Baxandall to Northwestern: Let's Have Solid EAA Reportage

July 23, 2002

Note: Mr. Baxandall sent the following letter to Oshkosh Northwestern Managing Editor James Fitzhenry. He forwarded a copy to Commentary. -Tony Palmeri

To the editor:

THANK YOU for your early, prompt attention.

In the July 22 Oshkosh Northwestern, the Oshkosh Chamber of Commerce CEO is quoted making an outlandish attendance claim for EAA Airventures.

"Any time you have a million people visit your community", John Casper said, big money flows into local cash registers.

Casper has colluded with EAA people for many years in exaggerating the number of EAA visitors by a factor of five or six. Visitors in excess of 800,000 were reported -- although the data generated in 1993 by the UW Extension, but not released in their integrity by the EAA, the OCC, or Oshkosh Northwestern, indicate roughly 143,000 visitors in the recent years. Not one million! That figure is the most irresponsible yet tossed to the press.

For the evidence and analysis of the real attendance, please go to

http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/experimentalattendance.htm

Making up attendance and income fantasies on this scale is deliberate, shameful and surely harmful.

The voters and county and city officials were convinced that our tax dollars and merchants' funds can appropriately and wisely be put at the service of the touted, one-week-a-year miracle phenomenon, while the work of developing a viable county airport and economic and cultural plan could be downgraded. And Oshkosh became a backwater.

The taxes paid locally by EAA are pitiful. Meanwhile it is rumored that much of the estimated sums spent in Oshkosh during the week don't remain in Oshkosh, but flow out to EAA crony businesses in Milwaukee and elsewhere.

In the July 24 and subsequent Northwestern EAA stories, may we have solid reportage? And no more discredited outrageous hype?

signed

Lee Baxandall

[P.S. I am the nephew of pioneer Oshkosh aviation hero Clyde Lee, and it is with deep regret that I feel it is necessary to call for an end to the untruthful hucksterism from an earlier era. The EAA is a fine organization and attraction to Oshkosh, without the blarney that disfigures it!]

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