Wednesday, March 3, 2021

Bill Long & His Airports – Part 3

By the late 1960s, Bill Long was well-established as Lorain’s aviation pioneer. He had already been the subject of a 1959 article in the Lorain Journal when he was 74 years old. Thus by 1967, at the age of 83, he had become even more larger than life – and consequently was profiled again in the Journal

Here’s the article, which appeared in the paper on May 19, 1967.

In the article he mentions many of the famous people that he rubbed elbows with, including Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford.

By the time of the 1967 article, the City of Lorain had been trying to acquire Long’s Airport for other uses for some time. In this article, which ran in the Journal on Dec. 16, 1968, Long apparently agreed to sell – but like previous agreements, this one crashed and burned as well.
Bill Long passed away a few years later on Feb. 9, 1971. (I posted his obituary here.) What became of all the things he accumulated over the years – his aviation trophies, scrapbooks and antique cars? They were all sold in a series of circus-like auctions held at his house and his airport. This article from the May 23, 1971 Journal tells the somewhat sad story.

It would be interesting to find out what, if anything, of Bill Long’s personal effects ended up down at the Lorain Historical Society.

4 comments:

  1. Wow, interesting name I never expected to see Dan. The auctioneer, Jim Wagner, is my great uncle who owned and operated a farm on middle ridge road. The family had a massive reunion there every year(its gotten much smaller) and his barn was full of really neat oddities. The highlight of it all was the hay rides he'd give us all during the reunion. Good times.

    And good to see you back Dan, hope all is well.

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    1. My parents built the family home on that property that was the old airport!

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  2. Thanks, Alex! Glad you found a personal connection in today’s post with your well-known great uncle!

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  3. Dan,

    A few years back I was researching an antique airplane propeller for a friend, and it turned out to be an extremely rare original propeller for one of the Douglas World Cruisers, the first planes to fly around the world. What was remarkable about it was that it was covered in hand painted military squadron insignias from the 1920s and early 30s...and one tucked away towards the bottom of one blade that had the word LORAIN on white aviator's wings, and under it LONG FLYING SCHOOL LORAIN OH. No idea when it happened, and our best guess was that the prop was in California from the 20s until the 60s, when my friend's dad acquired it. Trying to see if I have some pics of that part of the prop, and wish like heck I knew what Mr. Long was doing all the way out there.

    Mike

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