• Sunday-What'sUP September 16 - 11:56 pm

For many years Calumet and Hecla put out a regular publication named " C & H News - Views", a tabloid style monthly filled with photos and stories about life in the company and in the community. I ran across the article above on page 1 of the September 1948 News-Views. Wonder if anyone else in Pastyland has any photos or memories of that dedication?

CMX is still is one of the finest airports in the state. It has one of six precision instrument approach systems in the U.P.
John Paduan,who has passed away now, came home from the war and started a limo service. He ran people to and from the airport from when it opened until the late "90's".
He told me many stories such as lighing fires in 55 gallon barrels at end of runway so the commercial flight could identify the runway end. They built a ramp so he could drive his limo up it so lights pointed in air to guide the plane in on foggy nights. Thats customer service.

Neil,I worked for the Airport for 2 years before getting a job at NC/RC and in those day in the winter it wasn't unusal to put out flare pots because the runway lights were buried. Try that some stormy night with a half mile vis. and blowing snow!!! Knew John real well, but never heard the story of the ramp!!!!

looks like three P-51 Mustangs. From the Michigan air National Guard??

Looks like World War 2 ,P-51 Mustangs on the runway.Beautiful plane.

Does anyone remember Northwest Airlines bringing in a DC-9 to give free 1-hour rides when the inaugurated their three-a-day DC-9 flights? I flew out and back on many of these DC-9 flights on which there were often only ten or so people aboard. And they even built a movable ramp designed specifically for this airport so that passengers didn't have to walk to the plane in the cold and wind. Of course that was before the ban on airport subsidies.

I always wondered why so many airports were closed due to a bit of not so great weather as I once landed at Houghton on an old Blue Goose Convair in a snowstorm so bad I could barely drive home to Lake Linden.

Oh yeah...Don I once got on a DC9 one Sunday with one other passenger. The flight attendent came out, looked at us and asked if we'd ever been on one before. We both answered in the affirmative. She said "well if you need anything just hollar, I'll be up here reading the paper". That was her entire spiel.

My commercial airline pilot friends tell me that they dread flying in and out of the Houghton County Memorial Airport when flying under IFR (because of weather conditions). They cite other reasons for their dislike of the airport that can be found on some airline pilot websites. These pilots probably are "wimps".

I was one of the 20 thousand there. My memories are not real defined for that day but the P51's were Air Force, not ANG. I also remember that some planes from the RCAF were present as the airport was built with some assistance from the Canadian government also.

Jim in checking my photos of that day. I find a P51 with tail # NG 47469. I was there too and could'nt recall those detail either , but check my Gallery and you can see for yourself

RCW
One thing for certain, my memory is a long way from perfect. My memory was probably based on
the idea that the National Guard was not very
prominent in those days.

Jim
Hey, I'm pretty much in the same boat re memory.

I was at the inauguration of the airport back in 1948.I remember being amazed at the speed and noise of the jets. The jets were gone and then the the sound.
That was a new thing to get used to. They also flew several of those twin fuselage fighters. They were fast and the pilot sat in one of the fuselages. Not in the middle. That was some day. My older brother worked on that airfield when it was under construction.

RCW has some better shots than the ones I scanned from the C&H publication... Here are 2 F80 Shooting Stars (first jets at CMX) and a pilot climbing into a P51:

By the way, Pete, back in the 80's and into the early 90's I flew around a half million miles out of CMX, before and after we sold our software company in '88. Wracked up a ton of frequent flier tickets when they started that program. I could have been the other person on the flight you mentioned, as there have been a couple of times when there were only a couple of us on the Detroit or Minneapolis flight.

I remember when CMX 'opened'. There were all these P 51s, P 38s, the flying boxcars, the old Jennies and other biplanes. This was all so exciting for an 8 year old! My brother was 5, my sister was 2 or 3. We lived in Paavola at the time and walked out there, up Arcadian Hill and over past some of the old mining buildings to the left. My sister kept saying, "When are we going to get to the 'hair'port?" :o) Am I really getting that old? Already?

Interesting piece of history + photos. Thanks 4 sharing.