news-record.com

Now we know how long-ago, goggle-wearing pilots found the airport.

The answer shows up in a photo album that recently found its way back to Greensboro by way of the Alamance County town of Haw River.

Several downtown aerial shots show the top of the 17-story Jefferson Standard Building. “Greensboro” is painted on the roof, along with an arrow pointed west and the word “airport.”

The album from the 1920s and 1930s includes shots of giant galleries watching golfers at Starmount Country Club in the early PGA Tour event that is now the Wyndham Championship.

In others, crowds jam Elm Street watching Armistice Day (now Veterans Day) and Christmas parades. In a downtown office, people watch parades from windows.

The album belonged to the family of Walter “W.E.” Blair, an executive with Southern Real Estate Co., which developed Irving Park and Sedgefield. Walter’s son, Kennett, an avid photographer, likely took the photos.

Judging from the snapshots, the Blairs and friends enjoyed themselves. Men and women appear laughing, drinking and smoking. One woman is often shown in a bathing suit. She appears to be the same one pictured asleep in her nightgown. Others show women sewing and socializing in parlors with tall console radios.

W.E. Blair was “a big shot,” says local historian Taylor Doggett, whose father, James, worked for Southern Real Estate. W.E. Blair worked with A.W. McAlister, R.G. Vaughn and A.M. Scales to create what are still the area’s swankiest neighborhoods. Blair Street, which runs along the southern edge of Irving Park, is named for him.

The album turned up recently with Elizabeth Gordon Montgomery Waugh of Haw River. She inherited it from a great aunt long ago divorced from Kennett Blair. Waugh felt it should be returned to the Blair family. She was directed to Greensboro artist Harry Blair. Although he was unaware of W.E. and Kennett Blair, he figured he was kin.

“I think all the Blairs in this area are descended from one Quaker, John Blair,” Blair says.

Sports fans will enjoy photos taken in Kenan Stadium of UNC playing games in 1933 and 1934 against Georgia Tech and Duke. The visitor’s side is almost bare for the Tech game but packed for Duke.

Kennett Blair adapted to night photography, which was a particular challenge in those days, with clear photos of Greensboro Senior High (now Grimsley) playing under the lights at War Memorial Stadium.

W.E. Blair appears playing golf at Greensboro Country Club, the 15th fairway of which passed his house on what’s now Irving Place. Aerial photos show early course scenes at the country club. Tee and greenside shots of the pros playing Starmount include a young Sam Snead displaying his classic swing.

On a different side of town, an unidentified man in a black neighborhood gets a 5-cent shoeshine at a stand attached to an old house.

A heart attack killed W.E. Blair at 61 in 1934. Stress from the Depression may have been a cause. His widow, Mary K. Hunter Blair, who died in 1958, later moved to a bungalow in the Westerwood neighborhood off Mendenhall Street.

Kennett Blair, who died in 1978, lived with his second wife, Vera, in the Blair Apartments, which the family bought in the 1930s on Fisher Avenue. After Vera Blair’s death in 2003, developer Dawn Cheney renovated the Blair apartments and restored the original name, Vick. Vick Chemical Co. built them in 1919.

Harry Blair found a distant relative by marriage of W.E. Blair’s, but she wasn’t interested in the album. He’s considering giving it to a place where everyone can enjoy it, the Greensboro Historical Museum.

Contact Jim Schlosser at 601-9879 or beale1@clearwire.net