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For many, aviation passion begins early
By Mary Beth Breckenridge
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Sunday, Jul 13, 2008
LEXINGTON TWP.: You might say Ryan Newell has had his head in the clouds since he was born.
Maybe even earlier.
Newell, of Massillon, has been a regular as long as he can remember at the Taylorcraft Fly-In and Reunion, an annual gathering of enthusiasts of the aircraft. His first visit, he figures, was before he'd even made his initial appearance in the world.
''I was born in '81. My first Taylorcraft reunion was actually 1980,'' he joked.
Newell and his father, Tim, an East Sparta resident, were back again Saturday with other family members to enjoy the weekend gathering of Taylorcraft owners and the people who built them.
Tim Newell's Taylorcraft, purchased in 1979, is in his son's garage being restored, so the Newells had to satisfy themselves with eyeing the rows of planes parked on the grass at Barber Airport north of Alliance.
''We're airplane nuts, I guess,'' Ryan Newell said.
Taylorcraft planes were small
craft built in the Alliance area from 1936 to 1946 and from 1968 to 1986, said Forrest Barber, the airport's owner and a former Taylorcraft test pilot.
Taylorcrafts were designed to be affordable and easy to fly, and owners still like the 65-horsepower engines that use far less fuel than some other small planes.
The company was founded by C.G. Taylor, a former barnstormer who designed the Piper Cub and then tweaked that design in creating the Taylorcraft, said R.E. ''Duke'' Iden, one of the company's earliest employees and chairman of the Taylorcraft Old-Timers.
Taylorcraft planes initially were produced at a factory that now houses Lexington Abrasives Inc. After a reorganization in 1946, Taylorcraft moved several times before returning to the Alliance area to assemble its planes at what is now Barber Airport.
The rural airfield took on a family-reunion feeling during the fly-in, with aviation fans wandering among the planes and old friends catching up in lawn chairs.
Minerva resident Dorothy Middleton got a chance to revisit the plane she and her late husband, Forrest, had spent more than five years restoring, starting in 1979.
Current owner David Whitaker of Canton was displaying the white plane with the crisp red accents that Middleton painted more than two decades ago — a paint job that still looks pristine, thanks to Whitaker's meticulous maintenance.
For Whitaker, Taylorcraft ''is in the blood,'' he said. His grandfather, Louis Whitaker Sr., was the company's chief mechanic from 1936 until World War II, and his father, Louis Jr., owned a 1946 Taylorcraft for about 20 years. David Whitaker considers his own 1941 craft a flying museum, a tribute to the earlier, carefree days of aviation.
Iden remembers those days well. He fell in love with airplanes when, at about age 5, he was riding in the back of his family's Model T Ford and a Curtiss JN-4 ''Jenny'' biplane flew overhead. He began flying in 1931 and started building wing ribs for Taylorcraft in 1937, eventually working his way up to sales manager. He even flew his late wife, Bertha, to Wyoming for their honeymoon in a plane with ''Honeymoon Express'' and ''Here Goes the Sales Department'' scrawled on its side.
''I think airplanes were really my first love. That came before Bertha,'' the 92-year-old said with a gleam in his eye.
It's the kind of love his fellow reunion participants could appreciate.
Mary Beth Breckenridge can be reached at 330-996-3756 or mbrecken@thebeaconjournal.com.
LEXINGTON TWP.: You might say Ryan Newell has had his head in the clouds since he was born.
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