Sky King. Remember him and his Cessna T-50, the mighty Songbird? They flew ”out of the blue of the western sky” on Saturday morning television in the early 1950s to vanquish evil.
Well, Sky and his partner, niece Penny, fly again in a look-alike Songbird out of the western skies above McHenry County.
Maybe you`ve seen Dick and Jeannie Hill soaring over fields and towns in their restored T-50, the Bamboo Bomber. During World War II, T-50s served as double-engine bomber trainers for pilots who had advanced from single-engine biplanes, mostly Stearmans and Wacos.
The Hills of rural Harvard are two of a flock of sportflying enthusiasts in the northwest suburbs and beyond who are dedicated to the preservation of antique and classic aircraft. They scout the nation, even the world, for vintage airplane hulks; painstakingly restore them to their 1920s, `30s, `40s or `50s patina; then preen with their planes all summer long at fly-ins across the country. They are folks with a passion for flying the romantic planes of yesteryear.
Flying reunions and air shows continue in the northern states through the fall but climax each August at Oshkosh, Wis., at the Experimental Aircraft Association`s (EAA) international fly-in convention. (Dates for this year`s 40th annual fly-in are July 31-Aug. 6.)
Like homing pigeons, sport fliers around the world gather for a week of air shows, exhibits, workshops, forums and displays of show planes. Lined up row after row for admiration and judging are antiques (planes built before 1945), classics (those built between `45 and `55), homebuilts, kit-builts, warbirds, ultralights, light planes, rotorcrafts and seaplanes.
”Flying is a terminal disease,” Dick Hill, 64, retired Northwest Airlines pilot, said with a bit of a tease in his voice.
”It`s an infection. It keeps spreading,” he said, surveying the Bamboo Bomber with its 42-foot wing span, a restored classic 1952 Piper Tri-Pacer and more than half a dozen skeletons of aircraft stacked in corners and piled on shelves in a hangar borrowed from a neighbor. The Hills stable two older open cockpit restored Cubs and various airplane fragments in their own hangar fashioned from the barn behind their farm house.
”It`s absolutely not a disease,” said Jeannie Hill. ”Flying`s a love affair, a freedom, a liberation.” She scanned the sky as if caressing a lover`s face with her eyes. Jeannie, with her long, brown hair, brown eyes and red airplane earrings buzzing her neck, admits to celebrating her birthday recently, but she refuses to be 40. ”Just say it`s my 30-10th,” she said with a toss of the head that sent her earrings into a loop-the-loop.
Early that morning, Jeannie had taken up their 1933 E-2 Taylor Cub for a spin. While playing hawk and riding the thermals, she was joined by Dick in a 1937 J-2 Taylor Cub. They flew in formation for a while before heading to their respective destinations. Sky King and Penny, indeed.
”Flying is exhilarating,” Jeannie said. ”You either have the love or you don`t. For us, the ground is a grounding.”
Jeannie long had fostered a love of flying. She grew up in Oshkosh, just a hop and a skip from Wittman Regional Airport, home of the EAA convention. Because she was putting herself through college, she had no money for flying lessons. To earn tuition and to be close to planes and fliers, she worked behind the lunch counter at the airport. Wouldn`t you know. Oshkosh was a stopover for Dick as a pilot for North Central Airlines (which was acquired by Republic Airlines and eventually by Northwest).
”I`d stop in for snacks and met Jeannie who was working as a waitress. She wanted to fly, so I taught her. And now we`re 18 years married,” Dick said, blue eyes dancing.
”Well, I wanted to fly and couldn`t afford lessons,” said Jeannie, ”so I married him.”
The Hills are caught up in the romance of restoring antique aircraft.
”We are caretakers,” said Dick, leaning on the propeller of the Bamboo Bomber. ”I don`t feel we own this airplane. We`re custodians of it until the next caretaker comes along.”
”We`re historians,” said Jeannie. ”We`re in aviation for the preservation of history.”
Jeannie is one of the directors of the antique-classic division of the EAA. The Hills volunteer their summer weekends at the EAA`s Pioneer Airport in Oshkosh, a replica of a 1930s aerodrome. Each good-weather weekend, the Hills ”put up” four antique airplanes from the EAA collection, lecture briefly on their history, then ”hop rides.” Last year they took-off more than 200 times, giving rides to about 1,200 people.
”To keep these collections from becoming obsolete like dinosaurs, you need a landing strip,” Jeannie said. ”Some county boards are saying you can have only one plane. I can fly only one at a time. It doesn`t make sense to me.”
Dick`s passion for planes and flying took wing in 1944 as a high school student in Streator, Ill. ”Civilian planes couldn`t fly during World War II,” he said. ”But when the war was scaling down, the Streator airport re-opened and started giving rides for $2. I had a two-dollar bill in my pocket, so I took a ride.” Then Dick persuaded the pilot to apply the fee to lessons, which he started as soon as he could.
”As a kid, Dick lived either in a tree or on stilts,” Jeannie said with a laugh. ”He always wanted to be up, to be climbing. Now we want to instill our love for flying and appreciation of these old planes into others.”
That`s not so easy anymore. Because there are few small airports left in Cook, McHenry, Kane and Lake counties, there are fewer airport kids, youngsters who haunt the hangars just to be around planes and pilots. Bob Cosman, 15, of rural Huntley, is a classic example of an airport kid, one who prefers a Piper Cub to an F-17.
Tall, blue-eyed and looking like a young, blond Clark Gable, Cosman took his first plane ride when he was 5 or 6 years old-he can`t remember exactly. A neighboring farmer took him up and nurtured the boy`s enthusiasm. ”I loved it,” Cosman said, ”and I immediately started saving money to buy my own plane.”
Over the next seven years, Cosman, who has completed his freshman year as an honor student at Huntley High School, raised and sold cattle and hogs and worked on his parents` farm to save $11,000. Two years ago, at age 13, he bought outright a 1947 Cessna 120 that he`d seen displayed at Oshkosh.
Cosman is the youngest airplane owner in the United States. This year will be his tenth EAA fly-in. Although he`s been flying for years, once again he`ll fly his plane to Oshkosh accompanied by a licensed pilot. In Illinois, he can`t solo until he`s 16 and can`t get his license until he`s 17.
”I really like antique airplanes,” Cosman said. ”My `47 Cessna is aluminum with burgundy trim. Every day I read about planes in magazines and books and take flying lessons once a week. I want to be an aeronautical engineer. I want to design and build airplanes.”
”Flying has been the dream of mankind for centuries,” said Robert van der Linden, associate curator of aeronautics at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. ”There`s something romantic about aviation. It`s a symbol of progress and provides real speed. It also is an American creation in which the U.S. maintains its dominance.”
Van der Linden said that enthusiasts who restore old planes keep the spirit alive, as does the annual convention at Oshkosh and the Air and Space Museum itself.
”When the museum opened in 1976,” he said, ”planners hoped for 1 to 2 million visitors a year. Visitors, though, have been holding steady at 10 million a year. It`s the most popular museum in the world. Flying and vintage aircraft get a grip on people.”
Myrt Strong of South Barrington has felt that grip for 25 years, a little less than half her lifetime. The tall, slim blond started flying lessons in
`67 and earned her license in `77. Her romance with vintage aircraft has taken a more daring and varied course than most. First she demonstrated parachutes manufactured by the Strong Parachute Co. of Orlando, Fla., (of which she is part-owner) by jumping in them from planes. Next, she joined an air show (its announcer was Kirby Grant, the famed Sky King of early television) and barnstormed small airports as a wing-rider for four years in the late `70s.
A wing-rider, you say? Well, wing-walkers perform flips and somersaults in the space between the double wings of Stearman biplanes, steadying themselves with the struts. Wing-riders display their derring-do while strapped to a pole on the top of the upper wing of a Stearman. Their arms and legs are free to dance with the wind.
”The plane climbs to 1,500 feet,” Strong said, ”then dives at the main runway going 170 miles per hour. After it noses up, it does maneuvers like a loop, a figure-eight and a wing-over. The bottom of the loop is definitely a feeling. My first show ever was at Oshkosh. It was a wonderful experience, great fun and so exciting. (The year) 1990 in Florida was the last time I rode the wing.”
Strong`s personal plane back in the `60s and `70s was a blue and yellow 1941 J-3 Piper Cub, named Winston. ”After I first soloed him in Marshfield, Mass., I painted a smile on his face.” Strong was an art teacher at the time. ”Then, in 1980 when I moved to Florida to care for my mother,” she said,
”I sold everything, including Winston and a great old 1938 Dodge truck.”
After her mother died, Strong-always ready for adventure-spent some time exploring the Peruvian jungle and boating down the Amazon River, after which, back in the states, she met Bill Rose.
Rose, president of Rose Packing Co. and owner of one of Barrington`s newest restaurants, the Mill Rose Brewing Company, is also a sport flying aficionado. Rose hangars about a dozen antique and classic aircraft in South Barrington and at his farm in Marengo. Each July he hosts a breakfast fly-in in Marengo to which more than 100 vintage aircraft come. He also invites pilot friends to fly his fleet of restored aircraft to Oshkosh for the EAA convention. He leads the pack in his 1944 red, white and blue Grumman Goose.
Strong`s latest adventure will be to marry Bill Rose in September. For her birthday last year, Rose surprised her with Winston. He tracked down the 1941 aircraft through the FAA and found that it was for sale. He bought it, had it restored right down to its smile and rolled it out onto the grass runway for Myrt`s birthday and the plane`s 50th birthday.
To keep her adventurous spirit fine-tuned, Strong has 40 hours in helicopter flying, and when the skies are cloudy, she paints or takes to the backroads on her motorcycle.
It`s that love of adventure and vintage planes that powers the Dacy family of Harvard.
What started in the early 1900s as a dairy farm turned into the Dacy Airport after World War II. John Dacy, 75, is patriarch of the flying family that includes three offspring: Phil, 39, who buys and sells vintage aircraft around the world; Dave, 42, who rebuilds the vintage aircraft with his father and runs the Dave Dacy Air Show; and Susan, 35, a 727 pilot with American Airlines who is an aerobatics pilot for her brother`s show and rebuilds old aircraft in her spare time.
About 80 sport planes are based at Dacy. ”The number has remained even for the last four years,” Phil said. ”Aviation peaked in 1979. We find a more diverse group owning airplanes. Flying`s not their only passion.”
”Airports all over the country are closing down,” father John said.
”When I started here after the war, there were 48 airports in the collar counties. Now there are 16 left. We specialize in old airplanes. We have no charters and give no lessons anymore. We repair the old planes, and Phil sells them all over the world. We`re just maintenance and sales. No, I can`t remember when I`ve flown, it`s been so long.”
”Like a bus driver,” Dave said, ”he doesn`t take his bus out for a weekend drive. Flying`s our business.”
It`s not a business yet for some of the third generation Dacys. Phil`s children are smitten with flying and are spending their summer as airport kids, haunting the hangars and dreaming about their time between the wings:
Jessie, 14, wants to pilot a World War II North American T-6; Andrea, 12, aspires to be a wing-walker; and Patrick, 7, can`t wait to fly for the Navy.
Romance of the air still lives.
