Volume 10 , Issue 25

1945 - National Flying Farmers Group To Be Formed

A national association of flying farmers and ranchers, with the Oklahoma Flying Farmers as the parent group, will be organized immediately by the state group and the National Areonautics association, it was announced here Tuesday.

Forrest Watson, Thomas, president of the Oklahoma Flying Farmers, and William R. Enyart, Greenwich, Conn, president of NAA, said the nationwide organization will be known as the National Flying Farmers association.

It is to be set up as an autonomous group with membership open only to farmers and ranchers using the airplane in their business. While the national association will conduct its own affairs under national, state and qualify.

Plans for expansion of the Oklahoma organization into a nationwide group were presented to directors of NAA, here for the national Aviation clinic, by Gene McGill, Alva, chairman of the organizing committee.

As in the Oklahoma organization membership of the National Flying Farmers association will be limited to plane operators deriving at least 51 percent of their income from agriculture. Watson said. The wife of a farmer who is a pilot also may be a member, or the husband of a farm wife who is the pilot.

"The flying Farmers organization is typically grass roots, and so it NAA." Enyart said, "It will bring into our organization a segment of consumers which heretofore has lacked definition in NAA affairs."

Agriculture was slow to recognize the need for good roads but here in Oklahoma is a spontaneous organization. It means that farmers wre accepting the airplane as a part of their daily lives and the airplane has widened the horizons of those living on the farm."

Watson said flying farmers and ranchers in Texas and Kansas already are interested in organizing, and he returned last week from Tucson, Ariz., where he spoke at the Arizona State Aviation conference and found widespread interest in the Oklahoma Flying Farmers and the idea back of it. remote ranches in Arizona are finding the airplane almost indispensible, Watson said.

The Oklahoma flying Farmers president said merchanics of integraing the national association into NAA are yet to be worked out, but when it is finally accomplished the group will have complete control of its own affairs although a part of the corporate structure of NAA.

Starting point of the campaign to make the Flying Farmers nationwide has not yet been determined. A state may organize when as many as 25 members has been secured.

The Oklahoma flying Farmers were organized when a group of farmer pilots and their wives flew to Stillwater two years ago to attend a farm club conference at Oklahoma A&M college. The group is now recognized as a chapter of NAA.

The planes they flew were those they used for many farm and ranch chores -- inspecting fences, watching cattle herds, flying to town or macinery repair parts during harvest, or hunting coyotes. -- Nov. 21, 1945, page 4, The Oklahoman
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