Aviation Museum’s High-Flying Gift 

Military Aviation Museum founder’s $100 million to sustain unique collection of aircraft

Photo Above Left to Right: Board Treasurer Bruce Holbrook, Founder Gerald Yagen, Museum Director Keegan Chetwynd, Elaine Yagen, Museum Board Chair Dr. Edward George

Gerald “Jerry” Yagen’s decades-long mission to “Keep ’em flyin’” will live on thanks to a historic gift intended to transform his Virginia Beach-based Military Aviation Museum from a private collection into an independently managed nonprofit. 

Yagen is a businessman and philanthropist who also founded the Aviation Institute of Maintenance and Centura College. A lifelong passion for military and aviation history led him to start collecting planes in the 1990s. With support from his wife, Elaine, he opened the museum to the public in 2008. 

The 130-acre Military Aviation Museum is home to one of the world’s largest collections of historic military aircraft. Yagen’s $100 million gift includes the collection itself, the Pungo land on which the museum was built and $30 million to establish the Museum’s endowment. The gift was announced in October during the museum’s annual Warbirds Over the Beach air show. 

The approximately 70 aircraft in the gifted collection represent the first 50 years of aviation history from just after the Wright Brothers’ first flight in 1903 to the Korean War in the early 1950s. They include such historically significant examples as a North American Aviation P-51 Mustang, the Goodyear FG-1D Corsair and a rare, restored WWII German Messerschmitt Bf 109.

Yagen’s gift is designed to allow staff and supporters to continue preserving, restoring and flying these vintage warbirds— and inspiring visitors to honor those who built, flew and maintained America’s military aircraft.  

“In the beginning, I saw this as my personal challenge to preserve history and these beautiful warbirds,” Yagen told guests. “I just didn’t want to see them disappear to time. I never believed so many would volunteer so much to help Elaine and I do this. I realize it is no longer an individual challenge.”

Yagen encouraged members of the community to support the Museum to “help ensure we ‘Keep Em Flying’ long into the future,” citing the slogan the U.S. Army Air Corps used to recruit pilots during World War II.

Learn more at militaryaviationmuseum.org.