Response to Article in May/June Issue About Greenport Airport
Bob Kaelin of Riverhead sent in the following information on the short lived Greenport airport.

Several weeks ago, while down at Parker Wickham’s place, I was shown a copy of the LIEF newsletter from sometime this past year that requested information on an emergency airlift demonstration that was staged north of Greenport Village in 1940. I remember that; I was still little then and after went with my father to see it. We lived in Southold. At that age I would give anything to get near an airplane and was often treated to visits at the old Beers hangar in Westhampton.

As I recall, this demonstration at Greenport was part of the summer-long celebration of Southold’s 300th anniversary. It was organized by Joe "Doc" Hartranft who was one of the founders of AOPA and was himself, an old Southold boy. I knew the family, including his father, too.

This fly-in was done on the McCann farm which was a real showplace. Mr. McCann was a rich man from the city and may have had something to do with the well-known McCann-Eriksson advertising agency, but I don’t know for sure. My father would have known, because our family was in the farm machinery business and did business with then, probably dealing directly with the farm manager rather than with McCann himself.

I used to have pictures of this in a souvenir issue of the old County Review newspaper, but cannot find it. One showed a Taylorcraft and what appeared to be a twin Beech. Over the years, that newspaper merged with the old Riverhead News and is still in business as the News-Review papers in Mattituck. It also includes, or rather publishes the Greenport Suffolk Times. It might be possible they would still have some of the old files with photos and more information on this operation.

A little over 40 years ago, old Slim Hennicke got me to join the LIEF but I never remained active in it. Elmo Pickerill was still around then and if I remember correctly, he had gotten his license from Orville Wright. We also had Bill Hattrick from here in Riverhead as well as Bill Unkelbach for the Central Powers. They compared notes and figured out that they were in the same area near the front at the same time, so it was quite possible that they were shooting at each other nearly 50 years before that. It was an interesting group, that’s for sure. In later years, I flew as a member of a German flying club that included many Luftwaffe pilots, paratroopers, etc. from WWII. We had a Focke-Wulf Stieglitz, a Cub and a bunch of sailplanes. The Stieglitz was my favorite and I towed sailplanes with it. That old Focke-Wulf (it was a Swedish-built version) is still flying to this day. The Cub we had is now in Finland.

Through the 1960s I had an Aeronca that I kept at Mattituck. That’s down in Florida now. After that, I had two Taylorcrafts over the years, the last of which was a 1938 B model. That one is up in Maine, now. The Taylorcraft was a well-designed machine and certainly the best of its type in terms of speed, safety and comfort.

We now have a clubhouse at Mattituck for all of us who have flown there over the years and you must come and visit us sometime.

Editor’s note: Maybe Bob would like to become active gain with the club. I’ll give him a call.

Photo Caption: 1929 Curtis Fledgeling.

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