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.
www.facebook.com/junerosemarshall/posts/pfbid0TpjkEYa3FLaGtjr8xvUL7Xu57v6JxYLDB9bQtZhCdPGBDwtic1gupdMR8bmDFv7ol
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.
