Flabob Airport is the home of the Thomas W. Wathen Foundation, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation dedicated to education through aviation.  Founder Tom Wathen believes that aviation is a powerful stimulus to learning, especially the vital STEM subjects: science, technology, engineering and mathematics.  

Aviation fascinates and motivates young people, if only they can get to it.   But to most youngsters today  an airport is a forbidden place behind security fences, and an airplane is just a big aluminum tube stuffed with tiny seats where a lady asks you for two bucks for a bottle of water. 

At Flabob, aviation is up close and personal. Our dozens of programs provide many ways to turn a casual interest into lifelong learning.  Once our youngsters find out that they can actually commit aviation themselves, most of them are hooked, and they are even willing to learn math, physics and history to feed their aviation habit.

Our mission statement: The Thomas W. Wathen Foundation uses the fascination of flight to inspire the love of learning for successful careers and satisfying lives.  We include all people, especially youth, veterans and the disadvantaged and challenged.   At our historic Flabob airport, there is excitement in working with the head, the hands and heart, side by side with pilots, craftsman and innovators in an authentic workplace.  We preserve and disseminate the history of aviation, and encourage and nourish the designers, builders and innovators of tomorrow.

Back in the 1920s, students from Riverside's Poly High rebuilt the engine and covered the fuselage of Roman Warren's Thomas-Morse Scout, the trim little pursuit ship he flew under the Rubidoux Bridge.   Flavio Madariaga encouraged young people to enter aviation.  TV actor Lloyd Haynes planned a summer aviation school for disadvantaged young people at Flabob. Today, Flabob's "airport kids" find a high school, mentors, part-time jobs, hands-on learning, and inspiration on the airport, not outside looking in.

Our programs are for life-long learning, career and citizenship, and nourish:

• The head, by involving and encouraging learning and thinking in the diverse fields of knowledge which are used in aviation;
• The hand, by providing hands-on project learning; and
• The heart, by teaching civic obligation and the role of a citizen in a democracy.