Balloonists, barnstormers and wartime blessings: New book celebrates Great Barrington Airport

A new book by local historian Bernard A. Drew, “Runway 29: A History of Walter J. Koladza Airport in Great Barrington, Massachusetts,” tells the century-long history of the airport on North Egremont Road. Drew calls it a “powerful resource” for the town because it is still used for business and recreational purposes and is historically significant for its flight training programs.

At a drive-in/fly-in event at the airport in June, Drew signed many copies of his book in front of a large crowd. Although the fly-in event was canceled due to foggy weather, Drew said that “pilots, pilots’ sons, pilots’ granddaughters, whole generations who had a close connection to the airport came to chat and buy a book.”

“Local histories are a way for me to give readers a sense of place,” said Drew, who has written the “Our Berkshires” column for The Berkshire Eagle since 1996, along with more than 50 books, about half of which are local histories, including a history of the town of Great Barrington. In writing this latest book, Drew looked back to the days before the invention of airplanes and discovered that ballooning had been taking place in the Berkshires since before the Civil War.

“Great Barrington was not an ideal launching site because of the mountains and wind conditions, but Pittsfield and North Adams were, so the balloons often came down from there,” Drew told Edge. Some local residents owned and flew balloons, and the Housatonic Agricultural Society once brought Madame Carlotta, the accomplished, record-breaking balloonist known as the “Lady Aeronaut,” to the fairgrounds for a demonstration. “Not only was this one of the first experiences for the local public to see someone go up in a balloon, but the pilot was a woman.”

Later, in the Wright brothers’ era, some early airplanes “made their way to Great Barrington, then came World War I,” Drew explained. Many airplanes were made by Glenn Curtiss at his factory in the Finger Lakes region for the American Air Force. After the war, the U.S. military had a surplus, so it sold the planes, and not only veterans but also ordinary citizens bought planes and learned to fly.

Flying circles began to form, with pilots traveling around the region and performing demonstrations. According to Drew, they regularly appeared in Great Barrington in the 1920s, taking off and landing in fields. “They were called barnstormers because they flew low over barns. They performed all kinds of aerial maneuvers for the public and offered rides.”

In 1920, one of the pilots began using an ideally located onion field on North Egremont Road. As more locals took up flying as a hobby, “the local Chamber of Commerce saw future value in an airport,” Drew said. In 1931, they decided to build a hangar, which is what makes an airport. Eventually, they paved the grass runway, hired a manager and constructed more buildings.

The flight schools at the new airport “proved to be very valuable when the country entered World War II – they had a pool of young men who knew how to fly. The Air Force could teach it, but it took a while,” Drew said. “One of the things I was happy to accomplish with this story is to show not only the long-standing connection with the community, but the fact that it was doing something of regional and even national importance in training new pilots.”

Airports in the region that also have flight schools are “few and far between,” Drew explained, and Koladza Airport’s legacy in that regard continues today. The school remains a way to get a pilot’s license without joining the military. A long list of flight students have gone on to become commercial pilots, including one who became manager of Bradley Field in Connecticut. Drew met some of them at the airport’s book signing.

Since writing the book, he added, it has been gratifying to meet or talk with some of the people he mentioned in his history of the airport. Drew also knew the airport’s namesake and longtime owner, Walter Koladza, a little and once took a flying lesson from him. Koladza, a flight instructor and partner from Connecticut, purchased the airport in 1946 and operated it until his death in 2004.

Under the management of Walt and his wife, Louise Decker, who was also a pilot, the airport earned the nickname “New England’s Friendliest Airport.” “They had a free car that Walt provided to take people into town,” Drew said. “They treated people right when they arrived.”

Small airports across the country have come under pressure and closed for a variety of reasons. Great Barrington Airport, for example, sits on an aquifer and “a lot of money has been put into building new tanks and protections to keep leaks from happening,” Drew said. Those challenges are also addressed in his book, but most of all he wants to explore and celebrate the airport’s colorful history in the context of our region.

All proceeds from the sale of the book – available at the airport, the Great Barrington Historical Society, The Bookloft, Shaker Mill Books and The Bookstore in Lenox – will benefit a scholarship fund for young pilots and the Great Barrington Historical Society.