What is that? May 9, 2026
If you know, let us know. Send your responses to [email protected] or phone 631-275-1859.
Jennifer Allen wrote to us, knowing immediately that last week’s photo is of Klenawicus International Airport’s wind sock (see right).
Ed Hydeman and Cynthia Michalak also were all over it. And, oh, Roger McKeon, didn’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind was blowing.
On our Facebook page, Maximilian K. Pelletier, Kathryn O’Hagan and Barbara Vandenbergh were on course with their answers.
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 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 into 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 dubbed “Klenawicus International Airport” when Sidney Stiber left from Shelter Island and flew across the Atlantic to Europe in a two-engine airplane in 1967.
