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By GWEN SISSON
Starkville Daily News
Terry Camp said if it wasn’t for landing in a haystack, he would not be sharing the story of his father’s role in Starkville’s aviation history.
At a recent meeting of the Oktibbeha County Historical and Genealogical Society, Terry Camp shared stories of local aviation pioneer Sumter Camp and the many adventures of growing up around airplanes.
Edsel Wilson introduced Camp and said he had the pleasure of working for Sumter Camp at the Oktibbeha Airport during World War II, as “a grease monkey,” refueling airplanes, and helping start airplanes.
Terry Camp is the son of a local aviation pioneer, Sumter Camp, and grandson of Largus Bell Camp of Starkville. Terry got into aviation at an early age, with his first solo flight in 1949, at the age of 16 — the minimum age allowed to earn a pilot’s license.This year, Terry is celebrating 60 years of flying as a pilot, with about 25,000 hours of flying time.
After college, Terry served as a pilot in the Air Force, and returned to Starkville. He obtained his instructor’s license so he could work with his father. He was an FAA pilot examiner for 22 years, the first pilot for Garan Corporation, and a test pilot for the Raspet Flight Research Lab at MSU.
His grandfather
Terry’s tale starts in the late 1800’s, when his grandfather came from the Carolinas to Amory. As a small boy, Terry’s grandfather, Largus Bill Camp, was interested in flight.
“But if it wasn’t for a landing in the haystack, I wouldn’t be here tonight,” Terry said.
Camp’s grandfather began his career as a railway telegrapher and later designed and built Amory’s first telephone system. Mason Sumter Camp was born in Amory in 1902.
L.B. Camp sold the complete system, wires and all, to Bell Telephone, and, Bell gave him a new job as a branch manager in Starkville. He could have had his choice of other larger cities, but he chose Starkville, because he said “Starkville’s a good place to raise a family.”
Camp told of his grandfather’s family making trips back and forth to Amory, and the route of the Old West Point road not being what it is today. Many people at that time crossed the old original bridge across “Tibbie Swamp” but weren’t going to West Point, Amory, or Aberdeen, but just north of West Point, to Old Payne Army Airfield “to watch the airplanes crash.”
“Sometimes people would witness a crash, and sometime not,” Camp said, but pilots were flying the old Curtis Jennys — “very good airplanes, with good engines” according to Camp, but they were slightly tricky to fly.
Pilots didn’t know how to get out of a spin. Camp said there were also flight control problems as a result of lack of knowledge. Camp said pilots “were dying at a terrible rate.”
Camp spoke of the pilots getting into spins, and cross control stalls. There were a number of aeronautical reasons for the older airplanes crashing. Newer aircraft improvements have reduced these problems.
It wasn’t until Eddie Stinson, from Aberdeen, discovered the proper procedure for getting out of a spin. Camp said one of the reasons for a spin was a natural tendency for pilots to use incorrect correction procedures, but Stinson learned the proper correction for getting out of the spin.
At the end of World War I, there were “caboodles” of Jennys for sale. Prices ranged from $100 to $600, and many pilots took advantage.
“(Charles) Lindbergh paid $200 plus a motorcycle for his,” Camp said. “Many were sold to Barnstormers or Gypsy Pilots.”
Barnstormers would ‘buzz’ a town and land in a pasture and start giving airplane rides. Camp said “the pilots would charge $15 for a five minute ride, and I suspect they were making a pretty good living back in those days.”
Terry Camp’s grandfather never lost his interest in flight, and every time a barnstormer came to Starkville, he had to be there.
He invited them to his home, and gave them free room and board.
Soon, word began to spread far and wide, that the Camp home provided free room and board in Starkville for pilots. The barnstormers landed in a big open field right where Lindbergh Boulevard is now, on the city map as Fairgrounds.
“My grandfather would scoop them up and take them home,” Camp said. “There was a small boy sitting on the other side of the table listening to those wonderful tales of flying, and adventures, and travel, and he never forgot it.”
His father
Camp said his father grew up, and went to Mississippi A&M College, graduating in Electrical Engineering, then moved to Atlanta, Ga. He worked for Graybar Electric, and Bell Telephone.
Camp later learned that during those years, every time his father looked at a movie poster, and saw the price, e would ask himself if he would rather put the money in his flying fund or go to the movie. He chose to put the cost of the movie, 40 cents, into his flying fund every time.
Terry’s father didn’t own a car, but had gasoline money to pay his friends that did have a car. He was a happy man, and saved his money.
Camp said a train trip to St. Louis forever changed his father’s life. He went to the Robertson School of Aviation. It was 1926, and Charles Lindbergh flew the ocean in 1927.Camp was assigned Charles A. Lindbergh to be his instructor.
As the story goes, Charles Lindbergh had a sorry old car, and Camp had always been a good mechanic from the age of 12.
He kept Lindbergh’s car running, and they became good friends. He completed his training and returned to Atlanta, Ga.
Soon, Camp moved to Pensacola, Fla., and worked for the telephone company. While vising a son of his boss in the hospital, he met a nurse, that later turned out to be Terry’s mother. There was a problem—the hospital was operated by Catholic nuns; he asked to date her but they said “they would see about it.”
At the time, Camp was rooming with the Presbyterian minister. Terry Camp said that went over real good with the Mother Superior. His father and mother were married in 1930.
“My father purchased his first airplane, the Great Lakes, in 1931,” Camps said. “The country was deep in the depression at that time. This is a testament to the kind of a saver he was.”
Camp said it was a very sleek airplane, and very up-to-date for that era, and would cruise at 100 mph, which was fast for those days. The Navy at Pensacola at that time was still flying the Jennys, and his father was flying the airplane that was faster than anything flying at Pensacola. Camp said that would be very difficult today.
The depression started to get bad, and Sumter’s father invited him to come on home to Starkville. Terry’s grandfather had a big house, on an acre of land on Lafayette St, a big garden, and a cow. Terry Camp remembers as a small child operating a butter churn, but he gave it up because it was too much work.
Terry said that his father flew his mother to Starkville to visit the family, and that she wasn’t concerned about flying in an open cockpit, but was terrified of meeting his family in Starkville.
Moving to Starkville was to be a problem. Sumter had an airplane and a A Model Ford car in 1932. He was to fly the airplane, and Ruth Camp was to drive the A Model Ford back. She was 21 years old, and the drive to Starkville is 300 miles of gravel roads.
“My Father was very considerate,” Camp said.”He gave her a .38 revolver and told her ‘I’ll see you in Starkville.’ He flew the plane, and both did arrive safely back in Starkville.”
Mason Sumter Camp was the instigator in the establishment of the Starkville Municipal Airport (later named Bryan Airport) and the designer of the original hangar.
The airport was built under one government program but the hangar was built under a WPA work program.
In 1939, the college, Miss A&M, got a contract from the government for teaching flying. Sumter Camp would teach in the morning, and fly in the afternoon. The name of the program was Civilian Pilot Training (CPT).
Students at that time who took the flying training classes,signed a piece of paper agreeing that since they got this free Civilian Pilot Training, if requested, they would serve in the Army for two years.
“This was 1939, and I don’t think the boys knew what would be happening in two years,” Camp said.
His father’s students in the CPT program became the Cadre of Instructors that taught the first pilots to fly in World War II.
In 1942, the Army took possession of the airport, now known as Starkville Bryan Airport. Camp’s father had a number of airplanes at the airport, and located a field on the Old West Point Road, which was called Love Field after the family that owned the property. He rented the field, and continued to look for land to purchase.
He located and purchased the land that Oktibbeha Airport is on now, and the bulldozers got to work and created the airport as we know it now.
“I remember personally dynamiting stumps, and I thought that was cool,” said Camp.
The CPT program was finished at Oktibbeha Airport, and then he briefly stored his airplanes in a hangar at Aberdeen.
“By then, the handwriting was basically on the wall, that nobody was allowed to fly airplanes during World War II,” Camp said.
By this time, Sumpter Camp finished building his hangars in Oktibbeha County, and he disassembled the airplanes, removing the engines and storing the airframes in the rafters of the hangars, and they stayed there for the remainder of World War II.
It was about that time, the college gets a War Training Service contract, and the contract called for 40 instructors and 40 airplanes.
The students were housed and instructed at the college, and they would come out to the airport, 200 in the morning, and 200 in the afternoon.
The program consisted of 10 hours of flying, and the purpose of the program was to determine if the student had pilot aptitude or not, and that operation determined if the students would be pilots, bombardiers, navigators or gunners.
“It was a mad house trying to get all the planes in the air, get them down, and get them fueled, and keep everything working,” said Camp. “The program actually trained 3,300 students with 33,000 hours of flying. There were no fatalities, no injuries, and there were only three airplanes damaged.”
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