Waterbury-Oxford Airport – Part I

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Stuart Lockhart, right, and David Hunt stand by vintage aircraft at Oxford Airport. The planes flew there about 1979 when they were participating in the Bridgeport Air Show. (Photo courtesy Stuart Lockhart)

By DR. ROBERT L. RAFFORD

The Uniroyal Corporation’s story told in the last two issues is not complete without the history of the Waterbury-Oxford Airport, locally called the Oxford Airport. In the second half of the 20th century, the history of the two are inextricably intertwined, in part because Middlebury’s Uniroyal complex would never have materialized without the airport.

Connecticut Senator Hiram Bingham III introduced the Air Commerce Act, which, after much modification, became law in 1926, beginning a national organization of the flight industry. A year later, it was reported there were 864 airports and intermediate fields, along with 3,000 unimproved fields serving aircraft, and steps already were being taken to establish airports in Bridgeport, Stratford and Danbury. Even before the end of World War II, the Civil Aeronautics Administration had called for 25 additional airports in Connecticut with 11 others to be improved.

Charles A. Lindbergh (1902-1974) completed the first successful nonstop transatlantic flight from New York City to Paris, landing on May 21, 1927. The man who was almost first, due to legal complications, Clarence Duncan Chamberlin (1893-1976), crossed the Atlantic from New York to Germany, landing on June 6, two weeks later. However, he did become the first transatlantic flyer to carry a passenger, Charles A. Levine (1897-1991). Forty-one years later, in 1968, aviator Chamberlin visited Oxford, Connecticut, for a very special occasion.

Against a backdrop of prodigious social upheaval, Connecticut, in the 1960’s, would experience creation of Interstate 84, expansion of Route 8, inception of Mattatuck Community College (now Naugatuck Valley Community College), a huge expansion of Waterbury Hospital, the Hop Brook Dam project and creation of the Waterbury-Oxford Airport. The Naugatuck Daily News, from which much of this history is gleaned, led by publishers Rudolph M. Hennick (1897-1981) and Frederick E. Hennick (1927-2010), not only chronicled the materialization of the airport, but also played a key role in driving interest for it.

Statewide planning for Connecticut growth took off after World War II, with Connecticut Development Conferences beginning in 1947. From these meetings, regional planning agencies sprouted, including the Central Naugatuck Valley Regional Planning Agency (CNVRPA), begun in 1956. Its founder, Harlan H. Griswold (1910-1989), of Woodbury, a man of enormous vision and dedication, chairperson of the Area Development Committee of the Waterbury Chamber of Commerce, was elected its first chairperson, along with Charles M. Purinton (1922-1981) of Middlebury as its vice-chairman. Middlebury joined the CNVRPA in 1960, and the agency would go on to play a vital role in promoting the airport. Griswold visualized the enormous commercial and industrial impact that these transformative innovations of the 1960s would have on this area and all of Connecticut.

As early as 1955, Waterbury officials had expressed interest in a regional airfield, after it was announced that Brainard Field would be closing (it didn’t). Planners wanted a centrally located airport, and a possible alternative location at Rocky Hill had been eliminated. However, by a Superior Court order in 1958, Brainard Field outlived the efforts of Hartford’s citizens and political leaders to abandon it and turn the land into an industrial site.

On May 13, 1963, Oxford town voters approved by a vote of 540 to 324 a referendum question on construction of an airport in their town. Editorials in the Naugatuck Daily News, from January 1965, began zealously calling for the creation of an airport in Oxford. Shortly later, the Connecticut State Aeronautics Commission asked Gov. John Dempsey to “take the lead” in promoting new airport construction, citing a 1962 professional state survey recommending airports be located at Plymouth, Goshen, Oxford, Norwich and New Canaan. However, there was local opposition to almost every proposed airport.

You are urged to join the Middlebury Historical Society by going online at MiddleburyHistoricalSociety.org or visiting them on Facebook. Questions about membership can be sent to Bob at robraff@comcast.net.