Harris Whittemore Jr., aviation pioneer – Part II

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Aviation pioneer Harris Whittemore Jr. is shown with his wife, Roberta Napier Forde. The undated photo probably was taken around 1970. (Photo courtesy Thyrza Whittemore)

By DR. ROBERT L. RAFFORD

Harris Whittemore Jr. founded the Bee Line in March 1923. As New England’s first airline, it became a major catalyst for aviation growth throughout the region. The following year, the name was changed to Colonial Air Lines, with Harris Whittemore Jr. as the president. From its inception, regular sightseeing flights were offered to the public, and services continued to increase.

Large aeronautical meets were held at Bethany field and the new Bristol field in the summer of 1925, attracting thousands at a time to watch daredevil airplane acrobatics and stunning stunts, including parachuting. At one meet, a newspaper account related that, as a pilot banked about 100 feet above a crowd before straightening up, one observer said, “That’s the nearest to a murder of twenty-five people that didn’t happen that I’ve ever seen.”

Serving with Harris Whittemore Jr. on the board of directors of Colonial Air Lines as vice-president was Donald Seymour Tuttle (1890-1984), both with homes in Naugatuck and Middlebury. Two grandsons of business pioneer partners were virtually repeating history. Tuttle was the grandson of Bronson Beecher Tuttle (1835-1903), who, with John Howard Whittemore (1837-1910), Harris Whittemore Jr.’s grandfather, had formed the Tuttle and Whittemore Iron Works (later, the Naugatuck Malleable Iron Company, and eventually The Eastern Company) in Naugatuck in 1858.

A strategic addition to the Colonial Air Lines board was the sitting governor of Connecticut, John Harper Trumbull (in office 1925 to 1931), who became a director in September 1925, and later served as its president and chairperson. Other board members included Major Talbot O. Freeman, Leonard S. Horner, and Bernard H. Matthies, secretary.

By August 1925, Colonial Air Lines had a 60-acre landing field in Bethany, five airplanes and seven employees, which included three pilots: the famous aviators Bert Acosta, Gus Graf of Waterbury, and LeRoy H. Thompson of Woodbury. That month, Colonial increased its stock from $50,000 to $1 million.

On October 6, 1925, the United States government awarded Colonial Air Lines the country’s first air mail contract, Commercial Air Mail (CAM) #1, over three competitors, flying mail between New York and Boston, stopping in Hartford. Whittemore had scored three firsts – the first New England airline, the first licensed Connecticut airport and the first commercial air mail route in the country and had skunked Boston and New York in the process.

Two days after Harris Whittemore Jr.’s Colonial Air Lines won the highly prized airmail contract, a projected merger was announced between Colonial and Eastern Air Transport Inc., of New York. Washington Irving Bullard (1881-1948) had formed Eastern Air Transport in Boston about September 1925. When it gained wealthy New York backers, including Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, William Avery Rockefeller, Dutee Wilcox Flint and Richard F. Hoyt, Eastern moved there.

After the merger, on October 15, the name of the combined company became Colonial Air Transport Inc., and the company was officially organized on December 12, with Governor John H. Trumbull as chairman of the board, W. Irving Bullard as president, and Harris Whittemore Jr. as a vice-president. Other board members were Donald S. Tuttle of Naugatuck; William Avery Rockefeller; Henry Pomeroy Davison; Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney; Howard Coonley of Boston; Professor Edward P. Warner of Cambridge, Massachusetts; E. W. Longley of Boston; Major Lorillard Spencer and Robert G. Thach of New York; Dutee Wilcox Flint of Providence, Rhode Island.; Stanley H. Bullard of Bridgeport, Connecticut; Bernard H. Matthies of Seymour, Connecticut, and Lloyd L. Anderson of Waterbury, Connecticut. The age of American commercial airlines had begun in the Naugatuck Valley.

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.

This article was published in the October 2021 print issue of the Middlebury Bee-Intelligencer.