John was a long time member of the forum. As others have said, he always provided an encouraging comment to our builds. We will miss him. RIP and Godspeed John Eaton.
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I shared this news with the guys from the Agape Forum, too. John was a long-time brother with us there, too. Everyone is shocked and saddened.
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June, thanks for letting us know. I wrote with John privately several times and this is very sad news for me.
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Thank you for sharing this news with us. His kind and encouraging presence on the forums will be missed!
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First and foremost, I am so sorry to hear about the passing of your Dad, June.
My deepest condolences to you and your family. I joined soon after John did and from the get go, we, hit it off.
He was very easy going, loved to talk shop and all the various projects that he was working on.
He will surely be missed. Without a doubt, he’ll have a corner in heaven to continue his building.
Blue skies forever, the pattern is clear.
Mike
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Sincere condolences to you and your family. He was a great modeler and a great inspiration to all of us in the modeling community. RIP good sir!
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My sincere condolences. Rest in peace John.
I just thought - John had these really cool photos on his webpage: https://goldeneramodel.com/
Maybe somebody has an idea how we could make sure this content stays online as a kind of memorial to John.
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Terribly sorry to hear this. John has been a great contributor to this community for a long time.
I thank you for letting us know. Over the years, there’s been a lot of people who you see on here regularly and then they just vanish one day with no explanation. No clue what happened to them, I’ve known many on here and still wonder what happened to them. Thank you.
Thank you all for your kind messages. Many people have asked if his website will stay up and yes I renewed the hosting through 2028. I wrote his obituary yesterday and will repost it here, I think some of you will really like reading it and I tried to incorporate some of your kind words here about him.
John Marshall Eaton, 79, a lifelong resident of Woodland, Ca died Monday, December 29th at Woodland Memorial Hospital surrounded by his loved ones after a long battle with cancer. He was born December 16, 1946 to Fred Marshall Eaton and Esther (Herrmann) Eaton.
As the first born son in a 3rd generation water well drilling and farming family, much of his youth was sacrificed in service of the family business. His competence was such that he was single handedly overhauling diesel engines and drilling rigs at age 10. After graduating from Woodland Senior High School, he made the radical, audacious announcement he wanted to go to college which was not well received. He left home to get his pilot license at 17, his commercial truck driving license at 18 and earned a degree in Finance from Sacramento State University while working full time flying and managing the family farms.
From a very young age he developed an all consuming interest and passion for aviation, building model airplanes from earliest childhood, getting his private pilot license and instrument rating at 17, becoming a private jet charter pilot and working in aircraft sales and then in buying, refurbishing and selling business jets for many years. Despite being color blind, he went on to earn ratings in over 80 different airplanes and jets. In his spare time he flew gliders and also loved flying aerobatics.
John’s true north was always generously helping others, sometimes thanklessly as can be common when someone is as hyper-competent in so many areas as he was. If it could be fixed, he could fix it. His understanding of machinery was deep and almost spiritual. If an engine of a car, diesel truck, farm tractor, twin engine prop plane or a jet engine could whisper, he had a 6th sense within seconds of exactly what was happening and how to remedy it.
In the late 1980s he founded Golden Era Model Service after acquiring original manufacturer blueprints of rare WWII aircraft, some found in a dusty closet in the British Museum, and used CAD software to design exact, ⅙ scale radio control replica kits which he sold by mail order from the back of RC Modeler Magazine and later his website, to the delight of other similarly obsessed individuals from nearly every country around the world and still to today.
John was one of the earliest and longest members of the Woodand-Davis Aeromodelers Club. As a decades long board member, former president and treasurer, he was instrumental in securing its current flying site as well as the construction, planning and execution of the major grading, runway and other infrastructure at the site. He was also a board member of the Sacramento Valley Soaring Society, and a longtime active member of the Society of Antique Modelers. He was appreciated for his deep knowledge and enthusiasm, always encouraging others and for his dedication to helping build community in the craft of both radio control aircraft flying and small scale aircraft modeling. In death, his family learned that he was also a member of the Secret Order of the Quiet Birdmen.
In addition to aviation, he was also deeply moved by classical music and opera and listened to it all day every day at elevated volume which was very irritating to his daughters but later, along with so many of his eccentricities, was so very valued and appreciated in retrospect. He was a longtime listener and supporter of KDFC Capitol Public Radio and Bianco’s Opera Lounge and loved sharing his favorite composers, arias and operas and their singers and eras. He was also a voracious speed reader, reading a book a day often, whether military history or philosophy, nonfiction or science fiction.
John was someone who kept his thoughts close to his vest. If something needed to be said, then he would make it known. It was his actions, his steady, quiet generosity, and the way he constantly showed up for others and got things done, whether for his model and RC communities, his many friends and most of all - his children and grandchildren, that speak the most to the kind of person he was. He was our rock. And he was one of a kind.
John is survived by his wife, Donna Eaton, his siblings - Tom Eaton, Judy (Jim) Tischer, Elizabeth (Robert) Partlow, his daughters June Marshall (David) De Anda, Cedar Rose (Erik) Lundgren, stepsons Sean Cookman, Scott (Ellen) Cookman, and all his grandchildren who adored him: Ben, Jake, Grace, Yasemin, Audrey, Alex, Caleb, Isaac, Brooke and Iris.
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Thankyou for posting that. Such an accomplished person - would never have known all of that given his modesty.
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What a beautiful eulogy. Thank you for sharing it with us.
"His life was gentle, and the elements so mix’d in him that nature might stand up and say to all the world ‘This was a man!’ " - William Shakespeare Julius Caesar
Gary
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