John H. Livingston the age of 76. Livingston was inducted into the Iowa aviation Hall of Fame in 1995. His Waco taperwing has been donated to the EAA AirVenture Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin where it has been restored. John Livingston is considered to be the inspiration and namesake for the book and film "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" by author and pilot Richard Bach. Livingston-Betsworth Field, as well as the fixed-based operator at the Waterloo, Iowa municipal airport, are named in his honor. John H. Livingston John H. Livingston (1897–1974) was an American aviator and air race pilot of the 1920s and 1930s. Livingston placed
Richard Bach to the Ground (1963) described the deployment to France of his Air National Guard unit, and was well reviewed, for example by Edmund Fuller in the Wall Street Journal. In 1970, "Jonathan Livingston Seagull", a story about a seagull who flew for the love of flying rather than merely to catch food, was published by Macmillan Publishers after the manuscript was turned down by several others. It had been first published, free, in SOARING, the monthly magazine of the Soaring Society of America. The book, which included photos of seagulls in flight by photographer Russell Munson, became a number-one bestseller.