When he was younger, John Brodak was a disc jockey and he often played at class reunions in the area. He enjoyed baseball and he eventually created his own baseball game and sold it nationally. But the interests that would grow into a lifelong passion and steered a large part of his life were flying and building things with his own hands.
“John never stood still,” says Coral “Buzz” Brodak, his widow. “He built stores. He was the guy with the hammer up on the roof and down there laying the floor tile.”
He purchased his first plane at the age of 13 and became so enamored that he was building two to three planes a week. John later would purchase his first real airplane kits and motor and taught himself to fly by trial and error.
In 1955, John opened his first hobby shop in his mother’s grocery store, in a corner of the gas station in Carmichaels, and later organized the Carmichaels Flying Club. He and Coral married in 1960 and moved to Washington, PA where he worked as a machinist. Shortly into the marriage, John noticed an empty storefront. “I remember I was taking the Christmas tree down in our little two-room apartment, and he came in and said, ‘We’re going into business,’” Buzz says. “He had found an empty place for rent, and so we moved all his airplane stuff there and opened Brodak’s Hobby Center. He kept working as a machinist and I ran the store.”
Their first child was born in the early 1960s, and the family moved back to Carmichaels. As his family grew and John began to be more involved in his parents’ grocery store, airplanes were far from his mind, and he let the lease run out on the store in Washington. “Once things settled down, he ended up with three grocery stores and a couple of other businesses. He told me one night that he needed something to focus on at night other than business, and he decided he would build airplanes again.”
On a trip to England, while Coral and their daughter went shopping, John and their son Joe took off on their own adventure. They found a model airplane while on the trip, and John bought and brought it home.
Hobbyists had gone to radio control and John struggled to find control line airplane accessories. John started contacting various control line small businesses, and he accumulated a catalog listing them. He began his own advertising, and as business and demand grew more than the small businesses could handle, John purchased those businesses, started Brodak Manufacturing & Distributing, and began producing items himself.
John was an award-winning builder with a love for detail, winning a national scale competition with a plane he had built.
Whenever John would develop a plane, he would start to build it from the blueprints, and take pictures of every step of the plane until it was finished. He would use those pictures to create an instruction book that would go in with the plane. “That’s the way he did it, so that anyone could build a plane,” Buzz says.
In 1997, he decided, as a way of thanking his customers, that he would have a fly-in, a multiple day gathering of flyers competing in various classes. People came from all over the world for John’s fly-ins each year, with attendees sometimes numbering around 300. When COVID-19 hit, the fly-in was suspended for two years, but resumed in 2022 with the John G. Brodak Memorial Fly In.
“He liked to come home and shock me, and then go out to the garage,” Buzz says with a smile. “This time he came home and told me ‘We’re going to New Hampshire. I know a guy that has some airplane stuff, and he wants to sell it.’”
They traveled to New Hampshire and discovered the seller had an entire two-story, full basement house full of airplanes and memorabilia. “You couldn’t get another airplane box in if you had to. You walked sideways in there, between the wooden shelving he had set up. John asked if he wanted to sell it all, he said he did, and that was it. John drove me home, picked up a big truck and a helper, and they went back and loaded up his entire collection. Once he got home, John told me ‘We’re going to build a museum.’”
With John’s collection and the extensive addition of the new items, the museum had almost everything that it needed. They broke ground on the museum on June 8, 2016 and the building was completed in 2019. A small snag prevented an immediate opening, but work continued inside.
John started with his kits that he had put together and got that wall display completed and began working on the hobby shop display when he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. After an operation, he aspirated stomach acid and was on a respirator for four and a half months until he passed away on April 25, 2020. With John ill, all work at the museum had stopped. After his death, the Brodaks relied on flying friends to organize and finish the displays.
The commissioners approached Buzz about having a 2022 fly-in and possibly moving it to the airport. The man that ran the fly-in for the Brodaks came out and looked at the airport and advised Buzz that the airport wouldn’t work due to limited time constraints, so they decided to have it in the field near their house where it had always been held. It was held on June 13 to 18, with a strong turnout of approximately 150 attending. During the fly-in, a ribbon cutting was held for the museum.
“This was his dream. To have someplace that people who are interested in air flight can come,” Buzz says. “He was very proud of his town, and he was always involved in Carmichaels. I remember him saying, I want to bring people here.’ He was president of the Chamber 17 times, donated to Carmichaels light up night, and assisted organizations in the area. He was born in Fairmont, West Virginia, but he had been here since he was a baby.”
Currently the museum is open by appointment only, but that may change in the future. “Eventually we hope to see if there is some opportunity to be open for set hours. We’re also going to try to coordinate with the events going on in the area, like the Covered Bridge Festival, so that we are open when people would want to visit.”
“If there are any teachers that would like to bring their class in, that can certainly be arranged,” Buzz says. “We’d love to get the younger generation interested, to build stuff with their hands and spur their interest. John believed in teaching a child to build something with their hands that will actually fly to give them confidence, and the satisfaction of seeing that plane fly.”
“The big question at the fly-in this year was, ‘Hey Buzz, are we going to do this again or this it?’ I said ‘you know what, I’m 80 years old, I only have another twenty years. I’m going to be here next year; you be here too.’”
The museum is located at 100 Park Avenue in Carmichaels. It’s open by appointment. FMI or to make a reservation to visit, email flyin@brodak.com or call 724-966-7335. You can also visit their website at www.brodak.com.