Allen Paulson
| Allen Paulson | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Allen Eugene Paulson April 22, 1922 Clinton, Iowa United States |
| Died | July 19, 2000 (aged 78) La Jolla, California |
| Resting place | Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California. |
| Occupation | Businessman: Aircraft manufacturing Racehorse owner/breeder Philanthropist |
| Spouse(s) | Irene, Mary Lou, Madeleine |
| Children | Richard, Robert, James, Michael |
| Honors |
Aviation:
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Allen Eugene Paulson (April 22, 1922 – July 19, 2000) was an American businessman.
Born in Clinton, Iowa, Allen E. Paulson was on his own at age 13, supporting himself selling newspapers and doing janitorial work at local hotel until he moved to California in 1937. There, he worked on a dairy farm to pay his way through school. After finishing high school in 1941, he took a 30-cent-per-hour job as an entry-level mechanic for TWA. In 1943-45 he served in the US Army Air Corps and spent a year studying engineering at the University of West Virginia. After the war, he went back to TWA, this time as a flight engineer, and used his GI Bill of Rights to get his pilot's license. He then began flying commercially for TWA. Using his TWA travel privileges, he began flying to Chicago to buy cars that he drove back to California to sell. Soon, he had a van and was transporting a number of vehicles on every trip.
He left TWA to form his own company in 1951, first buying surplus Wright R-3350 engines from Boeing B-29s and selling the parts to airlines. In 1955 he purchased his first aircraft for resale, stripping the aircraft for parts and scrapping the rest and later rebuilding one aircraft for resale out of the parts of several. The first airplanes he bought were three Convair 240s; Western Airlines had turned to Lockheed Electras. Later, he bought all of TWA's Martin 404s. He sold those, 240s and Convair 340s for corporate airplanes.
His company, the California Airmotive Corp., became one of the largest dealers in second-hand aircraft (particularly second-hand airliners) in the world. At one time he had 35 Lockheed Constellations of various models, 22 Douglas DC-6s and DC-7s and 4 other airliners in storage at Fox Field in Lancaster, California in 1970/71, not to mention other aircraft at other airfields such as Burbank. A subsidiary company during the early 1960s was West Coast Airmotive Corporation. Allen Paulson bought out the Pacific Airmotive Corp. at Burbank and started converting various types of passenger transport to freighters. Several Lockheed Constellations were rebuilt by Paulson's company and converted to freighter aircraft. California Airmotive was renamed American Jet Industries in 1973.
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