Beckley's Flying Circuses

Even before the airport here was built in the late 1930s, Raleigh County hosted a variety of air shows and flying circuses that were especially popular with local coal miners who might never have seen an airplane before. These events included static displays, barnstormers, wing walkers, and parachuting demonstrations, and they offered plane rides over the city for one dollar or over the New River for two dollars. A 1932 show featured a parachute race between men and women performers near the White Oak Country Club. At a 1940 air show at Beckley-Mount Hope Airport, promoters announced that a local Beckley girl would make her first parachute jump from an airplane as a fundraiser for the Christmas toy fund, but a later newspaper account reported that, out of concern for her safety, pilot Herb Sessler secretly removed her from the plane at the end of the field and sent down a dummy jumper instead, raising money for charity through the stunt.

Beckley, West Virginia · United States