Qualla: Smith Reynolds Airport https://qualla.com/smith-reynolds-airport en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:06 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/q/v/smith-reynolds-airport-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Smith Reynolds Airport https://qualla.com/smith-reynolds-airport Smith Reynolds Airport: Introduction https://qualla.com/smith-reynolds-airport/ Photo credit Caholguin109, CC BY-SA 4.0. The airport is named for a man who never lived to see thirty. Zachary Smith Reynolds, son of the R.J. Reynolds tobacco fortune, was twenty years old when he died of a gunshot wound at the family's Reynolda estate in 1932. Suicide or murder? Winston-Salem still argues about it. What is not disputed is that Smith Reynolds loved flying - and that, ten years after his death, his family poured money into a struggling municipal airfield three miles northeast of downtown, asked the city to put his name on the gate, and built a memorial that breathes with the engines of working aircraft instead of carving his name into stone.

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]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/q/v/smith-reynolds-airport-wp/dnqv-smith-reynolds-airport-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Smith Reynolds Airport: The Reynolds Name on the Hangar https://qualla.com/smith-reynolds-airport/ Photo credit Caholguin109, CC BY-SA 4.0. Before it carried Smith Reynolds's name, the field was called Miller Municipal, after Clint Miller, who pledged $17,000 toward its first hangars in the 1920s. Reynolds Aviation - run by Dick Reynolds, Smith's older brother - was the field's anchor tenant through its first five ye...

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]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/q/v/smith-reynolds-airport-wp/dnqv-smith-reynolds-airport-the-reynolds-name-on-the-hangar.mp3 0:06 2 full Smith Reynolds Airport: Camel City Becomes Piedmont https://qualla.com/smith-reynolds-airport/ Photo credit Caholguin109, CC BY-SA 4.0. Camel City Flying Service did not stay Camel City for long. In 1940 it became Piedmont Aviation, and by 1948 Piedmont Airlines - one of the great American regional carriers - flew its first scheduled service out of Wilmington with a Douglas DC-3 nicknamed a Pacemaker. From this l...

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]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/q/v/smith-reynolds-airport-wp/dnqv-smith-reynolds-airport-camel-city-becomes-piedmont.mp3 0:06 3 full Smith Reynolds Airport: May 5, 1989 https://qualla.com/smith-reynolds-airport/ Photo credit Caholguin109, CC BY-SA 4.0. Late in the afternoon of May 5, 1989, an F2 tornado came out of the sky and walked right across the airfield. Thirty aircraft were tossed like grocery bags. Hangars were torn open. The Winston-Salem Journal would later call it the most destructive tornado in Forsyth County histor...

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]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/q/v/smith-reynolds-airport-wp/dnqv-smith-reynolds-airport-may-5-1989.mp3 0:06 4 full Smith Reynolds Airport: A Memorial That Flies https://qualla.com/smith-reynolds-airport/ Photo credit Caholguin109, CC BY-SA 4.0. Most twenty-year-olds who die famously become statues, or scholarships, or sentences in old newspapers. Smith Reynolds got an airport - one that has launched a regional airline, weathered a tornado, trained Air Corps pilots in World War II, and still pushes private aircraft into ...

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]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/q/v/smith-reynolds-airport-wp/dnqv-smith-reynolds-airport-a-memorial-that-flies.mp3 0:06 5 full