CHARLES CITY, Iowa - Bill Fox is getting ready to receive the award of a lifetime.

"I'm very humbled at getting this award," said Fox. 

In just a few weeks, Fox will be inducted into Iowa's Aviation Hall of Fame, but the award is just a capstone of an amazing career.

"Got involved in aviation, after i was in the Navy i became interested in it."

Fox grew up in Osage, and then moved out to California to pursue a career in flight engineering. It was there that his skills would land him an opportunity that at the time, he knew nothing about.

"Was asked if I wanted to go on this program. It was kind of a strange invitation to go on a program, because they couldn't tell me anything about it."

But he soon found out this program would send him to one of the most guarded secrets in America.

"Area 51, I spent many years there. Chose it cause I thought it was gonna be sort of a patriotic program, and it turned out that's exactly what it was."

The project was to design the fastest stealth plane in the world...the Blackbird. Fox says it was very exciting, but tough on his personal life.

"You'd leave home on Monday morning, fly out of Burbank in a transport aircraft, and go home Friday night if you were lucky. If all the work was done you could go home."

He also helped design spy planes in the Cold War that ran by remote over the USSR. Fox worked on the secretive projects until he retired in 1988 and moved to Charles City, and now, 20 years later, he says he's honored to join Iowa's Aviation Hall of Fame.

And by the way...Fox says in all his years in Area 51...he never saw an alien.