On Martin Luther King Day, I had the privilege of taking my wife and five young boys to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn. We had been to the museum once in the past, but we were only able to scratch the surface of what it has to offer.

Based on that first experience we decided to make The Henry Ford Museum an annual trip, and this was our second. Sitting on the bus that Rosa Parks protested in was no doubt a highlight, especially on MLK day. Other highlights included spending time before the chair that President Lincoln was sitting in when he was shot and seeing the car that JFK was in when he was assassinated. The experience made us grateful to be Americans, and proud of this country that we call home. However, those three momentous items did not prepare me for the discovery that I was about to come across.

As a Kingsford Flivver alumnus who has worn a Kingsford T-shirt with a Model-T Ford on it for as long as I can remember, I of course wanted my kids to see the Model T Fords. So, off we headed to the “Driving America” exhibit.

It was amazing to see the development of the automobile over the course of a century. I showed them that Model T with pride.

When we finished filling our minds and hearts with all Henry Ford has done for the auto industry and the world, we headed off to an exhibit that I was very interested in, “Heroes of the Air.” My interest in this exhibit was primarily because my wife’s uncle, William Ryan, spent 52 years working for Honeywell, primarily developing valves for aircraft engines, and garnering many patents in the process.

It was truly a fascinating exhibit, but I was most surprised by a placard I came across near the end of the exhibit, which read, “The Flivver — Model T of the Air.” Of course we all know that a Flivver is a car, right? Well, after reading this placard, I came across a small, single seat airplane, the 1926 “Ford Flivver.”

Of course the slang term “flivver” can refer to any shabby vehicle, but to set the record straight, the only thing Henry Ford ever officially termed a “Flivver” was an airplane.

Who would have thought, all those years of wearing those maize and royal blue shirts, there should have been an airplane on the front.

Go Flivvers.

Joe Dougoveto is a 2000 graduate of Kingsford High School.