The Bluegrass and Beyond

Piedmont Airlines’ first passenger flight from Lexington, on a DC-3 bound for Cincinnati, was Feb. 20, 1948. In 1965, Piedmont flew the first passenger jet flight into Blue Grass Field. File photo

When “Lucky Lindy” made a surprise overnight visit to Lexington at the height of his fame, he had trouble even finding the municipal airport, Halley Field, a converted pasture off Leestown Road where Meadowthorpe subdivision now stands.

More than 2,000 people watched Lindbergh leave the next morning. His five-passenger Ryan monoplane — similar to the famous “Spirit of St. Louis” he flew on the first solo non-stop Atlantic crossing — almost crashed on takeoff.

“Lindy Plane Barely Misses Trees at Hop Off,” The Lexington Leader reported with a front-page banner headline. “Lindy Says Lexington’s Airport Too Small for Present Aviation Needs.” How embarrassing.

That is one of many colorful stories Fran Taylor has discovered while doing research for a book Blue Grass Airport has commissioned to chronicle the history of the airport and aviation in Central Kentucky. Taylor wants help finding more great stories.

Everyone is invited to bring pre-1980 photos and mementos to the airport terminal’s lobby from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. A videographer will record oral histories, and a photographer will take pictures of special items. Prizes will be given for the best story, memento and photo.

“It’s a really rich history,” Taylor said, adding that the Aviation Museum of Kentucky at the airport has been a great resource. “Blue Grass Field was like the Forrest Gump of airports. If it happened nationally, it happened here in a big way.”

Although airplanes might have used a grassy meadow off Richmond Road as early as 1917, the first real local airstrip was Dr. S.H. Halley’s field, which opened in 1921 and became the municipal airport in 1927. After Lindbergh’s close call, Cool Meadow Field was built in 1930 on Newtown Pike, where Fasig-Tipton’s Thoroughbred auction facility is now.

It was at Cool Meadow that Lexington Airways offered flying lessons and Irvin Air Chute Co. tested parachutes it manufactured here, according to research by Frank Peters, an aviation museum volunteer. Airmail service began in 1939. Blue Grass Airlines offered regional passenger service a couple of years later.

When World War II began, the Army built a flight training facility that became Blue Grass Field across from Keeneland Race Course. The Army turned it over to the city and county in 1946, and the first terminal was dedicated that fall by Eddie Rickenbacker, the World War I flying ace and president of Eastern Airlines. Eastern and Delta Air Lines began passenger service with Douglas DC-3s.

Renamed Blue Grass Airport in 1984, the 1,000-acre facility now serves more than 1 million people — and several hundred horses — each year.

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II has made several trips through Blue Grass Airport, which also has been host to Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, and hundreds of movie stars and other celebrities. You know Keeneland sales are in session when Arab royalty’s Boeing 747s are parked nose-to-nose on the tarmac.

But did you know that the first air freight shipment from Lexington was a package of butter sent to President Harry Truman in 1945? Or that the supersonic Concorde made a stop in 1989? Or that the airport played a role in the nation’s most notorious hijacking?

Three hijackers with pistols and hand grenades took over a Southern Airways DC-9 with 31 people aboard in November 1972, demanding $10 million. They made stops in several cities, including Lexington, where the hijackers ordered a ground crewman to strip to his underwear while refueling the plane. After 30 hours and 4,000 miles, the plane landed in Cuba, where the hijackers were captured.

Everyone remembers Blue Grass Airport’s saddest day: Aug. 27, 2006, when Comair Flight 5191 crashed on takeoff, killing 49 of the 50 people aboard.

But aviation has shaped Lexington’s collective memory in more subtle ways, too.

I remember, as a child, getting dressed up to see my father off on an annual business trip. We would stand in the old terminal hall, surrounded by photographic murals of the bluegrass landscape, and wave as Dad boarded the plane and it disappeared into the clouds. It always left me wondering how such a big machine filled with people could possibly fly.

If you go

Blue Grass Airport history project

What: Public is asked to share stories, mementoes of airport

Where: Blue Grass Airport terminal lobby, 4000 Terminal Dr., Lexington

When: 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Aug. 11

Information: (859) 425-3105, Bluegrassairport.com.

Last year’s popular Second Sunday event at Blue Grass Airport will be repeated this weekend. People are invited to bring their bicycles, skateboards, rollerskates, sports equipment and walking shoes to have fun and get some exercise on the airport’s 4,000-foot runway Sunday from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m.

The free event will offer a number of activities, including a batting cage from the Lexington Legends, sports equipment from the YMCA and a display of various aircraft and safety vehicles, including fire engines, police vehicles, helicopters and unusual airplanes.

Participants can register to win tickets to one of three Florida destinations, courtesy of the airport and Allegiant Air. They also can bring picnics to enjoy while watching aircraft take off and land. During the event, aircraft will be using the airport’s main 7,000-foot runway, so there will be no interruption in flights.

Second Sunday participants should plan to enter the airport grounds from Versailles Road, near the Fire Training Center across from Keeneland Race Course. Parking will be adjacent to the runway. Leashed pets are welcome.

Second Sunday offers monthly events in Lexington and annual events statewide to encourage all forms of physical activity and fitness. Last year, 115 counties participated in the annual Second Sunday program in October, in which a section of road was closed in each county for the afternoon so people could use it for exercise and recreation.

Click here to see reports from last year’s event, which was a lot of fun.

One of the silliest things I’ve heard people say since the Lexington airport scandal began is that it’s a good thing the city didn’t take over the water company. After all, they say, business can always do a better job of running things than government can.

Apparently they haven’t been paying attention lately.

The mismanagement and malfeasance at Blue Grass Airport pale in comparison to the mess we’ve seen across corporate America. Most recently, some of our biggest banks and corporations have been running to the government seeking hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts.

Many jobs are done best by private enterprise, but some should be left to government. Both can succeed, and neither has a monopoly on inefficiency, mismanagement, short-sighted leadership, greed or dishonesty.

The real issue is that both government and business must be held accountable for their actions where the public interest is concerned. That’s why we must return to sensible government regulation of business and the markets, and more transparency and accountability in government.

President Barack Obama set the right tone with several executive orders Wednesday, his first full day in office. He ordered stricter ethical standards for administration officials to try to curb the pay-to-play system that has corrupted Washington. And, more important, he reversed Bush administration policies that favored government secrecy.

Obama said that when citizens request information about government activities under the federal Freedom of Information Act, it should be released unless there’s a good reason to keep it secret. That’s the way it was before the Bush administration effectively reversed the rule to favor a presumption of secrecy.

President George Bush’s excuse was that terrorists might gain access to sensitive information. There was never any evidence of that, but excessive secrecy helped hide his administration’s waste, mismanagement and abuse of power. Some of it came to light anyway, and who knows how much more we’ll find out about now that the veil has been lifted.

Obama called the Freedom of Information Act “perhaps the most powerful instrument we have for making our government accountable and also transparent.” He’s right about that. The old saying is true: Sunlight is a powerful disinfectant.

Believe it or not, Kentucky is a national leader in freedom of information and government accountability. Under laws dating back to the 1960s, government meetings in Kentucky are open to the public, and closed sessions are allowed in very limited circumstances. Remedies for violation of the law are swift and significant.

State and local government information is assumed to be public unless officials can state a legal reason for keeping it secret. They must act on a citizen’s request within three working days. If information is withheld, citizens can appeal to the state attorney general, whose opinion carries the force of law, although government can appeal to the courts. The Kentucky attorney general’s office has a long, distinguished record of favoring openness.

These laws aren’t just for news organizations trying to be watchdogs. Citizens can, and often do, use these laws to hold public officials accountable. (For more information about Kentucky’s open records and meetings laws, visit the Kentucky Press Association’s Web site.)

Were it not for journalists’ active use of Kentucky’s “sunshine” laws, the public wouldn’t know about the abuses at Blue Grass Airport and many, many other cases of illegality, impropriety and questionable ethics in government throughout the Commonwealth.

Kentuckians should oppose efforts to curtail these laws, and urge their legislators to close some loopholes.

The Administrative Office of the Courts, which runs the state judiciary, is exempt from the Open Records law. That should change, especially in light of Herald-Leader reporting last year about the wasteful $880 million courthouse building spree the AOC has conducted with little oversight or accountability.

At the least, the AOC should allow the public access to electronic court records now available online only to lawyers and police agencies. Federal courts have done this for years. There’s no reason to make people go to courthouses to see records that already are public documents.

Another loophole that needs closing involves juvenile court records. Although there are legitimate privacy issues to consider, there’s a much bigger concern that keeping these records secret allows abuse by state agencies and the courts.

Some Kentucky officials are using the Internet to make government more transparent. Among the best examples are the new “Open Door” Web site, created by Gov. Steve Beshear and a bipartisan task force, and Secretary of State Trey Grayson’s “Online Checkbook” site.

Obama said that “transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones” of his administration. Those are bold words, and we must hold him to them. We also must demand the same of our state and local leaders — all of them.