Milton Hersberger papers

The bulk of the material in the collection deals with Hersberger's airline. The most useful records for understanding its daily operation are the pilot logs and airline ledgers. The pilot logs, available for the entire period Hersberger was involved with the airlines, 1930-1953, provide a record of the number of hours Hersberger was flying on any given day as well as cumulative hour totals. They also indicate the nature of the trips being made and the planes being used. Unfortunately, they do not provide information for the airline as a whole, because there were periods when Hersberger employed other pilots. The ledgers, unlike the pilot logs, provide financial information and a record of the employees of the airline through indications of withholding and social security taxes paid. There is no breakdown of the earnings of the company on a per pilot basis, however, so it is difficult to know how much other pilots were flying in comparison to Hersberger. Ledgers are available for the years 1939 through 1953.

The collection has little correspondence. The main series was created through Hersberger's involvement with the Port Clinton Airport and deals primarily with the attempt to establish it as a municipal airport so that it would be eligible for federal funds to provide for improvement and expansion of its facilities. Hersberger started the airport by leasing land from the U. S. Gypsum Company in 1930. More land was eventually needed and to establish it as a municipal airport all of the land had to be acquired by Port Clinton. The bulk of the Port Clinton Airport correspondence stemmed from Hersberger's membership on the Airport Committee which worked to raise funds to purchase the land and get landowners to sell. Business correspondence and personal correspondence is extremely limited.

The newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and book sections are useful sources for tracing the activities of Hersberger and the history of his airlines. The clippings provide contemporary accounts of major events starting with Hersberger's appearing after the sinking of the "Mascot" to transport its stranded passengers and including an article on the sale of the airline. They also indicate what Hersberger did after selling the airline. Later newspaper articles, treating the airlines as a subject of local history, and magazine articles and book sections often include memories of the residents that provide an understanding of how important the air service was to the Islanders. Articles written for national news magazines in the 1940s show the contemporary importance of the airlines as an example of a successful passenger service in an era when air travel was being popularized.

The richest part of the collection is the extensive photographic record. Even though not all of the photographs have been identified, they show the sorts of planes Hersberger flew from his barnstorming days up until the day he transferred ownership of the airlines, which was also the last day he ever flew a plane. One photograph shows the ice cutters used before plane service supplanted them as the only means of transportation for the Islanders during the winter months. The importance of Hersberger's airlines to the Islanders is demonstrated by the many photographs of the great variety of cargoes flown and the crowded passenger cabins. With very few exceptions the photographs are of extremely high quality; a number of them were taken by photojournalists and ended up serving as illustrations for articles on Hersberger.

A small amount of material deals with Hersberger's career after selling the airline. Three ledgers covering 1951 through 1956 are for Urb's Cafe, which Hersberger operated in Port Clinton. Several newsclippings refer to his operation of a professional building in Port Clinton.