12 Planes of Christmas - Faces of Those We Honor

Dallas, Texas (December 12, 2025) - Every name has a story. Over the years, many of you chose to give to 12 Planes of Christmas in memory or honor of someone you love. When we read those dedications, we see so much more than a line on a donation form—we see lives lived in the air and on the ground, families who still remember, and legacies that keep inspiring new generations.

Names like Ray Kinney, Roy Christian Olson, Thomas W. Rash, Mildred “Micky” Axton, and John “Jack” Nusbaum are just a few among many. Some were wartime pilots and crew members. Some were ground support. Some carried the mission forward in peacetime, helping restore and fly the very aircraft we care for today. All of them were—and are—deeply loved.

The photos in this post represent just a handful of the people you honored: a WASP who became the first woman to fly a B-29, a CAF leader whose passion for a P-40 helped keep it in the air, and veterans whose stories are written in logbooks, letters, and family albums.

To everyone who made a gift in someone’s name: thank you for trusting us with their memory. We carry those names with us each time a warbird engine starts, each time a student walks through our hangar doors, and each time a visitor hears these stories for the very first time. If you’d like to share more about the person you honored—who they were, what they flew, or why they inspired you—we’d love to hear it in the comments. Their stories are why we do this.