MINA AVERY, CLASS OF 1933
I was assigned by Maryland Aviation Historical Task Force to write about Mina (Avery) Paille, manager of Davis Airport in Montgomery County, Maryland. She is scheduled to receive recognition as a Maryland Aviation Pioneer. The award will be on permanent display in the Observation Lounge, Main Terminal, Baltimore-Washington International Airport.
"Tell me about yourself," I began the interview.
Mrs. Paille answered, "I graduated from Berea College in 1933. My maiden name was Mina Avery. The college was started so there would be a place where children from the mountains, and poor children, could have a place to get an education."
Mina wanted to help people after she graduated from college. She was trained at the North Carolina School for the Deaf to be a teacher of hearing-impaired children. The school was near her home at Morganton, North Carolina.
Mina worked at the Clark School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she taught lip reading and speech to the hearing impaired.
You could see the passion in her face when she made this strong point, "People think hearing-impaired children can't talk. But they don't talk for a very good reason. They just can't hear anything."
Mina went on to talk some more about Clark School. It was a famous school in the field of teaching the deaf. Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison went there.
She there about four years. World War II came along and Mina applied for a job in the military medical service. She was assigned to Walter Reed hospital where she met Mr. Wilfrid Henri Paille, her husband-to-be. He was in her classes because of a hearing loss.
Mr. Paille had been a pilot during the war. His parents were French from Quebec, but Mr. Paille grew up in Massachusetts.
Mina, "Instead of pronouncing his name the way it sounds in French, Wilfrid Henri Paille (pronounced Will-Fred An-Ray Pie- Yea), he decided Bill Paille (pronounced Bill Palley) was easier for people to remember."
I interrupted to ask, "How did this beautiful farm land get to be an airport?"
"It belonged to a Mr. Davis," she answered. "After World War II, he started a pilot training program for Veterans under the GI Bill."
"And that's why it's called Davis Airport." I nodded.
"Yes. And Colonel E. Brooke Lee went around here buying up land. We bought this piece from him. Colonel E. Brooke Lee was the father of Blair Lee III, Governor of Maryland."
Mr. Paille passed away in 1977.
There are still big stacks of old aviation magazines on a shelf in the office, six or seven piles. I pointed this out.
"No place to throw them," she said with an innocent smile.
I agreed, "It makes a comfortable pilot lounge to have lots of magazines around."
To keep himself busy after military service, Mr. Paille rebuilt a Cessna T-50 Bobcat at Whipp airport in Glen Burnie.
"The thing was rags and sticks when we got it. Had to recover all the fabric," Mina remembers. "I helped him. It took two years to rebuild."
"How did you and the airplane get out here?"
"We wanted a hangar. To keep it under cover. Then we heard about this place in Montgomery County. It was closed by then. That was in 1949. The runway was still here, and that little shed. Flew the Cessna Bobcat over here, but it wouldn't fit in the hangar."
She pointed toward the hangar and frowned. It could only accommodate one single-engine airplane at a time, not large enough for the mechanic to do very much.
They had to leave the freshly restored Cessna T-50 Bobcat sitting outside. In about a month it was sold. Exactly one month later that beautiful airplane with all its new fabric was wrecked by somebody up near Hagarstown.
She continued, "My husband started fixing and repairing small airplanes. Some instructors and students came along to start flying. We bought Mr. Davis' airplanes. He still had three Aeroncas. Colonel Lee was buying land all around here. We bought what he would sell us, just this airport part."
Many years later, Col. Lee and Bill Paille were talking and the subject of all that land came up. Why was the Colonel buying so much of it? He had a simple explanation. It might not do him any good, but his heirs would love it.
"There is a fountain down in Silver Spring, Maryland, that commemorates Colonel E. Brooke Lee," Mina added.
First time I saw Davis Airport and met Mina (Avery) Paille was twenty-five years ago. I was giving a check ride to a pilot named John. We were flying out of Fort Meade Flying Club, Tipton Army Airfield, Fort Meade, Maryland.
John had bought a classic Stinson 108 airplane that still had the original headliner in it. The airplane was ready for pickup at Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We took a club Cessna 172 one bright Sunday morning and flew to get it. John's insurance policy required him to receive five hours of dual instruction. He chose me.
John and I walked around the Stinson and were satisfied it would be a fine ride. Leaving our borrowed Cessna 172 at Lancaster, off we went to log his mandatory five hours of dual with a Certified Flight Instructor.
"John, tell you what. Let's practice a few landings here before we go too far."
He said, "Okay," and proceeded to make every kind of soft- field, short-field takeoff and landing I could think up. He could do full stalls and wheel landings with no problem.
"You do one," John invited me.
I wheel-landed it precisely, just beyond the numbers.
"Wow, great job. You must have a lot of time in Stinsons," John said.
"Nope. Never saw one."
"Then how?"
"You're the one they said had to get the dual. Flight Instructors are supposed to be able to fly anything." Actually, I had been watching John land it.
After cruising around and sightseeing for about an hour, John looked down and spotted what turned out to be Davis Airport, just north of Gaithersburg, Maryland, and west of Baltimore- Washington International. He had been navigating clear of all Control Areas.
"Says Davis Airport on the map," John said. "Any kinfolks of yours?"
"Never heard of it," I said.
John did a splendid wheel landing on the airport and rolled to a stop in front of the office. A nice lady on a golf cart motored over to greet us.
"Hi. Need anything?"
"No, ma'am," John Said. "Just out flying around. We'll be on our way."
"Okay. Let me get my golf cart clear of the strut."
"John," I said after we took off. "Was that a broom handle leaning on the seat beside her?"
"You know," John scratched his head. "It looked like a shotgun to me."
The day I interviewed Mina for this story, I chatted with the mechanic, Jack Peters, while we waited. I decided to tell him the shotgun story. Jack is a part-time mechanic at Davis Airport and works full-time at USAirways.
"It was that same shotgun back there, probably." Jack laughed and pointed toward the tool shed.
Mina arrived shortly and I asked the first question that came to mind, "Why in the world are you managing an airport?"
"Married one," she laughed. "Don't print that."
Her eyesight is fading, but not her sense of humor. When I was preparing to write this, some people told me she was difficult to approach. I think they used words to the effect that she might be grouchy.
Far from being hard to visit with, Mina's face still shines with the human compassion that has guided her since graduation from Berea College at Berea, Kentucky. The college was founded in 1855 with the philosophy that their students should learn to work while in college and serve humanity upon graduation.
She is one of those rare and dear people who will keep a small airport going, beloved by pilots and respected by the community. Berea College must be proud of her too. And think of all those countless people Mina taught lip reading and speech when she was a practicing audiologist.
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