Chicago's Midway Airport: The First seventy-five Years by Christopher Lynch Lake Claremont Press Phone: 773/583-7800 www.lakeclaremont.com

My earliest memories of Midway Airport was of driving on it in a large green Cadillac. I was four, and my brother was two, and my grandmother Rose O'Carroll drove this boat with wheels on the service road, while we sat in the back munching on Tums, which she gave us and told us was candy. My grandmother was a woman with an easy laugh and a red mane of hair, and she drove fast and free, while jets screamed on the tarmac, waiting in line to take off. So from my earliest recollections, Midway was a fun place to visit.

Grandma Rose ran an aviation business called Monarch Air Service, whose antiquated name betrayed its early beginnings, back in the 1920's, decades before the jet age. She took the reins of the company when her husband Pierce "Scotty" O'Carroll died in 1961. He was a farmer from Ireland who came to Chicago with the dream of flying, and would spend the rest of his life doing just that at Midway. Although he died before I was born, I grew up hearing stories of him from pilots at the airport, about his adventures in planes, some of which crashed at times. But Scotty O'Carroll was a survivor, and the stories of his adventures survived as well.

I always knew that there was a fascinating story about Midway Airport, about the pilots, racers, movie stars, heroes, Presidents and roughs who would spend time there. This book is a history of an airport that started as an onion field, and would become the transportation hub of the United States, and later, the world.

When I started in 1995 on my journey of recording a history of this airport, I started by studying Monarch's gallery of early photographs, that was presented in a hanger. These early black and white photos were mysterious, of smiling men in open cockpits, their silk scarves wrapped around their necks, with their goggles and leather cap on their heads. Who were these pilots? What were their stories? I didn't know where to start.

Then I came across an article that ran in the Chicago Tribune in on the 75th anniversary of the Wright Brothers first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The article, written by David M. Young and Neil Callihan, described the exploits of a French Railroad engineer named Octave Chanute who was experimenting with kites on the sand dunes of what would become Gary Indiana. I had never heard about this Renaissance man, who would influence the Wrights, and I wanted to know more.

The article had a photo as well, of an 1911 airshow in Grant Park, with airplanes like kites circling. But what caught my eye was the thousands upon thousands of people who stood transfixed below, watching the spectacle above.

At the end of the article a note stated that Callahan and Young were preparing a book on Chicago Aviation History. I looked at the date of the article. It was 1978, and I hoped that a book had indeed been published. After some searching, I indeed found their book Fill the Heavens with Commerce, which I read with great pleasure.

Their book filled in many of the blanks I had in my mind regarding the early history of Chicago aviation. Yet the book ended right before the birth of Municipal airport, which would later be named Midway. And although this book was published over two decades ago and is out of print, copies are available from the Chicago Historical Bookworks, (831 Main St, Evanston, Illinois, (847) 869-6410) or online at Advanced Book Exchange (www.abe.com)

This book was the only credible historical study available. I soon discovered that not only was David Young a superb writer and historian, but also generous with his time to amateur historians like me. I called Young, and explained that I wanted to interview him, to learn more about Midway's history. Young shared his knowledge, files and photos with me. His insights were also featured in the WTTW Chicago Stories program "Midway Airport: Crossroads to the World" that aired on PBS in the Autumn of 2001.
But the ultimate compliment he gave to me was writing the introduction to my book. For me, it was if Shelby Foote wrote an introduction to my book regarding a small Civil War skirmish. It is an honor, and for anyone interested in Illinois aviation, I urge them to buy his much anticipated study on the a Hundred Years of Aviation, published by Northern Illinois Press, due in bookstores in 2003.