A reader’s photo of his father with his brand-new airplane.
Nick Proferes
Many readers have been sending us letters about our November 2013 story, Buy Your Plane at Penney's by Paul Glenshaw, regarding their own memories of the ERCO Ercoupe. Reader Nick Proferes send in this wonderful picture of his father, Nick Proferes Sr., sitting in his brand new Ercoupe at the Washington-Virginia Airport around 1950.
My father enlisted in the [U.S. Army Air Corps] at the age of 17 to learn to fly, winding up at Langley Field until WWII broke out and he got involved in radar and aircraft navigation systems across the north Atlantic. I still have a photo of him sitting in his newly acquired Ercoupe around 1950 at Washington and Virginia Airport at Bailey's Cross Roads, Virginia where there were a number of these aircraft parked on the field. I remember well flying with him in the plane from an age of around 6 when I could barely see over the cowling. He owned it for a number of years before selling it to buy a Stinson Voyager. I recently checked the FAA records for the tail number but sadly it appears to be no longer flying as the number has been re-assigned. I remember the plane as being rather slow but simple and a whole lot of fun.
Image courtesy Nick Proferes
Nick Proferes
Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer/AirCoupe1_main.jpg)