Duke remembers when the first Air Force One, a Lockheed Constellation VC-121A named Columbine II, flew President Dwight Eisenhower to New Hampshire to deliver the Commencement address to the class of 1953. He never saw the plane on the apron of the Lebanon, New Hampshire, airport, though, and never saw Eisenhower. 

“No,” he says ruefully, “I was in my mother’s car driving back to Connecticut.” The Russian major says he had too much fun his senior year and failed to finish his thesis on Soviet civil aviation. Training as an Air Force aviation cadet straightened him out. He came back to Hanover years later with his wife and young family, finished the required coursework and his thesis, and graduated in 1963 with all the pomp of a visit to the dean’s office, where he was handed his diploma.

In June Duke, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, gave a talk for the Virginia Aeronautical Historical Society (VAHS) about his time in the Eisenhower years flying the “Connies,” as he calls them, including the first Air Force One. Originally tagged Air Force 8610, the president’s plane was given the call sign Air Force One after a clearance call confused it with Eastern Air Lines 8610. 

Duke has contributed to the efforts of a group working to restore the Columbine II, abandoned for years in the Arizona desert, to its original grandeur. After his talk he toured the partially restored airplane he had flown decades ago. “Tom was so elated to be back in that plane again!” says Jody Nelson of the VAHS. Tour organizer Dick Gentaille adds, “He made the exhibit come alive for us aviation history enthusiasts.”