One thing was sure to lure young Bob Downs away from the dinner table.

It was when he heard a Stinson mail plane passing above his childhood home on Latrobe’s Irving Avenue, en route to the Latrobe Airport.

“I would jump up from the table, dash to the door and get out on the porch just to see a glimpse of that plane going overhead,” said Downs, 90, who now calls Monroe­ville home.

“The plane had what they call a gull wing,” resembling that of a seabird, he explained. “It was so graceful looking, and the engine sounded so powerful. This is where I got my desire for flying.”

Known as Arnold Palmer Regional Airport since 1999, the airport in Unity is named after the local golfing legend and pilot who graduated from Latrobe High School two years before Downs got his diploma, in 1949.

The historic first official airmail pickup occurred at the airport on May 12, 1939. By the time Downs worked there, from 1945 through 1948, as a teen mechanic’s assistant and “go-fer,” Stinson planes swooped down twice a day to grab mail bags suspended between poles, on one of five airmail routes serving the region from Pittsburgh.

In between pumping fuel for planes, helping to mow grass and other chores, Downs got to witness the mail pickups — presided over by one of the mechanics, Paul Smart, and Cubby, the pet collie of airport manager Charlie Carroll.

“Cubby was the mascot for the airport,” Downs said. “He would run in circles around the mail pickup sticks, and he wouldn’t let anybody get around them except Mr. and Mrs. Smart.”

Pioneer spirit

Dating from 1924, when it was known as Longview Flying Field, the airport began as a haven for pioneering local aviation enthusiasts. That same spirit was still evident when Downs arrived on the scene.

One of the pilots Downs admired was Lou Strickler. Son of Latrobe pharmacist David Strickler, who is credited with inventing the banana split, the younger man flew a Beechcraft Staggerwing airplane.

“The landing gear would retract into the forward wing,” Downs explained. “It was a very pretty airplane.”

At the time, the primary airport building was a hangar, along Route 981, that had “huge steel sliding doors that you opened by hand,” Downs said. Adjoining it was a small wood frame structure that served as the airport office.

As a mechanic’s assistant, Downs helped to repair fabric coverings on planes housed at the airport.

“Every once in a while, the mechanic would have to go somewhere to repair a plane or do some work to get it back, and I would go with him — primarily, to get an airplane ride,” he said.

He flew to Connellsville as a passenger with mechanic Tom Rankin, who repaired a plane that had landed badly. Downs recalled the pilot had “spiked the brakes, and the tires slipped on the rim and deflated. The plane nosed up, and it damaged the propeller.

“That was probably the first plane ride that I had.”

During World War II, Downs said, “They did a lot of training at the Latrobe Airport for the Army Air Force,” mostly using yellow Piper Cub planes and civilian instructors. “They didn’t want to tie up their military pilots training the students. They wanted to get them past that initial flight training using civilian trainers.

“They did dress in uniforms and carry out a lot of military protocol.”

Tales to tell

Downs benefited from the experience of George Allen, an African-American pilot and flight instructor at the Latrobe airport.

“He was the first commercial instructor in Pennsylvania that was of color,” Downs said. “Any time he had a spare moment I loved to sit and talk to him because he had a lot of tales to tell.”

Among Allen’s students at Latrobe was Fred Rogers, who went on to create the “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” children’s television program.

During World War II, Allen served as chief pilot for civil pilot training and squadron commander at the Primary Flight School at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

At the time, there were no adequate lights to assist pilots with landing at the Unity airport after dark, Downs said. But, that had been remedied by the 1980s, when he returned to the Unity airport as a private pilot and freelance flight instructor after serving a stint in the Army and beginning a career as a nuclear design engineer with Westinghouse.

The facility had become Westmoreland Airport in 1978, when the county took over its ownership and operation.

Over the years, Downs had about a dozen midair difficulties, either because of mechanical failures or poor weather conditions, but he emerged from all of them unscathed.

One such emergency brought an abrupt end to a flying lesson with a student, after they landed a Cessna 150 plane for refueling at the Unity airport.

“We were taking off to the northwest, and we were just crossing over Route 30, when the engine got very rough,” Downs recalled. Invoking an emergency prerogative, he took the quickest approach back to the airport instead of circling in a standard landing pattern.

“I wanted to get on the ground as soon as possible,” he said. Once he did, “The whole plane was shaking. When we got back to the parking area, I got a screwdriver out, took the cowling off, and found out one of the push rods had broken. It was a critical part that failed.”

In 1999, Downs was named FAA Flight Instructor of the Year by the Allegheny Flight Standards Office. He continued to pilot his own small plane for pleasure until he was 80.

‘In good shape’

Anthony Ferrante, a civilian pilot from Vandergrift, has seen the airport transformed with many leaps forward during the past several decades — including 13 years, beginning in 2002, when he served on the Westmoreland County Airport Authority that now operates the facility.

Ferrante, 79, was inspired to take flying lessons after attending an airshow at the airport in the mid-1970s.

He went on to operate a flight school at the airport for a while and continues to serve as a “red shirt” volunteer at the facility’s airshows. “Mostly, we control the crowds,” he said. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s a lot of fun.”

The airport skipped holding an airshow last year because a headline act wasn’t available. Ferrante recalled an earlier time when that occurred several years in a row. Instead, the airport tried holding car shows while an outside organization offered rides on a B-17 bomber, charging a fee of $600 for 20 passengers.

“They could pull their cars up under the wing and take a picture,” Ferrante noted.

The airport’s terminal building, control tower, runway and parking areas all have expanded through the years, while the flight options also have progressed. Charter service initially was augmented by commuter flights. Since 2011, Spirit Airlines has operated regular commercial routes. Current destinations include Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Orlando and Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

The airport’s past control tower, an orange trailer elevated on poles along Route 30, was replaced in 1982 by the current version that is near the terminal, according to Ferrante.

“When we didn’t have enough (air) traffic, we were in danger of losing the tower,” he said. “Now, since Spirit came along, we’re in good shape.

“It’s amazing what this little airport turned out to be.”

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