Art Christensen, 1924-2011, award-winning model builder, former head of Chicago Aeronuts

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

Art Christensen enjoyed precision and competition.

As a child, he spent frigid winter days perfecting speed skating in Humboldt Park.

Into adulthood, he also embraced golf, skiing and model airplanes — which he built with feather-light frames and rubber-powered motors.

When he wasn’t engaged in one of his hobbies, Mr. Christensen often had his nose stuck in a book about biomechanics.

He needed to know how things worked — correctly.

“He could look at something and see what wasn’t right,” said his daughter Candace Diaz. “He was a meticulous kind of person.”

Former president of the Chicago Aeronuts, a club for model aircraft enthusiasts, Mr. Christensen died March 4. A resident of Palatine, he was 86.

His hobbies dated to his boyhood in Humboldt Park, where he bought his first plane kit with the 10 cents he received for his 10th birthday, according to an autobiography Mr. Christensen wrote for the Academy of Model Aeronautics. Teaming up with a group of boys who called themselves the Flying Eight Balls, Mr. Christensen learned the tricks of the trade in his buddies’ basements.

Life got difficult during his adolescence. His mother died when he was 16, his father struggled and Mr. Christensen dropped out of Lane Tech High School to help support his family.

“He had to take on a lot of responsibility at an early age,” said another daughter, Kim Lopotko.

He worked a variety of jobs, including as a cabdriver dodging streetcars in Chicago and as a lifeguard at North Avenue Beach — where he first spotted his wife-to-be, Marguerite. (The couple wed in the 1940s.)

Though he had been building planes since childhood, Mr. Christensen did not fly them in competitions until the late 1940s, which was also the time that he designed planes for a few model makers.

Specializing in free-flight model aircraft, Mr. Christensen scrupulously constructed the planes.

“It took a lot of patience, but he built the entire thing from scratch,” said Diaz.

Most of Mr. Christensen’s planes ran on rubber motors, meaning they were not controlled by external sources, such as radio controls.

“His personality made him a pretty good flyer — you keep doing it until you get it right,” said Chuck Markos, president of the Chicago Aeronuts. “It was a struggle to make these planes fly. To make them fly on a level that’s competition-worthy is a real achievement.”

Mr. Christensen competed for decades at local and national levels, winning several regional competitions, according to his family.

He presided over the Chicago Aeronuts from 1959 to 1961. A salesman by profession, Mr. Christensen enlisted his skills in persistence to counter dwindling membership and funds for the club, he said in his autobiography.

Though he eventually stepped back from competing, Mr. Christensen continued to build models and directed regional contests. In the early 1980s he restored a plane that had won a world championship, and is displayed at the National Model Aviation Museum in Muncie, Ind.

Working with the Chicago Park District in the late 1990s, he tried to boost youth enthusiasm and interest in the hobby.

He also helped found the Grand Prix Ski Club, coaching skiing and other winter sports.

When Diaz was a girl and told her father that she wanted to learn how to twirl on the ice like a figure skater she saw on TV, Mr. Christensen was determined to make that happen. He dedicated several years to training his daughters in figure skating, taking them to competitions around the country and even connecting with Olympic skating coaches.

In addition to his two daughters, Mr. Christensen is survived by his wife; daughters Adriane Stretch, Cheryl Rothenbach and Dawn Christensen; eight grandchildren; four great-grandchildren, and two siblings.

Services were held.

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