The Big Picture: Lorain Ohio

Bill Long piloted his first plane in 1909. Well, technically, he was at the controls on many occasions in the previous year, but 1909 was the first time he actually took one off the ground.

Long, an Edgerton, Ohio, native who moved to Lorain, Ohio, with his family when he was a year old, was already a successful car dealer. But in 1908, some Lorain residents brought a Bleriot monoplane to him to fix up, and it served as entry into a lengthy aviation career.

At first, Long drove the plane around a racetrack before taking it into the air. He helped Glen Curtiss make his historic flight from Euclid Beach in Cleveland to Cedar Point in Sandusky. But when he tried to join the Army as a flier in World War I, he was turned down due to heart palpitations.

In 1926, he finally got his pilot’s license. It was an easy process, he recalled. “The government man came out in 1926 and said, ‘Let’s see you fly.’ I did and he gave me my license right then.”

The massive tornado in Lorain in 1924 effectively sank Long’s auto business, but his love for flying could not be abated. He worked with other aviation pioneers, both inventors and producers in aviation, and some of the nation’s most famous fliers, including Eddie Rickenbacker (whom he called “the fella in Detroit”) and Jimmy Doolittle (“the fella in Dayton.”)

Long also ran a flying service, taking passengers to Cedar Point. (In the days of Prohibition, he also might have transported some liquor from Canada to the United States, as well as given rides to federal agents to look over rumrunning routes. Of course, not at the same time.)

In 1932, while on a flying run with his mechanic, Long crashed his flying boat, and both were laid up in the hospital for several months. 

But Long was undaunted. In 1944, he opened the Lorain airport (he grew crops between the runways) and remained an avid flier into his 80s. Bill Long died Feb. 9, 1971, at the age of 83.

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