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"As we headed east it began to clear but for a long time it was overcast with very low ceilings," said Chuck, son of Glare Leavens, one of three brothers who started Leavens Brothers Air Service in the late 1920s in Belleville offering barnstormer rides to the public a penny a pound. On hand in the welcoming party was Chuck's aunt Queena Leavens, 92, wife of Walter Leavens. She asked him "Why are you so late? We were worried about you." Earlier in the lazy hot sun of the afternoon, amid the anxious wait for the Waco, Queena recounted the earlier days on a farm in Belleville near what is now Baz Auto east of Elmwood Drive south of Highway 2. "I'm used to this waiting," she said of the plane's tardy arrival. "They (the three brothers Walter, 8 Art and Clare) were the best in the world and I had the best in the world. Walt was a real good man. We were the first barnstormers. I travelled with them on occasion." At the time, the brothers had three air aircraft and a Model A ground support truck for their wild jaunts into the skies before large crowds. Queena remembers the excitement when the brothers and their flying circus would fly into towns and large cities drawing gaggles of sightseers. Before paying customers were lifted into the skies, they first had to step on a beaten up old bathroom weigh scale then cough up the change - - a penny for each pound of body weight. "They only took them for quick rides but it was new. They adver- tised ahead and got lots of people. It was a brand-new thing," she said, noting Walter attributed his long life -- despite his love for flying unproven old planes -- to his sound maintenance and preflight checks of the aircraft. "The thing with Walt was he never took a chance. He took time to do everything he should on the engine before he took off." When the brothers weren't performing or taking people for rides at fairgrounds across Ontario, Walter was back here in Belleville crop-dusting, spraying local parks for mosquitoes or flying advertising banners over cities across the province. When the Second World War arrived, Art and Walter moved to London at the behest of the Cana- dian government to start up a flight school to train pilots direly needed to fight Hitler's Luftwaffe. "Walt taught hundreds of men to fly," she said. "When it was up to full speed, he had 70 pilots learning under him. He had a lot of worry then.". After the war, the family business grew through the decades until Leavens Aviation Inc. was moved to property near Pearson International Airport. Walter's grandson Jeff Leavens said the business continues to excel today mainly in the small aircraft section of the industry fixing and maintaining parts for smaller planes such as Pipers, Cessnas and Beech. "We now overhaul 60 to 70 fourand six-cylinder engines a year," said Jeff, noting the Waco plane that landed in Belleville was bought by the company in the 1970s for eventual restoration. He said the firm hated to give up the plane for indefinite loan to the museum but said it is aging and "is not very fun to fly. "This one you have to fly very carefully. It's very thrilling being out there in the open air." As well, he said, fewer and fewer pilots know how to fly the old birds given the high technology of today. He thanked family friend Watt Martin, 76, for flying the plane out of its longtime home at the Brampton Flying Field destined for Ottawa. "They don't make 'em like they used to." p <, <~-v