Yagen makes $100M donation to Military Aviation Museum

Gerald “Jerry” Yagen, founder of the Aviation Institute of Maintenance and Centura College, has made a $100 million gift to Virginia Beach’s Military Aviation Museum, including his private collection of 70 vintage military aircraft, the museum announced last week.

In the 1990s, Yagen began collecting aircraft from the first 50 years of aviation history, from the Wright Brothers’ flight in 1903 to the Korean War in the early 1950s, planes that were originally stored in hangars in Suffolk. In 2008, he opened the Military Aviation Museum in Virginia Beach, allowing the public to see the collection. Yagen’s gift includes the 130 acres where the museum sits, an airfield at 1341 Princess Anne Road, and $30 million to start an endowment for the museum. The gift was announced Oct. 5 at the museum’s annual Warbirds Over the Beach air show.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin thanked Yagen, his wife, Elaine, and their family for the gift in a statement. “It’s due to great Virginians like the Yagens that our commonwealth is the best place to live, work and raise your family.”

The museum, which now has about 250 volunteers, is run by Keegan Chetwynd, the museum’s director and CEO, who has shepherded it from a private collection to an independent nonprofit. About 85,000 visitors come to the museum annually, according to the announcement. Many of the aircraft are still flyable, and on Thursday, a World War II-era plane from the collection carried a load of baby formula, diapers and other necessities to western North Carolina to assist victims of Hurricane Helene, in partnership with the Virginia Beach Fire Department.

“In the beginning, I saw this as my personal challenge to preserve history and these beautiful warbirds,” Yagen said in a statement. “I just didn’t want to see them disappear to time. I never believed so many would volunteer so much to help Elaine and I do this. I realize it is no longer an individual challenge.”