Shelter Island Reporter photo quiz, May 6, 2023: What is that?
If you know, let us know. Send your responses to [email protected] or phone 631-275-1859.
Roger McKeon emailed us to identify the mystery photo from last week (see below): “Trying my luck … Wind sock at Klenawicus Airfield?” Hold on to that rabbit’s foot, Roger.
Mollie Numark followed right behind with a much more definite (and correct) response. And Kathryn O’Hagan got it right on our Facebook page, noting that, “Dave Klenawicus Jr., at age three, would call it Aunt Fran’s carrot.”
The wind sock is the height of technology at the field, indicating the strength and direction of the wind for pilots taking off or landing on the grass airfield.
The 17-acre Island institution was purchased by the town in April 2011 for $4,148,500 from the Klenawicus family, using Community Preservation Funds to preserve it from development, and granting The Shelter Island Pilots Association stewardship.
The history of the airfield was chronicled by Shelter Island High School student Natasha Borisova in the Shelter Island Historical Society’s Autumn 2000 Newsletter, and published by the Reporter in June 2021.
The Klenawicus family bought a lot for a farm in 1927 to grow potatoes. Joseph Klenawicus Sr. was the first in the family to take an interest in aviation. He and his friend Mike Sabal built their first airplane together in 1935, when they took an engine from a car and adapted it to a glider.
When they finished, their takeoff was the first flight from Shelter Island. The plane got up in the air, but then the engine failed and it crashed into a cornfield. That didn’t stop them, though.
The airfield was a still a working potato farm until about the 1950s. The planes that used to land there had only a narrow path, the width of a car, between the potato rows.
Other obstacles were the large trees at the end of the short runway. Planes had to go around them. In 1955, when Jon Wright and Dick Edwards organized the Shelter Island flying service to Flushing Airport, the runway was increased to its present length of approximately 1,600 feet.
It was nicknamed “Klenawicus International Airport” when Sidney Stiber left from Shelter Island and flew across the Atlantic to Europe in a two-engine airplane in 1967.
