June 25, 2008

In the beginning, the airport serving Rome, Utica and Oneida County was where Mohawk Valley Community College and the state Armory now stand on the Parkway and Culver Avenue in East Utica. It was named Glenn Wicks Field in honor of a Utica pilot who was killed overseas during World War 1.

Wicks Field opened in 1920 and had the distinction of being the area’s first commercial airport. There was a grass runway, a two airplane hangar, and on top of the hangar was a large American flag, which was patriotic, of course, but also gave pilots the wind direction. That’s all Wicks had. But it was better than landing on a golf course or cow pasture, which is what pilots had to do before Wicks opened.

The land was owned by the Tilden Realty Corporation but the aviation operation was operated by Stewart Davies, a Utican who came home from World War I with the experience of flying as an officer for the Army, a love of aviation and enthusiasm. The idea behind Wicks Field was to encourage local aviation, to provide a place for transient airplanes to get fuel, and to give Davies a base of operations.

Davies offered sightseeing flights to anyone brave enough to go up and he provided passenger service between Utica and Syracuse. (It took about an hour, give or take depending on the wind.) Alas, Syracuse didn’t yet have an airport so Davies landed at the fairgrounds.

Wicks Field had a grass runway. Some grass runways are a pleasure to land on. Wicks wasn’t one of them. The runway had ruts and holes and pilots didn’t like landing there. But back in the early 1920s, pilots coming into Oneida County either landed there or looked for a level field somewhere else and took their chance that a golfer or cow wouldn’t get in the way.

Into Wicks Field on August 15, 1927 came Lt. Commander W.D. Thomas, a naval aviator. As he touched down a wheel caught one of those ruts and the airplane, which had just been delivered to the Navy, did a somersault and ended upside down, damaging motor and propeller. Pilot Thomas suffered minor cuts. His young passenger, who could be seen smiling as she dangled upside down in her seatbelt, was not injured. In fact, she started laughing as she walked away.

That probably would have been the end of it had it not been for who the young passenger was. Her name was Corinne Aslop, 15, and she lived in Avon, Conn.

She was the niece of Theodore Robinson, who just happened to be Assistant Secretary of the Navy. And Uncle Theodore just happened to be watching as the airplane carrying little Corinne flipped over. Unlike his niece, the Navy Secretary wasn’t amused.

“The fault of the accident,” Robinson told a reporter for the Utica Observer-Dispatch, “lies in the rottenness of the landing field and no place else.”

The O-D reporter wrote that there was a cry of indignation in the secretary’s voice.
What happened to the aviation career of the pilot, Lt. Commander Thomas, has been lost in time, but maybe he got out of it okay because Secretary Robinson told the press, “It had nothing to do with the plane or pilot, it is this lan
ding field.”

Four days later, the area’s first official airport was closed by its owners. But a short time later a replacement field opened a few miles away, thus earning the distinction of being the area’s second airport.

Editor’s Note: This is an occasional series of articles about early aviation in Oneida County. Joe Kelly earned his private pilot’s license in 1969 at the Oneida County Airport when it was in Oriskany.


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Joe Kelly is the editor and publisher of The Boonville Herald & Adirondack Tourist and THE GRIFF.