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DESIGNED BY CHARLES LINDBERGH, THE BUSIEST AIRPORT IN ARIZONA DURING THE 1930s LANDED CLARK GABLE, CAROLE LOMBARD AND OTHER BIG NAMES WINSLOW INTERNATIONAL

The old man in a starched white shirt and tie stood silently in front of the rundown hangar at the Winslow Airport as the northern Arizona wind blew bits of paper along the runway and coated his newly polished black shoes with red dust. Joe Kasulaitis, still straight and tall although nearly 90, was telling me about the long-ago glories of the airport when it was the biggest and busiest one in the state and when all the famous aviators of the day as well as countless movie stars, celebrities and captains of industry flew out of Winslow for the East and West coasts. Kasulaitis paused in his retelling of those years and, turning away, he looked down the long runway. He didn't say it, but I knew he wasn't seeing the flat emptiness of the land or hearing the wind. In his memory, Kasulaitis was seeing aircraft landing, people scurying around, pilots watching their planes being refueled and passengers laughing excitedly as they waited to board. Then, with a wry smile, he picked up the conversation again.

"Over where the coffee shop is now was the waiting room," he said. "When their flight came in, the passengers would walk on a carpet to the plane, all dressed up in their best, because flying then was the most glamorous, adventuresome way to travel. Kasulaitis was intimately involved in those early aviation days. A resident of Winslow for 67 years, he helped build the Winslow Airport and ran it through the 1930s and during the war years of the 1940s.

Winslow had the biggest airport in Arizona and welcomed all (LEFT) The Winslow Airport was the biggest and busiest in the state as celebrities flew in for refueling on trips to and from the East and West coasts. those famous faces because it was the refueling point between Los Angeles and Albuquerque. "The planes of those days had a limited flying range, about 400 miles," Kasulaitis said. He considered it the best airport in the whole West, actually; better than Los Angeles, better than Phoenix or Tucson. "Pilots loved Winslow," he recalled, "because it had a good flying climate — no fog, little snow, paved runways and flat, nearly treeless terrain.

WINSLOW INTERNATIONAL

"Charles Lindbergh laid out the airport in 1929. He did the whole thing: decided the location of the hangar and how big it would be, selected the sites for the three asphalt runways and set their length at 3,800 feet, which was extremely long for the airplanes of that era and very visionary."

Early airports didn't have many employees. Kasulaitis served as the meteorologist, a radio operator, passenger agent, station manager and district manager for TWA. We walked over to the hangar, its paint peeling, dirty windows cracked or broken, some with rags stuffed in the holes to keep out the wind.

"This hangar was big enough to handle any aircraft made back then," said Kasulaitis. "Look over there. See those lines?" he asked, pointing into the interior at some dim paint nearly hidden by 65 years of grime and grease. "Those were our tennis court lines. We'd play tennis in there during the winter."

Kasulaitis first met Lindbergh in 1927, in Washington, D.C., during a massive celebration at the Washington Monument to welcome the "Lone Eagle" home after his solo flight from New York to Paris. "I was in the Army Signal Corps at the time, and I operated the public address system that Lindbergh used to speak to the huge crowd. After I was discharged from the Army, I became the Winslow meteorologist. I arrived on March 10, 1929, just as construction was starting," said Kasulaitis. Lindbergh had a room at the Santa Fe Railroad's Harvey House in Winslow, with his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh. They'd just been married and were on a flying honeymoon. "He had been hired by Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT), the forerunner of TWA, to lay out airports along its air route from the East to the West Coast," said Kasulaitis. "Lindbergh was a wonderful person. So friendly and unassuming. When I got to Winslow, I asked him if he remembered me from the Washington Monument celebration. 'No,' he admitted, he didn't remember me.

"And then he put his arm around my shoulder and said, 'But don't feel bad. In those days, I didn't even remember my own name.'"

While the airport was being built, Lindbergh and his wife would fly about northern Arizona, landing in roadless areas to camp overnight beside their plane. Many times the Lindberghs would land their opencockpit biplane on an isolated spot on the Navajo reservation and, to the amazement of Navajos still living in primitive log and earth hogans, the pair would climb out and visit. "They were kind of fascinated with the Indians, and they would buy Navajo rugs and jewelry on their visits," said Kasulaitis. "Nearly every morning they would fly out to the reservation and then come back to Winslow in the afternoon, and we'd service their plane while they went back to their suite. The next morning, they'd fly off to someplace else.

"I never saw them apart. They were always together. She was a good-lookin' woman. They would come back here year after year. Lindbergh liked Winslow. And you know why? Because we didn't bother him. Every place else they'd tear off his clothes. So anytime he was anywhere near here, he'd stop and stay over. When Santa Fe built the La Posada to replace the old Harvey House in Winslow, it had a special set of rooms reserved for the Lindberghs."

Winslow was a live-wire town back in the 1930s, larger and more progressive than Flagstaff also attracted other celebrities.

"All the famous fliers Jimmy Doolittle, Amelia Earhart, Pancho Barnes, Jackie Cochran, Howard Hughes, George Armistead, Benny Howard and Col. Roscoe Turner would land here. "Roscoe Turner would fly in with his pet lion in the rear [open cockpit] seat and would park his plane in the hangar. Winslow wouldn't let him take the lion into town, so he'd have to leave the animal in the plane. The fuselage was fixed up so that