My real name is Philip Moss, but almost everyone calls me Pip. I’ll be 60 years old this coming June. I’m in my third blissful year of retirement after a 35-year career as a middle school music teacher, all but one year of which was spent in the Lincoln, MA school system. I taught classroom music, chorus, an instrumental group in the early years, and I directed 33 productions of Gilbert & Sullivan operettas with 6th, 7th and 8th graders.

 I have also lived in Lincoln since I was 6, when my father, a violinist, became a member of the Boston Symphony. I started doing plastic models around the age of 8 or 9, at about the same time I started cello lessons. I can’t remember the first kit I built, but I do remember quite a lot of Revell battleships and jets, full of glue gobs and largely unpainted except for little bits of red or black using those old Testors gloss enamels that always looked terrible. I remember being thrilled with the Revell 1/72 PT boat because it had so many parts and so much detail. Man, how our perceptions change! My local IPMS chapter did the old PT kit as a group build project a year ago — what a dog!

 By the time I hit high school, there was just too much other stuff going on to do much model building. I did dabble with HO railroading, built some Ahearn freight car kits, and planned a layout; but it never got much beyond the planning stage.

 I went to Harvard College and majored in music. I was in the class of 1969, with the prospect of getting drafted and being sent to Vietnam hanging over all our heads. When I graduated, not really knowing what I wanted to do with my life, I got a job teaching classroom music in Hudson, MA, which gave me a draft deferment. That fall I met Jane Beck through a mutual friend. We were married in May the next year (1970); at about the same time I was offered a teaching job in Lincoln, and a house in Lincoln became available that we could afford to rent.

 Going on 37 years later, we’re still married and still living in the same house, which we now own. We’ve raised two children: Matt, 34, who’s struggling with mental illness in Oregon, and Ann, 30, who’s a classical singer living with her boyfriend in Berkeley, CA. The objects of our doting are now our two cats, Gus and Emma. I tried to get Emma in the photograph, but she declined.

 I got back into model building quite by accident. Sometime in the 1980s, there was a snowstorm and no school. I had to go to the neighboring town of  Concord on some errand and found myself at McCone’s (long gone), a combination sporting goods and hobby shop. Totally on impulse, I bought a Monogram 1/48 Hurricane kit to give me something to do for the rest of the day. I also discovered all the Pactra International flat paints that the shop stocked. Building that Hurricane without all the excess glue and giving it a decent paint job was a revelation—it looked SO much better than my childhood attempts. I was hooked, and I’ve been at it ever since. I’m afraid I’m firmly in the 1/48 aircraft niche, with a few 1/72 and 1/144 planes thrown in here and there. I’ve built exactly two armor models, one NASCAR, and one monster truck (to the great disapproval of my local chapter).

 Speaking of which, in 1989, pretty much on a whim, my then adolescent daughter and I headed out to San Diego to attend the IPMS national convention. We had some very nice father-daughter bonding, and I spent quite a bit of time in the display hall while she suntanned by the motel pool. While checking out the vendors area, I met a soft-spoken, gentlemanly fellow selling a line of vacuform aircraft kits. We got to talking, and I told him where I was from. He told me he lived in Bedford, one town away from Lincoln. He also told me about IPMS/Patriot Chapter and invited me to come to a meeting. This delightful man was none other than Bill Koster, a living legend in the hobby, a mainstay of Patriot Chapter before he moved to Chicago, and whom I’m proud to call my friend.

 I’ve been active with Patriot Chapter ever since. I’ve served as president during three years, and I’ve been the newsletter editor since the early 90s. I enjoy judging at model shows, and I was part of the planning committee for last year’s Region 1 convention, NoreastCon 2006. I’ve won my share of trophies at our local show, Patcon, now, sadly, curtailed due to rising costs; and I was shocked and elated  to win a first place trophy at NoreastCon for my Spitfire Mk.XVI. Mostly, though, I just enjoy building aircraft models and hanging out once a month with my friends at Patriot Chapter.