were meant to be suspended from helicopters while filming. However, the movie, which was to be directed by Gene Kelly, was never filmed. Windstorm damage to one of the airships delayed the filming, and then various scheduling and financial issues arose and production was indefinitely suspended.
James, 42, had been a huge Tom Swift fan since he was 8. His father owned the original series, which consisted of 40 books. Created by Edward Stratemeyer (who also created The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew), the series revolved around the adventures of the eponymous main character, a clever young inventor. The books influenced countless inventors and science-fiction authors, including Steve Wozniak and Isaac Asimov. In fact, the Taser is an acronym for “Tom A. Swift's Electric Rifle,” named by inventor Jack Cover after his childhood hero.
An avid collector of anything related to Tom Swift, James started learning more about the series while managing a children's bookstore. He became an expert, writing articles and speaking at conferences. He now owns the complete set of five series and plenty of rare items. Kim was an avid reader growing up but didn't start reading Tom Swift until she met James.
“We've known each other since we were teenagers,” she said. “Through James, I became an accidental Tom Swift fan and semi-expert.”
James considers himself a lucky man. “A lot of wives don't support it—they just tolerate it,” he said.
Around 1989, James' collecting led him to the airship when he purchased some photos of it being assembled in 1969 and several copies of the script for the movie. Most items related to the unmade film were auctioned off in 1971, but the airships were privately sold.
“That's why James had such a hard time figuring out what happened to them,” Kim said.
In 1988, Jankowski purchased it from an unknown previous owner. James says that Jankowski quickly lost interest after realizing the ship wasn't supposed to fly. For the next 19 years, the disassembled airship sat in more than a dozen huge crates in a storage lot in the Nevada desert, slowly withering away under the assault of the elements.
When the Keelines first saw it, some of the boxes had caved in. There was extensive water damage, and the varnish was peeling off. The balloon part of the ship was a giant, 1,000-pound heap of shredded canvas. They couldn't even tell if it was for one or two ships, or if it was even the full balloon.
Jankowski had loaned one of the cockpits to a guy in Las Vegas named Lonnie Harmmargren, a former lieutenant governor of Nevada famous for his collection of unusual artifacts, including a roller coaster from the top of the Stratosphere hotel building. Harmmargren had the cockpit sitting in his front yard.
When James saw the cockpit, it was in pretty bad shape, but it turned out to be both a curse and a blessing. “If the ship had been kept nicely, we probably wouldn't have been able to afford it,” Kim said.
The Keelines deliberated the purchase for months. “It's a life-changing experience,” James said. “It dictates where we're going to live in the future.”
“We had a talk about this long and hard,” Kim added. “With me shaking my head saying, ‘I can't believe we're doing this!'”
Finally, they decided they needed to save the airship.
“If it didn't go to us, it'd just rot away to nothing,” Kim said. “It deserved to be treated better than it was.”
After much negotiation and securing a storage space on a ranch near San Diego, the Keelines made the final trip to Boulder City in September 2007 to transport the airship. As part of the deal, Jankowski provided a whole crew, and they filled a 48-foot flatbed trailer to its legal height limit. That was the easy part.
“Getting it off the truck was the major production,” James said. The ranch only had two small forklifts, and one was broken. They managed to prop up the boxes on the two forklifts and have the truck pull forward. By the end of the day, the Keelines were left with a long line of boxes and parts scattered across the storage lot.
They stared at the mess in awe. They were now officially the proud owners of a full-size Tom Swift airship, albeit in pieces. What now?
“First, we have to get a bigger place,” James said.
The better-preserved cockpit now sits in the garage of their El Cerrito home, just east of Mid-City, along with some random parts, and the rest of both airships is still in storage. They need enough space to fully assess the damage in order to start the restoration process.
It won't be easy. Both James and Kim lost their jobs a few months ago. Currently, they're focusing their energies on putting together the 100th Anniversary Tom Swift Convention, which will be held July 16 through 18 at the Sheraton in Mission Valley (visit tomswiftenterprises.com for details). There will be a series of presentations and exhibitions, and parts of the airship will be on display. They also recently authored a book, Tom Swift Guide to Life, based on life lessons learned from the first two series, which will be available at the convention.
The cockpit, now partially restored, provides a glimpse of how beautiful the full airship could be if it's ever resurrected. And that will be the Keelines' mission for the years to come.