James "Jim" Hutchison

James Hutchison was born in 1901 and came to Alaska in 1919 with the United States Army. He became  a noted aviation mechanic in Fairbanks, Alaska. He excelled at patching together aircraft at crash sites so they could limp back home. He worked with aviation pioneers like Noel Wien, Ben Eielson, Harold Gillam and Joe Crosson, and worked on Arctic explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins' Fokker airplane for the Detroit News Arctic Expedition. He repaired Wiley Post's landing gear, which was damaged on his first round-the-world solo flight. Hutchison was named Alaska Aviation Mechanic of the Year in 1972 by the Federal Aviation Agency for a design change he made on the nose wheel steering mechanism of the Hercules aircraft. He lived in the downtown Fairbanks log cabin that he and his wife bought in 1923 and where they raised their ten children. Jim Hutchison died in Fairbanks on September 3, 1996. He was 95 years old. Biographical information from: Alaska Magazine 1995, v61 no.10, p103.