Wichita, by virtue of its service as a site for leading manufacturers in the aviation industry, owns the label “Air Capital of the World”—Cessna, for example, has operations there. The Kansas Historical Society web site details Clyde Cessna’s journey to aviation king, which turned the corner in Wichita after a stint at Queen Airplane in New York—an apprenticeship of sorts, so Cessna could “learn aircraft construction.”
Determination overcame setbacks. “Cessna soon began to build his own monoplane, the Silverwing,” explains kshs.org. “He crashed on his first attempt at flight in Alfalfa, Oklahoma. Cessna was not discouraged and made a successful flight in June of 1911. He continued to build monoplanes from 1912 to 1915.
“During the winter from 1916 to 1017 Cessna moved his operations to Wichita.”
Learjet, the company for which Pete Campbell left his advertising brethren in the final episode of Mad Men, has its home base in Wichita—yet another example of an iconic aviation name grounded in this Midwestern metropolis.
Wichita was also the launching pad for Pizza Hut. In 1958, Wichita State University students—and brothers—Dan and Frank Carney founded their enterprise at the corner of Kellogg and Bluff. The Carney brothers “borrowed $600 from their mom and set out to change the way the world experience pizza,” states the Pizza Hut web site.
For baseball fans, Wichita offers the Wingnuts, so named in honor of the city’s rich, prestigious, and famed aviation heritage; the label’s alliteration has a mellifluous sound, akin to other teams in sports history, e.g., Boston Braves, San Francisco Seals.
Other team name possibilities conjure images of air power—Jets, Pilots, Skies. The Wingnuts moniker does not enjoy this status, however—wingnuts are unsung but crucial elements to a plane; without wingnuts to fasten parts of the body, a plane will fall apart.
On November 7, 2007, the team débuted its name and logo at a press conference; Wichita entered the American Association of Independent Professional Baseball. Nate Robertson, a former major leaguer who has a part-ownershyip in the Wingnuts, embraces a team philosophy. “You see guys who have a bad at-bat and they are running around ranting, tearing up the locker room, and the team is winning 5-0,” said Robertson in a 2015 article for minorleaguesportsreport.com. “That is a guy who cares only about himself, and other guys on the team see that. No one likes to be around a person like that because they can tell that guy doesn’t care about the team.”
The Wingnuts ball club plays its home games in Lawrence-Dumont Stadium.
A version of this article appeared on www.thesportspost.com on November 19, 2016.