Craig Kodera has always loved aviation. Born in Riverside, California, in 1956, he cannot remember a time when airplanes and flight were not part of his life. He was raised in what he calls an aviation family, in a neighborhood close to the Los Angeles Airport. Kodera was quick to pursue his dreams of art and aviation; he started to paint at fourteen, and by the time he was seventeen he had earned his private pilots license. Kodera attended UCLA, where he carried a bachelors degree in mass communications and completed the equivalent of a minor in art history. After graduation, he worked as a commercial artist for several advertising/ design firms, and also for McDonnell Douglas Aircraft. There art and aviation merged, and Craig found himself employed as a production/ design artist and illustrator. Following a year of commercial art, Kodera spent more than seven years in the Air Force Reserve. After completing OTS and flight training, he was assigned to the Air Rescue Service and stationed at March Air Force Base, where he logged over 1300 flying hours in the Lockheed HC-130H Hercules. He also served with the Strategic Air Command, stationed at the same air base, where he flew the McDonnell Douglas KCA0A Extender. Today Kodera is a first officer for American Airlines. He is the charter vice president of the American Society of Aviation Artists, arid he is a member of the Air Force Art Program and the Los Angeles Society of Illustrators. His work hangs in several museums and is part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institutions National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.