Paul Poberezny, American pilot and businessman, founded the Experimental Aircraft Association (b. 1921)
Paul Howard Poberezny (September 14, 1921 – August 22, 2013) was an American aviator, entrepreneur, and aircraft designer. He founded the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) in 1953, and spent the greater part of his life promoting homebuilt aircraft.
Poberezny is widely considered as the first person to have popularized the tradition of aircraft homebuilding in the United States. Through his work founding EAA and the organization's annual convention in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, he had the reputation of helping inspire millions of people to get involved in grassroots aviation. Many attribute his legacy with the growth and sustainment of the US general aviation industry in the later part of the 20th century and into the early 21st. For the last two decades of his tenure as chairman of the EAA from 1989–2009, he worked closely with his son, former aerobatic pilot and EAA president Tom Poberezny, to expand the organization and create several new programs within it, including an aviation education program for youth and the EAA Museum, among other initiatives.
In addition to his longtime experience as a military aviator (earning all seven types of pilot wings offered by the armed services), Poberezny was also an instructor, air show, air race and test pilot who frequently test flew his own homebuilt designs as well as various aircraft built by the EAA, such as the EAA Biplane. He flew for more than 70 years of his life in over 500 different types of aircraft, and was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1999. He also received the Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy in 2002 and was ranked fourth on Flying's list of the 51 Heroes of Aviation, the highest-ranked living person on the list at the time of its release. Poberezny died of cancer in 2013, at the age of 91.