The Mishawaka Pilots Club: the institution that stayed

1947 — PRESENT · THREE SITES UNNAMED, THEN ITS OWN GROUND

The founding and the wandering: Mishawaka's durable air institution is not a field but a club. The Mishawaka Pilots Club was founded in 1947, on the club's own history, and for its first decade it was a tenant of other people's ground: the South Bend Tribune's account of 25 November 2012 records that the club "settled on the land in 1957 after having to leave three earlier sites," that its members decided "they needed to own the property and control the property," and that the group formed the Airport Realty Corp. to hold the ground — 65 shareholders, and more than 100 acres including 13 bought recently, at that telling; about 70 airplanes and 165 members, dues of $15 a month, in the same account. The land it settled is on Mishawaka Road in Elkhart County, east of the city — the field the next entry reads in the federal record.

The three sites, tested and not asserted: Where the club flew from 1947 to 1957 is not named by the Tribune, by the club's published history, or by any source reached — the club's own records and the Tribune's files are the settling sources, and the gap is carried open from the Transit pass, which banked the same gap in the same terms. One identification will tempt every reader of this section and is tested here in the open rather than made: the club existed while Mishawaka Airport was last referenced (May 1948) and when Sportsman's was dedicated as the new field (September 1949), so use of one or both Mishawaka-named fields is chronologically possible. It is not shown. Three sites in ten years is three unknowns, and Cadet Field, Bendix Field, Elkhart's field, Chain O' Lakes, and farm strips are equally open on the record reached. The identification is printed as unproven, and if the club's records ever make it, both earlier fields stood on township ground — so even then, the Transit pass's settled line stands: the city's namesake club has never been shown to have flown from inside the city.

The club today: The club's own current account, carried on its website and repeated in its encyclopedia entry, puts the field as home to approximately 65 airplanes, with over 100 current members and an annual Father's Day Fly-In and Pancake Breakfast — flown, as the federal record's entry below states plainly, at Elkhart, on Elkhart County ground. One tangle in the retelling is printed whole rather than smoothed: the 2012 Tribune story names the club's affiliate both "Mishawaka Air Activities" and "Michiana Air Activities" in the same article, and no source reached reconciles the two forms. The club itself — founded by Mishawakans, named for Mishawaka, flying for seventy-nine years — is the city's whole continuous aviation story, and it has spent all of it based somewhere else.

Sources:

1. South Bend Tribune, 25 November 2012, as reprinted by Kathryn's Report — the 1957 settlement after three earlier sites; the Airport Realty Corp., its 65 shareholders and hundred-plus acres; about 70 planes and 165 members; Dee Davis, club president, quoted; the "Mishawaka Air Activities" / "Michiana Air Activities" double naming, printed whole.
2. Mishawaka Pilots Club, the club's own published history (via its website text and Wikipedia, "Mishawaka Pilots Club Airport") — founded 1947; approximately 65 airplanes and over 100 members in the current account; the Father's Day Fly-In and Pancake Breakfast.
4. Board of Zoning Appeals of Elkhart County v. New Testament Bible Church, 411 N.E.2d 681 (Ind. Ct. App. 1980) — the Airport Realty Corp. and the Mishawaka Pilots Club, Inc. as parties in an Elkhart County zoning case: the club field's Elkhart County setting in a court record.