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From the middle 1940s to the early 1950s, Rev. Paul Hartford, dubbed “The Flying Preacher” or “The Flying Parson” by news media, operated a flying school out of Winona Lake’s Garfield Hotel to train potential aviator missionaries in the use of single-engine aircraft.
Descriptive material on a missionary aviation scholarship to Moody Bible Institute which was endowed by Hartford’s daughter and grandchildren describes Hartford’s life as “a life lived with great enthusiasm, talent and ability, and totally dedicated to spreading the gospel through use of the single-engine airplane.” The material notes that Hartford was the founder of Victory Sky Pilots, Inc., “the first flight school in the U.S. dedicated to training missionaries to use the airplane on foreign fields.”
The memoirs of the first woman pilot to graduate from the program, Helen Jean Moose Zwyghuizen, note that Hartford’s program was headquartered in the Garfield Hotel on Chestnut Street in Winona Lake (now replaced by duplex housing).
Aviation columnist William Mollenhour, writing in the Oct. 27, 1947, issue of the Warsaw Daily Times, noted Hartford was the owner-operator of the smaller of three airports in the Warsaw area. Named “Victory Field,” the airport was described as 80 acres nestled on the west shore of Chapman Lake. The field at that time had three runways, and construction of facilities was continuing, with the Hartford family living in a country home next to the airport. Mollenhour noted that “Few local pilots fly at Victory Field, for it caters mostly to ministers and mission-folk on their way to foreign fields where the airplane is not only an asset, but a necessity.”
Noting there were currently 26 graduates of “Victory Sky Pilots, Inc.,” Mollenhour indicated that 120 students have studied at the aviation school, utilizing seven planes. He also noted that Rev. L. L. Grubb, executive field secretary of the Grace Brethren Home Missions Council, based his own Cessna plane at Victory Field and he “hops off to all parts of the United States by air.”
Hartford was also a representative of Youth for Christ, speaking frequently at YFC events and at other young people’s meetings. An advertisement for one of his appearances in Florida indicated that the person bringing the most people to the YFC rally would be rewarded with a flight in Hartford’s plane. Hartford, who had been a missionary, also was a skilled trumpeter and vocalist and often included music in his speaking engagements.
Mollenhour reported that Victory Sky Pilots was guided by a board of directors consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Hartford; Dr. Ralph Neighbor of the Fort Wayne Gospel Tabernacle; Dr. Sidney Correll, editor of the Missionary Digest in Dayton, Ohio; Dr. Torrey Johnson of Chicago, president of Youth for Christ International; Dr. J. G. Gay, Longview, Washington, president of the Grace Gospel Evangelistic Association; and Dr. John Huffman, dean of the Winona Lake School of Theology.
Hartford’s aviation school received wide attention, including a write-up in Newsweek magazine. An article from the Presbyterian Guardian described the schedule.
Devotions start the day. Minister students get three home-cooked meals a day on the field, but are likely to be asked to “help with the dishes.” To his students, Hartford stresses: “You can become a frontier messenger, take a new ‘grasshopper’ ship loaded with supplies and reach a new tribe which never has heard of Jesus Christ. Or you can become a ferry pilot, taking a plane to a missionary halfway around the world. Or you could become an explorer, taking a flight of a few thousand miles into remote regions and explore the terrain to discover the best type of aircraft suitable to the region.
The 1947 newsletter from the annual Winona Schools Reunion, which was held for a number of summers, noted that, “Paul Hartford, new owner of the Garfield, who has the Winona Flying School for Missionaries, delivered a missionary to his station in a jungle country, made a general survey of the air route through Central and South America, and dropped an airmail note for his friend, Robert E. Neighbor, a missionary near Daderba, Colombia.”
The newsletter noted that “Winona seems to be air-minded,” since the School of Theology now offered a ground school course in aviation and Fred Strauss Skyways was offering chartered flights anywhere in the U.S. Strauss said his planes, “are well equipped, seats wide, and upholstered, has radio and loudspeaker and adjustable heat.”
