BLOOMINGTON - Artist Robert R. Auth sends holiday greeting cards like no other. The handmade cards are colorful and historic, and although Auth lives in Idaho, some have a Central Illinois connection because that's where his hometown roots are.

Bloomington resident Tom Kuhn knows all this firsthand because he has received such cards for the past several years.

"I'm so impressed with his artwork," said Kuhn, adding that he intends to create a display of Auth envelopes and cards at the Prairie Aviation Museum, where Kuhn is a board member. It was at the museum that Kuhn met Auth.

Kuhn said the Auth work would go well at the museum because some of it has an aviation theme.

This past season, for example, Auth depicted what was the Will aviation hangar. While the site now is a cornfield north of Normal, it once was the center of aviation in Bloomington-Normal.

The bright red and blue card depicting the hangar also shows Scoop, an airplane The Daily Pantagraph used from 1929 to 1941. The airplane was used to gather aerial news photos.

Also shown were a 1929 Model A Ford car and a 1928 Curtiss Robin, the first airplane that Auth, an aviation enthusiast, ever flew in.

In an attached narrative, Auth tells the story of the picture.

"That great little airfield (the Will hangar) has now returned to nature as a 72-acre corn field," Auth, 82, wrote to friends and relatives.

Auth, who left Central Illinois in 1959 to teach art for nearly three decades in Idaho, has never forgotten his hometown.

"I have so many great memories of Bloomington-Normal," Auth said.

The last time he was in Bloomington-Normal was about three years ago. That's when he got reacquainted with Miller Park and Funks Grove.

Both were favorites of his before he joined the Navy in World War II and attended college on the GI Bill to study art.

Bloomington provided the Idaho father of three grown daughters his first exposure to art, an art exhibit at the old Withers Public Library, which once stood at on the northeast corner of Washington and East streets.

Nowadays, the artistic possibilities in Yellow Pine, Idaho, where Auth lives, are endless.

"I've fallen in love with the mountains," Auth said. "I have elk and deer in my front yard."

His love of Idaho began in 1955 when he hunted there with friends.

As much as Auth loves the American West, he still thinks about Bloomington-Normal and plans to return this spring.

"I'll never forget my hometown. The farther I get away, the closer I get," he said.