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I offer you this perhaps controversial column today, because I think it’s a fitting time to provide a bit more lore for the Ernie Hall Aviation Museum which had its grand opening at Sloas Airfield Aug. 8 and 9. Let’s call this column ”Imagine.”
My dad was the manager of Warren Airways, Inc., for a time before World War II. Where Warren Airways was is now the site of Trumbull Plaza on Parkman Road where Big Kmart, Sparkle Market, Radio Shack, Little Caesar’s and a few other stores are in business. At the south entrance to the plaza is McDonald’s, across from the Lunar Module display celebrating two of Neil Armstrong’s First Flights.
Imagine how it once was. Where the acres of asphalt are now, there was once a huge rectangle of well-mown grass. From that grassy patch, wonderful fabric- covered planes of all shapes and sizes roared off into the wild blue yonder. A windsock was their only advisory to tell which way to take off.
There were two aircraft hangars with big, beautiful, arched roof structures that housed those fascinating denizens of the air. Warren Airways was the dealer there for 40-horse, two-place Taylorcrafts that could be purchased for $1,495, including a complete flying course.
The Airdrome Tavern was there, too. And it was the favorite watering hole for all of those dashing pilots of that bygone era. These pilots wore fedoras (like Howard Hughes) instead of the requisite helmet and goggles because they flew mostly in enclosed cabin airplanes and wanted to look as normal and every day as possible to instill a bit of confidence.
And speaking of dashing, the first airmail out of Warren was a Warren to Cleveland flight from Warren Airways on May 19, 1938, piloted by my dad’s partners, the mustachioed Charles ”Chick” Haaf and Roy Lyon. I can show you the franked letters with special Western Reserve cachet that are still possessed by our family that can attest to that fact. (My sister has donated her airmail letter from that day to the Ernie Hall Aviation Museum.)
A couple of years or so before that first air mail flight, my dad, Chick, and Roy had teamed up to purchase a 1934 Stinson Reliant SR-5 with a big, radial Lycoming engine of 225 horsepower. Its cabin seated five adults. Was this the same plane they used for that airmail run? I can find no one around anymore who could verify that.
In order to defray some of the cost of this big, gas-gulping behemoth, they would offer airplane rides to spectators, many of them kids, standing wide-eyed around the airfield. I was there, hanging out among them. My sister and her buddy, Jackie Lyon, were promised a dime by their respective dads for each $2 airplane ride they sold.
I was just a toddler back then, but I can vividly remember what must have been my first flight in that big Stinson. I was placed in the back, squirmingly sitting on my sister’s lap looking out the side window of that noisy, vibrating plane. The autos below looked like so many toys.
In this present day, what piques my curiosity when I visit that Apollo 11 Lunar Module display is this: It says ”July 26, 1936 Neil Armstrong, a Warren and Champion Township resident, took his first flight in a Ford Tri-Motor from Warren Airways.” Well, maybe it was a Ford Tri-Motor, but I would like to imagine that it wasn’t – even though the commissioned portrait of the young Neil Armstrong and his dad shows a Tri-Motor in the background.
I don’t want to take anything away from all those who spent thousands of hours putting together the First Flight Lunar Module and its related story, but I spent many days of my early years at that airport, and I never saw, in my years-dimmed memory, anything bigger there than our single-engine Stinson. I would like to imagine that it was our Stinson that took Neil Armstrong on that first flight.
Maybe I’d like to imagine that I was there with Neil Armstrong on that July day back in 1936. Maybe I was one of the little kids who went up with him. Of course, I was perhaps a bit too young to have really gone up with Neil on his first flight. But, remember, we’re imagining. Yes, imagine . . .
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I would like to thank my sister, Shirlee Chambers, for helping me get some of my facts straight for this column.
Mumford if a Warren resident. Email him at editorial@tribtoday.com