Burt S. Avedon, Commander, USNR will be laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors at 3pm on Thursday, October 18th following a horse-drawn casket procession to the cemetery, a 21-gun salute and a Navy flyover in the "Missing Man" formation in honor of his Silver Star and Navy Cross medals. Avedon flew carrier-based fighters in both World War II and the Korean Conflict and was later a Navy test pilot at China Lake and an instructor at the Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program ("Top Gun") at the Naval Air Station Miramar in San Diego. He died on May 1, 2018.

Cmrd. Avedon was born April 15, 1924 and was sent to Missouri Military Academy at age 12 where he learned to fly with over 600 hours of flight time. At age 16, he raced against Jimmy Doolittle for the Thompson trophy in the Cleveland Air Races, where they became lifelong friends.

After graduating from military school, he flew to Rangoon, Burma in November 1941 and joined Clair Chennault’s American Volunteer Group (Flying Tigers). A month later the Japanese bombed Perla Harbor and war was declared, so he then returned to the U.S. and attended UCLA while joining the university's Naval Reserve Officers Training program. Commissioned as an ensign in 1944, he was assigned to the carrier-based Flight Group VF-6 in the south Pacific where he flew 190 missions and was awarded the Navy Cross, Silver Star, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, nine Air Medals, a Purple Heart, a Navy Commendation, a Presidential Unit Citation, the Pacific Theatre Campaign Medal (Seven Stars), a Philippine Liberation Medal and several other awards.

After the war, he returned to UCLA, graduated in 1948, and was sent by the Navy to the Harvard Business School where he wrote for the Harvard Business Review and was awarded an MBA in 1950. Returning to active duty, he fought in jet fighters during the Korean War, flying over 300 missions.

After a two-year post-war break from the Navy, during which he worked as a professional hunter and bush pilot in British East Africa, he returned to the states and trained at the National Test Pilot School at Pawtucket River, Maryland. Then he was a test pilot at the Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake for the next ten year, where he tested laser guidance systems, conducted altitude research and flew prototype fighter jets.

In 1964, he was appointed Chief of Staff for Air Training for NATO in the U.K., Belgium and Italy. In 1979 he joined the Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program (A.K.A "Top Gun") at the Naval Air Station Miramar in San Diego, California as an instructor where he participated in developing the original training syllabus. He flew with their Aggressor Squadron in F-15s wearing a Russian uniform and employing Russian flak. He was then assigned to Air Group on USS Kennedy in late 1970, and retired from the Navy as a commander in 1972.

His post-Navy business career was highlighted by his acquisition of Willis & Geiger, which he reorganized and, joined by a new design partner, Susan Colby, re-introduced improved and entirely new versions of many of the iconic Willis & Geiger styles that had so capably outfitted adventurers and explorers like Teddy Roosevelt, Ernest Hemingway, Charles Lindbergh, Sir Edmund Hillary and Amelia Earhart.

After shepherding the company through a series of owners, he sold Willis & Geiger to Land’s End in 1996. As president of the company under Land's End, he transformed Willis & Geiger from a wholesale operation to a direct-mail catalog marketing company. Land’s End closed Willis & Geiger along with their other divisions Territory Ahead and Montbell at the end of 1999 during a well-publicized financial crisis.

After an unsuccessful attempt to buy back Willis & Geiger, he and Susan Colby founded the Avedon & Colby Group, Inc. to design premium lifestyle garments for high-profile clients that included Woolrich, J. Peterman, Orvis, Duluth Trading, Beretta, and Eddie Bauer.

In October 2014, at age 91, he launched a new line of high-performance adventure and field apparel under his own Avedon & Colby label. Avedon & Colby's first product, the Signature Field Shirt, won a Gray's Sporting Journal's "Gray's Best" in December of that year and Sporting Classics' "Award of Excellence" in 2018. The brand reincorporated as Avedon & Colby International Outfitters. LLC in 2017 and currently offers over 20 different garments through their website www.avedoncolby.com.

Avedon was a long-time member of the prestigious Explorer's Club in New York, and once led an expedition to Greenland to find a lost WWII squadron of airplanes that crashed and disappeared after running out of fuel while being shuttled to Europe. He was also a member of the East African Professional Hunters Association and the exclusive and secretive Quiet Birdmen organization, which counted Charles Lindbergh, Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle and Wiley Post as members.

Avedon is survived by his wife, Silvana, three daughters and a son.