Biography—Edward T. Heikell

Race:                                                 Caucasian

Education:   Grades 1 – 12 Wapato, Washington

                        Graduation                Wapato High School

                        Pre engineering       Central Washington College of Education

                        Engineering              University of Washington

                        Graduation                1961 BA in Aeronautical Engineering

Working Career:     The Boeing Airplane Company:               1961 thru 1996

Personal Family:                Married on December 19, 1969

                                                            To Joyce Claxton

                                                Children:       Curtis             November 22, 1961

                                                                        Timothy          May 15, 1964

Home Life Narration:  Edward was born in Yakima to a teaching family who owned and operated a small 13-acre ranch on the Yakima reservation west of Wapato, Washington.  His dad was the principal of the Wapato Grade Schools for 30 years while his mother taught lower grades in other near by communities.  The ranch was primarily fruit trees that needed year-long attention and farm animals which helped support the needs of the fairly large family of five children.  Edward was next to the youngest but helped his dad in the farming chores during his growing years.  This environment provided the opportunity to grow up in a rural environment with more free reigns including fishing and hunting opportunities with his many friends living in the area.  In their spare time, he and his dad spent a great deal of time backpacking into the eastern Cascades, fishing and rifle hunting for Jack rabbits, other varmints and deer.  The ammunition reloading room was always occupied while getting prepared for the following weekend.  In Edward’s high school years, he was continually a member of the honor society and earned his letter being the mile runner for Wapato and spent much of his time studying and preparing for his private pilots license which he earned in his senior year after turning 17 years of age.

Career Narration:  Edward supported his school years at the University of Washington by working as “Chief of Computing” at the Low-Speed Wind Tunnel located on campus.  There he met a number of key Boeing officials responsible for the tests who later became instrumental in his being hired into The Boeing Company after graduation in 1961.  At Boeing, as a new engineer, he worked on the development of the new 727 flap system that later became the industry standard.  Then after work on other 707 and 737 derivatives, he became the supervisor of a number of preliminary design concepts (as a side light, Alan Mulallay, current CEO of the Ford Motor Company, was part of his team as the flight control specialist).  Later, he was transferred to the Military side of the Boeing Airplane Company in a team aimed at converting their operation into one more like that used in Commercial.  Eventually, he was assigned the job of being the Proposal Manager in an attempt to get a fighter program into the Boeing camp.  The result was getting a key role in building the new F-22 program for Boeing—a program in which he later became the Technology Manager responsible for over 100 engineers and other technical people.  During these times, key pastimes included hunting (but now with a bow and arrow), hiking, fishing, skiing and flying.  He obtained a commercial license with an instrument rating which was used to fly his partially owned Cessna 182—mostly in mountain environments on fishing trips into Canada.

He retired from Boeing in 1996 and continued his love of hunting, fishing and flying.  In 2001 he grounded himself from flying and more aggressively took up video, the making of edited DVDs and is currently writing a book on historical aviation in Washington state.  He has since made more than 10 DVDs with two being marketed commercially.  His background in written communication and visual impression techniques has offered a great deal of benefit to his pursuits in this field.