Kermit Weeks - Life and Career

Life and Career

The Weeks family moved to Miami, Florida when Weeks was 14, and he began flying model aircraft and competing on the high school gymnastics team. At 17, with only model airplane flying experience, he began building his own home-built Der Jager D-IX (a biplane powered by a four-cylinder Lycoming O-320 engine). During his final year of high school Weeks spent almost all his spare time building his airplane; he finished it in about four years, and test flew it at age 21.

Weeks later learned to fly. He eventually purchased a Pitts S-2A in order to fly in aerobatic competition. In 1973 Weeks began entering aerobatic flying competitions while pursuing an aeronautical engineering degree at Miami-Dade Junior College, the University of Florida and Purdue University.

By 1977 Weeks had built the "Weeks Special," an aerobatic aircraft of his own design, and qualified for the United States Aerobatics Team. In 1978 he was a runner-up among 61 competitors worldwide, earning three Silver medals and one Bronze medal in the FAI World Aerobatic Championships staged in Czechoslovakia. Over the span of a dozen years, he placed in the top three in the world five times and won a total of 20 medals in World Aerobatics Championship competition. He has twice won the United States National Aerobatics Championship and has won several Invitational Masters Championships in worldwide competitions.

During the late 1970s, Weeks started to acquire, restore and preserve antique aircraft. By 1985 he had accumulated enough vintage aircraft to start the Weeks Air Museum in Miami. A non-profit facility, it housed much of his private collection and antique aircraft owned by the museum. Weeks then acquired a 250-acre site near Polk City, Florida, 20 miles southwest of Walt Disney World, for an aviation-themed attraction called Fantasy of Flight.

In 1992, as development plans finalized for Fantasy of Flight, Hurricane Andrew struck the Miami area, virtually destroying the Weeks Air Museum facility (it was repaired and reopened in 1994) and seriously damaging most of the vintage aircraft within it. Some of Weeks' collection, which was damaged by the hurricane, has been restored and is now displayed at Fantasy of Flight which opened in 1995.

On May 26, 2000, Weeks married Teresa Blazina in Sedona, Arizona.

In 2008 Weeks published a children's book, All of Life is a School, featuring airplane characters. In 2009 he won a bronze Independent Publisher Book Award for the book. He followed it up with "The Spirit of Lindy" in September 2012.

In 2012 Weeks was awarded the Lloyd P. Nolen Lifetime Achievement in Aviation Award by the Wings Over Houston Airshow. In 2010 he won the Freedom of Flight Award by Bob Hoover. In 2008 Weeks was inducted into the Florida Aviation Hall of Fame, and in 2006 was named a "Living Legend of Aviation."