1972 Lorain City Airport Photos

Here's a few more photos from our blog buddy Bob Kovach. He had already sent me the photo of Bill Long's Ercoupe a few days ago that I posted at the end of the article on Mr. Long. Now Bob has dug into his photo collection again and come up with two more gems.

Above is a nice shot of the Lorain City Airport hangar from July 1972. Remember that windsock? And the words LORAIN on the roof?

And below is a photo from September 1972 of the other building on the property – what a great shot. Who knows – this might be the only known photograph of it!

The Lorain City Airport was a big part of Bob's life while he was growing up, since he lived on Mark Drive, which was right across from it. Bob remembers Mr. Long too.

As Bob tells it, "I can remember one time speaking to him over by the white building that was at the airport. Mostly I remember his beard! I also remember many times us kids playing outside when his little plane would fly low and slow overhead. We would all start waving our arms and sure enough he would tilt the wings up and down as he passed by. I think he looked forward to us being out there."

What a great reminisce – thanks for sharing it and the photos, Bob!

1964 Lorain City Airport & LSE #149 Photo

One of the best things about doing a blog is hearing from someone who actually reads it and found something interesting. And when they send you a photo or clipping related to the topic, it's like getting an early Christmas present!

My blog posts about the Lorain City Airport are still generating some nice emails and photos from readers, who have been kind enough to grant me permission to post them here.

The photo at left (click on it for a closer look) is from local historian and archivist Dennis Lamont, who has helped me out on several occasions (such as providing the vintage aerial photo of Lorain that solved my Gregg/Foote House mystery). 

As Dennis related, the photo is of the Lake Shore Electric wood coach #149, shown at the Lorain City Airport in 1964. The photo is looking north towards the hangar. Leavitt Road would be to the right of the photo.

Apparently this car's history is very well documented. According to Dennis, #149 was disassembled in Sandusky in 1938, and from there was trucked to a bar in Birmingham, then to the Lorain City Airport, then to Paul Eckler's Farm outside of Norwalk, then to Delta, Ohio, then to Lions Park near Sylvania and then to its final resting place (which I'll reveal at the end of this post).

The great Arcadia Publishing Lake Shore Electric Railway book (by Dennis Lamont, Thomas J. Patton and Albert Doane) includes this photo of #149 with the following caption. "Car No. 149, one of the "big" Niles cars, was extended to 60 feet in 1923 so it could handle the large passenger loads necessary to work the Cleveland-to-Lorain runs and school bus runs. The Cleveland-to-Lorain operation was the most profitable service ever handled by LSE, and it was profitable right to the end of the line."

Today #149 is part of the Northern Ohio Railway Museum in Chippewa Lake, Ohio. Click here to see #149's page on the Museum website.

And if you're looking for more online information about the Lake Shore Electric Railway, be sure to drop by Drew Penfield's Lake Shore Rail Maps website.

Thanks again to Dennis Lamont for the great photo.

And I'm not through with the airport yet – the photos's are still a-coming in!

1959 Bill Long Article

A few weeks ago while blogging about growing up on Lorain's westside, I mentioned the Lorain City Airport and received a few comments and emails about it. It seems to be a topic that many people besides me find interesting.

I noted that on some maps back then, the airport was still referred to as Long's Airport. Well, the photo above is of Bill Long, who operated the airport. The photo accompanied an interesting article that I found in the 125th Anniversary of Lorain edition of the Lorain Journal at the Lorain Public Library.

Here is the article, as it appeared in the July 18, 1959 Journal. It was written by Edward Brown.

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Began 50 Years Ago
Old Flier Finds Beard Gets More Attention
by Edward Brown


Bill Long, 74, doesn't much care for the attention he gets as "one of the older fliers in the country still active," and now he is getting more than ever since he's grown a Gabby Hayes beard for Lorain's anniversary celebration.

"Why they've asked me to be judge at the antiques show on Harry Griffin's place in Sandusky," Long complained. "But I don't want to. I want to get out and mix with the boys."

Just about every Sunday in summer Long downs a little oatmeal and garlic, drives over to the Lorain City Airport in his "Continental Bentley" and tunes up one of his four planes for a jog to Fostoria, Bryan or Cedar Point.

"Some of the boys don't like to fly with me," he said. "So I usually go alone, but there's quite a crowd that comes for breakfast." The "drive-in, walk-in, fly-in" breakfasts are held Sunday at private airports around the state.

Once in a while in the afternoon there's a plane show or a flying meet at another town, maybe 100 miles away – "wherever the boys can get someone with a field big enough to land –" and Long has to take off again to get there in time for lunch.

Most of the time that Long hasn't been in the air – and he has logged over 4,500 hours in the last 50 years – he has been collecting old photographs, violins, cars, land and a lot of good memories.

"I got stuff my dad and grandfather had," he said. "You don't know what kind of a junk house I got."

The house is at 172 N. Broadway where Long lives with his sister, Mrs. Jenny Jack. Dad Long brought his family from Edgerton to Lorain in 1897 when the community's population was only 3,500.

One of the prize "junk" pieces, a racing car driven by Barney Oldfield, stands in the hangar at the Lorain City Airport. Long says he bought it from a patent medicine man who drove it to Lorain in 1902 "to attract a little attention" for his sales pitch.

Another old relic is the propeller to the Curtis Flying Boat Long piloted at Cedar Point during the twenties. In those days the "Admiral of Cedar Point" had a booming business taking vacationers on short flights. (Blogger's note: click here for a link to an article about the recent sale of this plane)

"I probably had more takeoffs and landings than any other pilot in the country," he said. "With a mechanic and a ticket taker we hustled'em through, sometimes 12 flights an hour, 12 hours a day during the season."

But in 1932 he quit his rugged summer schedule. It was towards the end of the season, and the pilot and his mechanic were out for a lark swooping across the end of Cedar Point toward Sandusky Bay.

"The wind was blowing hard," he said, "But I hadn't a drop to drink all day. Over the woods a down-draft caught us and dragged the ship into the bay."

Long, who said he couldn't swim a stroke, managed to hold onto the wing until someone fished him out. As he lay on his back 3 1/2 months with a busted pelvis and ankle, he learned he had crashed in four feet of water.

It was his first and only accident in nearly 50 years of flying. The bug initially came in the 1890's, when Long began reading his "crazy" uncle's five-cent novels about Frank Reed Jr. and his flying machine.

In 1906 his friend, Frank Miller, went down to Dayton to learn to fly and got killed. "That kind of took the wind out of me," he explained.

Then Glenn Curtiss made history flying 65 miles from Euclid Beach to Sandusky in 1910, and the young Lorain garage mechanic was ready to give it another try.

"We didn't have any flying lessons in those days," he said. "We'd just get in a plane, start taxiing across the field, let her take off a little bit and then shut the motor off."

Like the old racing car, the wooden propeller, the Stradivarius violin and the property down in Florida, there are too many memories associated with the airport for Long to think of getting rid of it.

"I've been operating an airport in Lorain as long as anybody's been flying around here," he said. "I like it and don't intend to sell it until I have to."

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Bob Kovach, one of the regular readers of this blog, used to live right across from the Lorain City Airport while he was growing up, and he spent a lot of time over there. He was nice enough to send me this great photograph of Bill Long's Ercoupe. The photo is from 1972.

Seeing the hangar in the background brings back a lot of memories. Thanks, Bob!

Happy Thanksgiving!

If you were heading down the aisle of your favorite Lorain County Food Fair back in November 1967, these are some of the Thanksgiving bargains that you'd find! (Give it a click so you can read it!)

I think it's interesting that the newspaper ad states that "Your Food Fair Store will have a large variety of selected FRESH POULTRY for your Thanksgiving... CAPONS, ROASTING CHICKENS, GEESE, DUCKS, and TOM or HEN TURKEYS..."

For years my mom fixed two birds for our family: a duck and a capon – rarely a turkey. When I mention this to people now, they inevitably ask, "What's a capon?" If you don't know, click here.

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For those of you who like to go out on Thanksgiving, back in 1955 you could saddle up and head to the Saddle Inn on Lake Road in Avon Lake for a great dinner!

Since I'm a Sheffield Laker, back in 1955 I probably would have headed over to Vian's Barbecue for my Thanksgiving feast! It would have been only a mile from where I live now.

And of course after a delicious dinner either at home or at a fine restaurant, what could be better in 1955 than going dancing on Thanksgiving – especially to the music of Lorain's future Mayor Joe Zahorec?

Happy Thanksgiving!

1955 Lorain Arena Aerial Shot

Here's another ad from that Clem Rice newspaper ad from 1955 that I mentioned yesterday. It's a nice aerial view of the Lorain Arena, which opened that year.

The caption of the photo read, "Mr. Rice is proud to be the builder of this million dollar Arena. It is one of the most up to date in this part of the country, located on Routes 2 & 6, just west of the city limits."

(Back here in June, I did a series of blogs on the Lorain Arena, and was given a tour of it by Bill Latrany of Coldwell Banker Hunter Realty. Bill has been a great supporter of this blog, providing me with all sorts of ideas, personal anecdotes and vintage photos. Thanks, Bill!)

Anyway, a comparison between the vintage photo and one from this past May (below) reveals some minor structural modifications of the former Baetz Dairy Bar building (consisting mainly of reducing the two large windows in front and expanding the left end of the building).

Pure Service Station at Oberlin & Meister

Here's a photo that ran as part of a 1955 newspaper ad for Clem Rice, "Builder of Beautiful Homes." The full page newspaper ad for the company had a nice assortment of photos of both residential and industrial construction projects that the company had recently completed.

Here's one of them. The caption for the photo read, "Located on the corner of Oberlin Avenue and Meister Road, this is one of the eight Service Stations Clem Rice has completed in the past three years."

The 1955-56 Lorain City Directory identified the station as Jack's Pure Oil at 3217 Oberlin Avenue. It was the first gas station at that intersection, predating both Super's Sohio Station and Bill's Sunoco Service Station by a year in the City Directory.

It also predated the Lorain Plaza Shopping Center, which I assume was constructed where all those trees are in the photo. The Sandy's hamburger drive-in at the same corner came a decade later in 1965.

Jack's Pure Oil became a Union 76 station in the early 1970's. (This wiki entry explains why.)

Here's what the same corner looks like today. The Valero gas station has the same 3217 Oberlin Avenue address.

By the way, the PURE brand is still around. Click here to visit the official website. Remember the great "Firebird" logo?

F. C. Whitmore House Then & Now

Here's another photo from that Lorain, Ohio 1903 Souvenir and 1924 Tornado book at the library. This one is identified as the residence of Mr. and Mrs. F. C. Whitmore.

A 1912 City Directory at the library had the Whitmores living at 225 6th Street – meaning their house was right across the street from the library! I just didn't recognize it right away because of the extensive changes to the exterior.

Here is how the house looks today. Looks like a few of the original trees are still there, more than a hundred years later.

A funny side note: the photo above was my second attempt to shoot this house. On my first try, while I was focusing (from across the street) a passerby walked into the photo and planted himself in front of the house. Apparently he really liked that spot, because he stood there with his back to me for 15 minutes! Wary of shooting anyone without their signed permission (and reluctant to say, "Hey man, would you please get out of my shot?") – I gave up!