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Willis L Cole Jr. passed away 31412. He and his wife have been living on his daughters property in Huntington, Texas until his hospitalization. He was a resident of the Far Hills Subdivision on Lake Conroe for the past 11 years. He was born August 17, 1923 in Erie Pennsylvania to Willis L. Cole Sr. of Verona NY and Margaret A. Gearheart Cole of Erie, Pennsylivania. Willis grew up in the Golden Age of aviation developing a deep interest in aviation that sparked his lifelong career. He graduated from Curtis Wright Technical Institute as an aeronautical engineer in 1942. He put in a short term at Lockheed before snappeed up by the draft into the US Army Air Corps. He went to Ft. Logan, Co, where he went through ane ngineering and operations school and moved on to a couple other Army Air Corp bases before ending up at Wright Field, Dayton Ohio as a design engineer draftsman. Stationed at Pratt Airfield near Wichita KS., he met and married his wife, Dorothy Farner of Peru, Kansas. Transferred to Wright Patterson Air Base in Dayton Ohio , he was assigned to designing military aircraft modifications for special missions. He was mustered out of the Army as a Sergeant in 1946 and promptly went into another engineering job at Boeing Airplane Co in Wichita, KS. After the war Willis took a short term position with Boeing Aircraft in Wichita before moving to St Louis in January of 1947 with McDonnell Aircraft for 20 years working on a number of projects including aircraft, helicopters and the Mercury Space Capsule. In August 1966 , he moved to Texas to be a project engineer and draftsman in preliminary design at Bell Helicopter in Hurst, TX. Willis worked on numerous helicopter programs with Bell Helicopter in Ft. Worth Texas until his retirement in 1984. He and Dorothy moved to a home they built in Gains Bend on Possum Kingdom Lake. They moved to Lake Conroe in 2000.
Willis was an accomplished and award winning landscape and aviation artist. As a member of the Texas Watercolor Society, Association of Aviation Artists, American society of Aviation Artists, Southwestern Watercolor Association, Texas Fine Arts Association, and Experimental Aviation Association his paintings were exhibited throughout shows in Texas and at the EAA convention in Oshkosh Wisconsin, the National Aviation Art Exhibition , and on the cover of Sport Aviation. An active member of the TWS, he often taught the art of drawing classes emphasizing the mechanics of perspective and subject development, sketching and painting layout, color theory, pallette knife, landscaping, trees, watercolor applications and 3 dimensional models. Willis studied under Joseph Plavan, Ronald Thomason, Wm. Whiteside, Amon Froman and others. He was adept in oils, acrylics, pen and ink, pencil and conte crayon and watercolor. His paintings are held in many public and private collections.
A former Boy Scout master, he was the a sea scout master and an art merit badge counselor.
Willis leaves behind his wife Dorothy, sons David and his wife Suzanne of Far Hills, Lake Conroe, Raymond and his wife Elaine of Tampa Florida, Stanley and his wife Glenda of North Richland Hills, Texas, daughter Carol and her husband Jorge Ramos of Huntington Texas. In addition he leaves 7 grandchildren, and 13 great grandchildren.
Willis was an accomplished and award winning landscape and aviation artist. As a member of the Texas Watercolor Society, Association of Aviation Artists, American society of Aviation Artists, Southwestern Watercolor Association, Texas Fine Arts Association, and Experimental Aviation Association his paintings were exhibited throughout shows in Texas and at the EAA convention in Oshkosh Wisconsin, the National Aviation Art Exhibition , and on the cover of Sport Aviation. An active member of the TWS, he often taught the art of drawing classes emphasizing the mechanics of perspective and subject development, sketching and painting layout, color theory, pallette knife, landscaping, trees, watercolor applications and 3 dimensional models. Willis studied under Joseph Plavan, Ronald Thomason, Wm. Whiteside, Amon Froman and others. He was adept in oils, acrylics, pen and ink, pencil and conte crayon and watercolor. His paintings are held in many public and private collections.
A former Boy Scout master, he was the a sea scout master and an art merit badge counselor.
Willis leaves behind his wife Dorothy, sons David and his wife Suzanne of Far Hills, Lake Conroe, Raymond and his wife Elaine of Tampa Florida, Stanley and his wife Glenda of North Richland Hills, Texas, daughter Carol and her husband Jorge Ramos of Huntington Texas. In addition he leaves 7 grandchildren, and 13 great grandchildren.