How I Stumbled Upon Hugh Proctor
Last Tuesday night I was scrolling through old aviation forums trying to find parts for my model plane collection. Some user mentioned Hugh Proctor in a thread about 1920s pilots. The name rang zero bells. So I went down the rabbit hole.
Started simple – just typed “Hugh Proctor” into the search engine. Got nothing useful at first. Page after page of lawyers and realtors. Then I added the word “pilot” and boom! An obscure Georgia history site popped up saying he flew in WWI. That was my hook.
Digging Through Archives
Took me three evenings because records are messy. First hit the digital newspaper archives. Found his tiny wedding announcement in a 1922 Atlanta paper. Then military records showed he trained at France’s Issoudun airfield in 1918. Got excited when I discovered he actually shot down two German planes – never saw that mentioned anywhere else!
The real goldmine was an old aviation bulletin board. Some guy’s grandpa flew with Proctor in the 1920s. Shared crazy stories about barnstorming days when they’d land in cow pastures to sell $5 joyrides. The grandpa recalled Hugh once fixed a busted fuel line with chewing gum mid-flight.
Putting Pieces Together
Here’s what shocked me most:
- Proctor created the FIRST African American owned airline in 1923
- His Proctor Air Lines ran mail between Atlanta, Nashville, Birmingham
- His terminal was literally a shack at Atlanta’s Candler Field
- He trained Tuskegee Airmen before WWII
Found zero photos of him though. Not one. Kept clicking through library databases until my eyes blurred. Around 2AM I finally hit a blurry microfilm image of him standing next to a Jenny biplane. My cat jumped when I yelled “YES!”
Why This Matters Today
Finished researching around 3AM covered in coffee stains. Here’s the kicker – we all know about Tuskegee Airmen, but nobody talks about pioneers like Proctor who paved their way. Dude was booking flights for black passengers when other airlines wouldn’t even look at them. His airline folded during the Depression, but man – that legacy’s important.
Now every time I see a plane overhead, I think about that chewing gum fix. Some heroes don’t get history books. They get found by nerds with too much coffee and stubborn internet searches at midnight.
