Did you know?
You may recall that I’ve written previously about the time that the world’s greatest aviator (at the time) – Charles Lindbergh – made a highly publicized refueling stop near Uniontown in September of 1934.
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“Lucky Lindy” and his wife Anne were on their way to New York to testify at the famous Lindbergh baby trial the following day, when they stopped at Floyd Bennett Field on Connellsville Road.
Interest in the flying ace was so high, that even the serial number of the $5 bill he used to pay for his gas and oil was part of the front-page coverage that followed his brief visit.
“Drawn on the National Bank of Cincinnati, O., serial number A-003288 of the series of 1929. His bill was for thirteen and one quarter gallons of gasoline and two gallons of oil with a total cost of $4.27,” wrote W.R. Beckwith for the Uniontown Morning Herald.
Beckwith, eager to chronicle even the tiniest detail of this American hero’s visit to Fayette County, took great pains to unravel the non-mystery that proceeded Lindbergh’s purchase. What did Charles Lindbergh do with the 73 cents in change?
“The flier accepted the change in full and left no tip,” he wrote.
Lindbergh wasn’t the only famous aviator to make a stop in Fayette County.
On Monday, Oct. 23, 1933, the Morning Herald reported on its front page that “a man, suave and soft spoken, short of stature, dark hair, tinged with grey and dark, coolly-observant eyes was approached last evening as he stepped from the dining salon at the White Swan Hotel with the query: ‘Are you not Harold Gatty of Post-Gatty, Round-the-world-fame?'”
The questioner was a reporter, of course. And the man he asked the question of had been the navigator on a flight that set the record for aerial circumnavigation of the world in June of 1931.
Gatty, along with legendary pilot Wiley Post, had flown their Lockheed Vega around the globe in a flight that lasted 8 days, 15 hours and 51 minutes.
But, apparently, in October of 1933, Gatty’s goal was to try to circumnavigate the confines of the White Swan Hotel as inconspicuously as possible.
He admitted he was, in fact, Harold Gatty. But he hardly said much else.
He told the reporter that his renowned flight was “old stuff now.” And then he inquired about why there were no Sunday movies in Uniontown.
Otherwise, he only gave vague details about his landing at Uniontown’s Burgess Field, and that he was heading to Dayton, Ohio on “government business.”
In October of 1930, there was also a flight leaving Burgess Field, with a passenger that had gained some (local) notoriety.
“‘Betty, the goat, Burgess Field Mascot, makes flight to Virginia,” read the headline on the front page of the Oct. 22, 1930 edition of the Morning Herald.
“Betty” had apparently been a low cost lawn care worker at Burgess Field, but eventually low cost turned into high maintenance.
“The mascot’s appetite for shrubbery, airplane wings and shellac became too acute at the local field and as a last resort she was placed aboard the large bomber which left Tuesday for Langley Field, (Va.)” said the report.
From Langley Field, “Betty” was taken to Mather Field in California, “in an effort to give her a ‘change of climate’ which it is hoped will cause her to have a change of diet,” the report concluded.
Last week, I wrote about New York Symphony Orchestra’s concert in Uniontown in October of 1925.
But the New York Symphony Orchestra was hardly the only world-renowned musical organization to take to the concert stage in Uniontown.
In October of 1959, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, under the leadership of William Stenberg, made its fifth appearance in Uniontown.
But what made that concert unique was what happened when Uniontown Mayor J. Watson Sembower joined Steinberg on stage.
Sembower was pictured on the following day’s edition of the Morning Herald, handing Steinberg a baton that had been specially crafted from wood taken from the ancestral home of Uniontown’s George C. Marshall.
The concert took place on the day Marshall was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
I found a rather interesting picture that was published in the Oct. 3, 1950 edition of the Uniontown Evening Standard.
“All Bald Up,” said the line above that picture. It seems there had been the annual convention of the “United Bald Heads of America” in Port Arthur, Texas, and the “delegates” were pictured “Exposing their glistening pates to the hot Texas sun.”
Some of those delegates were waving signs that said, “United Forever In Holy Bands of Baldness,” “No Dandruff for ME,” and “Men of Extinction.”