Shirt-tail legacy

They soloed in 1977, and their solo shirt-tail was tacked onto the wall of their flight school, a proud memento of an unforgettable moment. The airport has since closed and the flight school with it, but the shirt-tails remain. A Virginia pilot would like to reunite them with their owners.

Jim Stevens of Norfolk, Virginia, recalls that the former South Norfolk Airport in Chesapeake, Virginia, owned by H.D. and Hattie Todd, was an aviator’s paradise in its heyday, and the little flight school was part of the excitement. The airport’s two turf runways buzzed with taildraggers and trainers.

“There were days when not just one person would solo but several,” said Stevens, a retired airline pilot. In the 1970s and 1980s, his father, A.M. Stevens, ran the airport and the flight school, and Stevens and his four brothers worked there mornings, evenings, and weekends.

Keeping with a long-held tradition, flight instructors would cut students’ shirt-tails after a first solo, and these shirt-tails would be labeled, decorated, and posted on the wall at the airport. Another tradition was that whoever witnessed a solo would buy a Coke from a machine in the building.

The airport and the flight school were labors of love for Stevens’ father, A.M. Stevens. “He just loved it. He reinvested every penny he had in the flight school.”

South Norfolk Airport closed in 1985, and the only traces that remain are photos and chart snippets found on the “Abandoned and Little-Known Airfields” website. A. M. Stevens died in August 2019. While cleaning out his dad’s house, Stevens discovered two garbage bags full of solo shirt-tails. He couldn’t bring himself to throw them away, and ever since, he’s been using social media to make connections, posting the names on groups in the region.

Nancy Duncan happened to be scrolling through Facebook one day when she spied a familiar name posted in a group called I Grew Up in Norfolk. The name was Laura Punte. Laura Punte is now Laura Punte Barnett, and she is married to Duncan’s son, Scott Barnett.

Duncan contacted Stevens and retrieved the shirt-tail—this one was in a frame. She wrapped it as a gift and surprised her daughter-in-law. “I wish I had taken a picture. She was just totally amazed,” Duncan said.

Russ Porter III found out from a Facebook friend that his name was on that list of solo students. Porter soloed on his sixteenth birthday in a Cessna 150 in 1975.

“I was going [to the airport] with my dad every other weekend,” Porter said. He did the requisite three takeoffs and landings, and after one of the landings he forgot to take out the carburetor heat before the next takeoff. The airplane’s anemic performance startled him, but he remembered to adjust the carb heat and all went well after that. Porter’s dad, Russ Porter Jr., was sitting on the fence watching and waiting. “I saw a big grin on his face,” Porter said.

Porter got as far as the solo cross-country—admitting that pilotage and dead reckoning got him a little lost until he spotted a water tower—but his father died in 1977 and there was no more money for flight lessons. He cherishes memories of spending time with his father at South Norfolk Airport, and is happy to have a token of those days.

Stevens continues to track down long-ago pilots. He’ll keep putting the names out there in the hopes that he can deliver the sacred scraps of cloth (and some framed certificates) to their owners. If you soloed at South Norfolk Airport in the 1970s or 1980s and would like to see if your name is on the list, contact [email protected].

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