Event Spotlight – Pylon Airport 50 Year Reunion
The Short Wing Piper Club website has our Events Calendar so the Club, chapters and other aviation groups can post events that might be of interest to SWPC members.
I plan to do an Event Spotlight from time to time to showcase aviation events. There’s an event coming up on Saturday in Texas that looks especially fun, the Pylon Airport 50 Year Reunion. The organizers of the reunion are looking for information about the people who were involved in this now closed airport. Even if you can’t attend the reunion, give this Event Spotlight a read. Maybe you’ll have some information or pictures somewhere that will help out the Pylon Airport gang! ~Myrna/Website Content Manager
Here’s some information from one of the Pylon Airport Reunion organizers, Joel Russell, with some information about Pylon Airport and their reunion event.
My Dad, Tom Russell (solo’d in ’49) and his friend Sid Fisher (solo’d in ’52) met in the mid 50’s and by the late 50’s were looking to start an airport. Land was purchased in Arlington, TX., hangers built and the small house that Dad had constructed for he and Mom was moved in to become the office building. The first plane landed there in May 1960. At the beginning there were at least 6 Luscombs and an Ercoupe. Soon after followed all kinds of “short wings”, 120/140’s, Bellanca, Fairchilds and more. I was born in 1959, and Pylon was a great place to grow up. Mom says at the age of 3 I’d walk the line of hangers knowing what each plane was and who owned it. Never one to know a stranger I enjoyed rides “around the patch” from any and everyone.
Unfortunately on December 20th 1965, Dad crashed his clip wing Cub while doing a slow roll down the runway and was killed. Sid carried on with the airport until the property was needed and purchased by the Arlington ISD in 1975. Today there is nothing left except an Mulberry tree my Mother planted that stood in front of the office.
I have been working on this “reunion” now for about 10 months and have placed flyers at all the surrounding airports, several on line with other sites including what has been a real gold mine, “Little Known and Abandoned Airfields” web site.
The meeting will be held June 22nd 2013 at the Grand Prairie Municipal Airport Terminal Building, Grand Prairie, TX. from 12:00-5:00. We are asking that anyone who might have photos to send them to this email so they can be included in a Power Point display, and to bring any mementos from Pylon. We hope to have several people fly in including one of the original Luscombs that belonged to one of the earliest Pylon members.
Click HERE to go to the Pylon Airport 50 Year Reunion listing on our Events Calendar or click on the image below to view full size.
