Podcast: Taking flight with the Bayport Aerodrome Society
By Joe Adelmann
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Transcript: EPISODE 5: AERODROME PROFILE PIECE
Long Island has a deep and rich history in aviation. Some of the most famous pilots have flown from airports and runways on the Island that is home to the Cradle of Aviation Museum. However, history is not always just put on display and left for the past, at least not in Bayport.
Transcript:
When was the last time you actually enjoyed the act of being in a plane? Modern air travel is generally viewed as a pain having to go through security, check bags, and be crammed into a packed airliner with not enough leg room and spending the whole flight in uncomfortable seats. Not to mention the significant lack of views, even for the lucky few sitting in a window seat. Well, there’s a whole other side to the aviation world that many don’t know about, but for those that do, it is magical…
Bill Clifford: I was just shocked at how magnificent it was, how, the beauty. To see what the birds see… you don’t get this on an airline. And for people who have never left the ground, or only left the ground in an airline, they have no clue what they’re missing.
That’s Bill Clifford, a pilot who is one of many members of the Bayport Aerodrome Society, describing the feeling that comes from flying in small propeller powered planes, or prop planes. I understood exactly what Bill had meant when another member of the Bayport Aerodrome Society, Stuart Bain, took me on a flight in his antique Piper Cub. There is a sense of awe and wonder that immediately fills you from sitting in a plane and looking out in any direction onto the world below. Stuart controlled the plane and pointed out some of the scenery below as we flew south out of the Bayport Aerodrome. Cars looking more like toys on roads that expand from the grid of the town center and eventually snake out into neighborhoods and cul-de-sacs. Highways and parkways cut across the landscape like gray veins flooded with multicolored traffic flowing on them as people rush home or out on errands. Harbors and small docks filled with boats of all shapes and sizes complete the picturesque image of the south shore hamlet on the water that is Bayport. Unbeknownst to many Long Islanders, Bayport has far more to offer than scenic views and traditional South Shore life. Hidden in plain sight, surrounded by trees in northwest Bayport, sits the Bayport Aerodrome, the last municipally owned grass runway on Long Island and what many consider the Island’s best kept aviation secret. Leasing the hangars at the runway is the Bayport Aerodrome Society, a club of pilots and aviation enthusiasts. It is their love of aviation history and passion for flying and antique planes that makes the Aerodrome a living and breathing museum.
Bob Mott: We’re not about collecting static display stuff. We’re about actually flying everything that we have and using everything that we have.
That’s Bob Mott, the museum director of the Bayport Aerodrome Society.
We definitely are big about the golden age of aviation, so like 1920s, 1930s, You know we like to support that, and we have some airplanes from that era here, and that is like the real … thing. But this airport didn’t really get it’s start until after World War 2…
Which historically speaking made the Aerodrome one of the late additions to Long Island’s storied aviation history. Long Island is the Cradle of Aviation, after all. It earned this prestigious moniker thanks to the seemingly endless number of feats and developments that originated from between its shores. Long Island is home to relatively large plots of flat open land, especially in Hempstead. A stone’s throw away from wealth of New York City, and it’s general geographic positioning gave Long Island all the pieces it needed for aviation success. In the early 1900s airports and aerodromes covered the landscapes as the skies filled with planes and surrounding areas filled with aviation-related industry. Roosevelt Field may be known for its plethora of shopping options now, but in 1927 it was an active airport and was the starting point to Charles Lindbergh’s revolutionary first ever non-stop flight over the Atlantic Ocean. In 1939 Pan Am took off from Port Washington with the first-ever commercial passenger flight across the Atlantic. Some of aviation’s finest hours and creations come not from commercial air travel, but in times of war and in the form of military aircraft. In 1941 Farmingdale’s Republic Aviation developed and supplied the P-47 Thunderbolt, a single seat fighter plane that many U.S. and Allied troops used during World War 2, including during the D-Day invasion. Then of course is the Long Island behemoth that is Grumman. Grumman has supplied military aircraft such as the Hellcat and Wildcats of World War 2, along with the long-running F-14 Tomcat from the ’70s to 2006. And Grumman’s most famous contribution to aviation history was developed and built in Bethpage, the Apollo Lunar Module. The LEM took years to develop and the effort of thousands of Long Islanders throughout the aviation manufacturing industry and within Grumman itself, all to land man on the moon.
But as the years have come and gone, the golden age and glory days of aviation on the Island seem to be a thing of the past, destined to be history seen only in museums and read in textbooks. As pilot and Aerodrome society member Jim Seer points out:
Jim Seer: This Aerodrome is a literally a flying museum, and there aren’t many of them left.
And Museum Director Bob Mott agrees:
Bob: Many, many others on Long Island are long gone. I mean I have a map where there’s like, something like 32 airports on Long Island, and it uh, now today it’s like there’s like maybe 16 left. So half of them are already gone.
So too does Aerodrome Society Vice President Bill Clifford:
Bill: Airports are disappearing, and with that the chances for people to experience aviation or to see it as it was is disappearing with it.
Yet in Bayport, as Aerodrome Society member and pilot Stuart Bain notes, the Aerodrome stands strong, keeping the proverbial torch of history burning bright for anyone who wishes to see it’s brilliant light and bask in the warm glow of days past.
Stuart Bain: There’s a lot of cool airplanes down there, there’s a lot of airplanes that there’s only one of in the country.
Much like the Olympic torch, the path that led to the Aerodrome holding the proverbial torch of history was long and not always easy. Tracing the roots of its grass runway, the Bayport Aerodrome was once a corn field owned by the Davis Family, an iconic Long Island family famed for their moving company. After his father’s passing, Curtis Davis decided to transform the family farm into the family airfield. In 1947, he completed the transformation and had built two sets of hangars on the runway, one for himself on the south end, the other to rent out at the north end. Unfortunately Curtis became ill and by 1953, sold the land to a flight school owner George Edwards
Bob: So he told his whole family we’re gonna pick up lock, stock, and barrel, whole family and move out to the boonies and and operate an airport out there, would you with me? And his daughter, son and wife all said yes.
The Bayport Aerodrome Society’s resident historian and Museum Director Bob Mott with more of the Aerodrome’s history.
So he bought the airport. The Davis house movers picked up his house in Wantagh. They put it right here at the airport at the other, the south end of the airport, and he would leave his back door and walk across the field and go to work every day for the next 20 something years. And by the time the 7, the ’70s came, it was basically known as Edwards Airport.
Under Edwards, the airfield boomed as a commercial airport. Seventy-five to 80 airplanes called the runway of the Aerodrome home. Sadly, that too slowly died off, and by the early 70s Edwards was looking to retire. Like Curtis before him, Edwards sold the land, only by now the “boonies” of eastern Long Island were the targets of real estate developers. Land values were skyrocketing and the demand for housing was only ever increasing. So Edwards sold off his airfield to a company who planned on turning the Aerodrome into a housing development. Turns out, Bayport wasn’t exactly fond of the idea. Once again, Bob Mott explains:
Bob: That would have really hit the tax base for the, uh, school district. The local airport, we’re used to the nice sleepy airport being here, not a housing development. So it was a really unique set of circumstances, ’cuz most airports on Long Island were closed up and paved over and made into housing tracks like that *snaps* no, no if, ands, or buts. But this one somehow managed to survive, and it was a miracle because politicians who wanted the airport to stay, you had, umm, the local neighborhood who wanted people to stay, and a whole big group of pilots from the Antique Airplane Club of greater New York who didn’t want to see the airport go away.
So, they all petitioned the federal, state and local governments for money to save the Aerodrome. By 1978 their efforts payed off, literally, as the Town of Islip officially purchased the land from the developers. On July 13th, 1980, the town officially dedicated it the Bayport Aerodrome, the name it still goes by today. Now this is an important distinction. The town owns the land at the Bayport Aerodrome, and the Aerodrome Society only leases or rents the hangars. This means contracts over those leases and rights must be renegotiated every so often, causing some turbulence along the way. The circumstances around their most recent renewal was far from the standard boardroom negotiations. A town contracted landscaper had cut back and trimmed the trees at the south end of the runway way too far, destroying the integrity of the natural barrier between residents and the runway. So the town supervisor at the time held a town hall meeting to discuss the issue and assure he would take care of the problem. Only the meeting didn’t go as the supervisor planned, and residents had some strong opinions and let the town supervisor know.
Bob: This guy was literally sitting in his living room having a cocktail watching airplanes coming straight down at him down the runway when there used to be a whole forest there blocking all that. So these people were not happy, so they demanded satisfaction from the town. But the people were enraged, so the Bayport Aerodrome society took it on as a great opportunity to, you know, maybe, you know, push our case for getting a new lease, because our lease was up. So we show up to the meeting and all the people are just going after the town supervisor. What they did was wrong, and he’s like yes, yes, yes, we’re going to fix the whole problem. And then one of our members stood up and started talking about what about the Bayport Aerodrome Society. You know our lease is up this year, we’re a feather in the cap of the town, you know, we’re a living history museum, what are you gonna do about our lease? And he didn’t want to talk about it, ’cuz he wanted to negotiate that behind closed doors, he wanted to be a tough negotiator. Well, the people in the audience who love us because of the events we do, and they love seeing the old airplanes, they said wait a minute, what do you mean talk to the bay — what do you mean give ’em a lease, give ’em a lease. Give them a lease! Give them, and alright, alright, alright and he ran out to his limousine. And he went to and they shook hands, and they gave us a 25-year lease right then and there. Alright, alright, alright, I’ll give them a lease, I’ll give them 20 years. ’Cuz he was only gonna give fi-. I heard later on he was only wanted to give us 10 years, but because of this big furor and all the people yelling at him, he goes alright, alright, alright ,and he gave us a 25-year lease.
With the lease secured for the time being, members of the Aerodrome Society could breathe a little easier and keep doing what they love, working on their beautiful antique planes and making the aerodrome a home away from home. Many take the idea of a living museum to heart, filling their hangars with memorabilia and historic displays, showing off their love and appreciation of aviation history before them.
Jim: The artwork on the, on the walls of the hangar tracks the heritage of aviation from World War 1 all the way through, um, today, and a lot of it is memorabilia from my father’s time, my time and what came before and after us.
Bob: anything ancient in aviation that I can find, or anything old that I can find that I can put on display in my hangar that’s not going to break the bank, I’ll, uh, I’ll buy and put up in the hangar. Stuff I’ve collected my whole life I’ve got in there. And it’s not just the airplanes, we have some vintage cars floating around here, vintage motorcycles around here.
Old school oil barrels, cans sit off to the side of planes as vintage advertisements and artwork of various single-engine prop planes throughout history adorn the walls of Bob and many other people’s hangars. Not to mention military flags flying proudly in the winds outside. Not surprisingly, in a place full of antique planes and vintage decor, the members of the Aerodrome have some history of their own to share with the world.
Stu: Some of the guys, the old guys, they’ve got some really cool stories.
Jim: What it is, there’s a lot of heritage here. There are people here that we would pass in the street and look at them and think that they’re little old men and in some cases, just little old women. When you start finding about, out about what they did in their lives it’s just fascinating. It just reinforces the idea that you can never judge book by it’s cover
Bill: I was in the Army for 2 years. I spent a year in Vietnam. When I had time off I could fly as a door gunner on a liaison ship and I never had to, uh, fire a shot in self-defense or anger. Actually my tour of duty was, uh, wasn’t terrible at all. And, uh, it’s a beautiful country, especially if people weren’t trying to kill each other. Most of the fellows here at the society are veterans. I was in the Army and a few of the fellows in the Marine Corps. One of the guys had a Marine Corps flag hanging on his hangar, another guy had a Navy flag on his…
Like the 92-year-old known simply as Fitz.
Fitz: I went to war out of Bremerton, Washington, to the Hawaiian Islands and then into the Pacific, where I was on a carrier out of Okinawa, where all the kamikazes was, was really very strong at that time. And fortunately we survived without getting hit by a kamikaze. You know as an 18- or 19-year-old kid like I was, I wasn’t scared. I was just determined that I wasn’t going to die, the other guy was.
Bill: And we have some fellow here who served in the New Zealand Air Force also.
Stu: I got to fly around New Zealand in a fighter jet, which was kinda cool. My job in the military was in armament and bomb disposal and doing stuff like that and I used to get to blow stuff up.
But don’t let these countless war stories intimidate you from visiting. The working-class vets and other members of the Aerodrome Society are not shy about sharing their passion, and are open to new visitors.
Bob: We’re not just a country club for rich old men.
Bill: Here it is, I can have all of these things that only very wealthy people can have if I’m willing to to have something that’s old. From a period of time which was so exciting. And I don’t even have to be a millionaire to do it!
Stu: I mean at the end of the day, we’re all doing the same kind of thing. So you know, we’re kind of a family.
Bob: We’re definitively an attraction, a town attraction. We are here for the public. We’d be, something wrong if we weren’t share trying to share it with other people. You know and try to keep it to ourselves. It’s really too nice for that.
And Bob Mott certainly means it. The Aerodrome is a great place for a day trip on a warm calm Sunday, with picnic tables, antique planes buzzing overhead, and history surround you. You never know, some visitors may get the experience of a lifetime, as Bob explains.
Bob: If you’re lucky enough someone might even give you an airplane ride, that has definitely happened, people have walked in here complete strangers. I mean I can tell you a story, I took a young lady for a ride many years ago in a little Piper Cub. I was running the engine up and getting ready and checkin-, doing my checks, making sure I was ready to go and the whole airplane was shaking on me this freaking plane is shaking, what the hell is wrong, do I have miss- is a cylinder missing, do I got a misfire, what is going on? Until I realize, it was the young lady in front of me was shaking so bad from fear, she was shaking the whole airplane. So I was like, oh my God, so I had to calm her down and said look, this is what we’ll do, I give the same deal to everyone else, as soon as we get off the ground and you don’t like this thing, I can be on the ground in about one minute. I can turn this plane around, get it back on the ground for you, and you’ll be safe and sound, so you let me know. She said okay. So you good? Okay. You gonna try? Okay. We take off and no sooner do we clear the trees and we start climbing out, all the shaking goes away, she sits forward and out comes the cellphone and she starts taking pictures immediately. And the rest of the ride she was just absolutely fine. Just loving the view, loving the whole thing. Got back on the ground, oh, I don’t know what I was so afraid of. That was fantastic, that was absolutely beautiful. So those are some of my favorite experiences when you get to share that with somebody, something I love and share it with somebody else.
It was thanks to the generous spirit of the members of the Aerodrome Society and their willingness to share their passion that I ended up sitting in the front seat of Stuart’s bright yellow Piper Cub looking out on the picturesque Bayport below. We followed our way back north to the Aerodrome along the river that cuts through the small hamlet, the trail of blue a stark contrast to the grays and greens that sit on either side. As Stuart pointed to the Aerodrome, it looked unassuming, a grass field in the middle of some trees. From the sky, the only difference between it and any other field is just a couple sets of buildings and the well-manicured strip of grass. While Stuart expertly pilots his plane down to the ground, the magic of the Aerodrome hit me again. Several of the antique planes come into view as they sit inside and outside the hangars as members who were also there for the day stop for just a moment to watch as the old Piper Cub touches down on the grass.
Stu: Now we’re open on Sundays. During the summertime we open all the hangars up and you know if you want to wander around, in, you can wander in, wander around. Look at the, all the aircraft and stuff that are there and talk to anybody.
Bob: Well, Bayport and the Town of Islip like to look at the Bayport Aerodrome as a feather in their cap, a little destination spot, where you are going to see some unique old airplanes do their thing you know.
Stu: People that have never been down there should make an effort to go down there and see it. Most people just think of an airport as a big concrete thing, and, you know, we’re not.
Bob: So that’s what makes this place unique. People put on leather helmets and goggles, they’re gonna jump in their airplanes like they did a million years ago and go tearing off into the sky.
Fitz: Once you fly one of those things, you fall in love with it.
Getting out of Stuart’s plane, he spots the seemingly impossible-to-remove smile plastered across my face. “Yeah, it’s pretty cool, isn’t it?” he asks nonchalantly. “Cool is an understatement, it’s not every day you get live history first hand, at least I thought it wasn’t.”
Jim: You can be part of history. That’s not an exaggeration. That’s the reality.
The Bayport Aerodrome opens their doors to the public on Sundays during the summer and hosts a couple big events every year for people to come down and visit. For more information about these events and the Bayport Aerodrome and the Bayport Aerodrome Society, check out BayportAerodromeSociety.org. For Ready for Takeoff, I’m Joe. I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride.
For more on the photography, go to https://www.imageamb.com/.
