The Willis M. Hawkins Papers, 1920-2009 (80 boxes) document the successful aerospace engineering career of Hawkins at Lockheed, the relationships between industry, military, and government, and the development of airplanes, missile systems, and space vehicles during the second half of the 20th century. Effort was made to maintain the original order in which the collection arrived at The Huntington Library and the arrangement reflects Hawkins’ organization of materials largely by subject, project, or organization. The collection is divided into ten series: Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and Development, Calendars and Diaries, Consulting Files, Correspondence, Personal Files, Photographs, Presentations and Speeches, Publications and Writings, Subject Files, and Oversized, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the Consulting Files, Correspondence and Subject Files series. The bulk of collection materials date from the 1950s to the early 1990s and consists of correspondence, memoranda, presentation and meeting materials, reports, blueprints, clippings, speeches, writings, and ephemera. The collection is especially rich in correspondence; in addition to Hawkins’ incoming and outgoing correspondence is the copied correspondence of other Lockheed executives with whom Hawkins worked closely during his tenure. Hawkins’ involvement in consulting and professional organizations was often in conjunction with his role at Lockheed, and researchers should thus be aware that materials are often dispersed through the series. For example, materials related to specific committees are frequently represented in both the Correspondence and Consulting Files Series.

Willis Moore Hawkins (1913-2004) was born in Kansas City, Missouri on 1 December 1913. As the only child of Willis Moore Hawkins, Sr. and Elizabeth Daniels, who divorced shortly after his birth, Willis was raised by his mother. He was one of five students in the first graduating class of Leelanau School, an experimental high school in Glen Harbor, Michigan that emphasized the outdoors and science. After earning his Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1937, he began a career that would span over 60 years at Lockheed Aircraft Company, starting as a junior detail engineering draftsman in Burbank, California.

80 boxes

In order to quote from, publish, or reproduce any of the manuscripts or visual materials, researchers must obtain formal permission from the office of the Library Director. In most instances, permission is given by the Huntington as owner of the physical property rights only, and researchers must also obtain permission from the holder of the literary rights. In some instances, the Huntington owns the literary rights, as well as the physical property rights. Researchers may contact the appropriate curator for further information.

Collection is open to qualified researchers by prior application through the Reader Services Department. For more information, please go to following http://www.huntington.org/huntingtonlibrary.aspx?id=554.