The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Machine learning
History to be served at Planes, Trains & Automobiles in Leroy Township
The 68-acre Pheasant Run Airport in Leroy Township, home to one of the largest private collections of vintage aircraft in the country, on Aug. 15 will host a collection of trains and automobiles against the backdrop of a barbecue dinner.
A fitting fundraiser for the Leroy Heritage Association, the 4-to-8 p.m. picnic-style afternoon will showcase World War II U.S. Army Gen. George Patton’s personal aircraft, the Ford pace car for the 1953 Indy 500 race and a host of other planes and cars. A model train layout from the Painesville Railroad Museum will be inside the Pheasant Run hangar, a white frame building centered by a control tower at 5782 Trask Road.
The Heritage Association supports the 1832 South Leroy Meeting House, 13668 Painesville Warren Road, where it is creating a museum to preserve township history. Henry Brakeman cut and milled the wood for the Meeting House from local forests beginning in 1822. The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
Heritage Association member Gretchen Reed lives at the airport in a large colonial home she shared with her late husband, Charles F. Reed Jr. Airport Manager Chris Joles, who once was one of her aviation ground school students at Riverside High School, has an apartment on the property.
Reed, 76, who retired from Riverside in 1995 after 28 years of teaching English at that Painesville Township high school, also established an aviation ground school there in 1969. Although a depth-perception issue has grounded her, she was most fond of a Meyers OTW, an open-cockpit bi-plane built in 1943 as a military trainer.
“This is my escape,” she told a News-Herald reporter in a 1986 article.
That plane is still active in the main hangar and will be on display at the Planes, Trains & Automobiles event. Fifteen other planes are retired from flying and are on display in a second hangar, beyond a pond on the property.
Active planes, in the main hangar, use a 2,200-foot northsouth grass airstrip and an 1,800-foot east-west airstrip on the property. Joles flies a Titan Tornado light sport aircrafts and is reconstructing a CGS Hawk.
“I had 48 years of flying,” Reed said. “But since I had cataracts and lost my depth perception, I haven’t flown in more than two years.”
She also still has the motorcycle she rode until recently.
Like his mentor, Joles also was in love with flying from an early age.
“I was about 3, I think, when a relative took me on a pennya-pound airplane ride,” he recalled. “I’ve been in love with flying ever since.”
Trained as a propulsion engineer in the U.S. Navy, he was a devoted friend to Reed’s late husband and came to work for her at Pheasant Run shortly after she was widowed in 2008. He keeps his own plane there and will conduct tours of the museum at the event.
A 1935 Plymouth, which once belonged to his grandfather and has been restored by Joles, will be among the cars in the show. Car entries are still being accepted, and those entering a car will get a reduced admission.
Patton’s plane, with a toothy grin painted on its fuselage, is always an attraction for visitors when the museum is open to the public on summer Sundays.
“It’s an Interstate L-6,” Joles said. “Patton wasn’t a pilot, but it was his personal aircraft and was used during World War II for observation.”
Displayed along with it in a glass case are a bazooka and some hand grenades — grenades were usually were aboard the plane.
Flyovers, done by owners of historic aircraft, will take place during the event but are weather-dependent. No airplane rides will be offered.
The barbecue dinner, included in the $25 admission for the event, will be prepared by Painesville Township’s Smoke BBQ Grill at the restaurant and be catered to visitors beneath a big tent set up near the hangar.
“We smoke it on apple wood from West Orchards,” said Chris Baduria Smoke co-owner. “It’s wood trimmed from their trees at the end of the season.”
The meal will include barbecued pulled pork, barbecued chicken, tossed salad, macaroni and cheese, corn on the cob and watermelon slices. Water, iced tea and lemonade will be included.
Admission for kids is $10, which includes a dinner of hot dogs and macaroni and cheese.
Those who bring a car for the car show will be admitted for $15, which includes the meal. (Car-show entries must be arranged in advance, by calling 440-897-9671.)
Admission without the meal is $10 and $5 for children. Beer and wine will be available for purchase.
Mixed drinks from Perrybased Doc Howard’s Distillery will be offered at $5. Wine from the new Stonegait Winery in Madison also will be served.