MONTICELLO — The Monticello Area Historical Society (MAHS) will meet at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 22 at Zwingli UCC, 416 E. Lake Ave., Monticello. After a short business meeting, Michael John Jaeger, a volunteer with the Kelch Aviation Museum, Brodhead, will present a program on the “Airmail Beacons in Southern Wisconsin Fields.” The public is welcome to attend.

Jaeger is a volunteer docent and researcher at the Kelch Aviation Museum.  He’s a former pilot who’s always loved looking at the landscape from above in small planes. He also likes to share with others how aviation in days past helped shape the local area and the world today.

Learn how cutting-edge technology can become obsolete — and perhaps entirely forgotten — in the blink of an eye. Learn how did airport radar equipment, use of GPS on a smart phone, and even sent packages “by airmail” came to be.

Modern day navigation and the understanding of getting from point A to point B was influenced heavily by the U.S. Postal Service’s beacon towers, one of which stands at the Brodhead Airport in southern Wisconsin, near the Kelch Aviation Museum. 

Airmail was a critical component to the development of American aviation in the 1920s and 1930s — but how, and why, did this affect rural towns and real people? This presentation will explore the role light beacons played in the advancement of airmail, airways, and navigation, shedding astonishing new light on aviation and U.S. history.