"World's Smallest Airport" Soars into Athens

After a few seconds of watching the documentary “The World’s Smallest Airport,” you realize one thing: the Thrasher brothers were nuts.

Some people might call them reckless, fearless or even brave. But to fly airplanes in such a haphazard way, to grab a ladder or a plane’s struts and dangle in the air as the plane flies around an airfield while spectators watch, slack jawed, don’t you have to be sort of nuts?

You decide. Go see “The World’s Smallest Airport” this week at and get back to me.

Produced by Grady Thrasher, III, and his wife, Kathy Prescott, the project started last year as an essay in Slackpole, Flagpole’s spoof publication. Grady, who has written children’s books since he retired from being an attorney, wrote about the Thrasher Brothers Aerial Circus, which thrilled people from 1945 until 1950.

 publisher Pete McCommons suggested Grady make a movie, so Grady and Kathy found computer whiz Matt DeGennaro, who began meshing photos and footage with music and narrative. Some 13 months later, voila! They had a documentary.

From it, we learn that Grady Thrasher, Jr., I built his first glider--which didn't---in the 1920s. He learned to fly in Athens as did Athenian and aeronautical pioneer Ben Epps, Jr., and honed his skills during World War II, returning to Athens to teach flying. Two of his pupils were his younger brothers Bud and Tunis.

Hey, why not strap 4-year-old Grady, III, into the cockpit, seat yourself on the wing, where you could work the controls, and bill the little boy as the World's Youngest Pilot? Why not pretend to be drunk and steal a plane away from the legitimate pilot? Why not build a platform on the family Ford and then bill it as the World's Smallest Airport and land an airplane on it more than 300 times?

Of course, when Grady's mother drove the car-airport into town to buy groceries or run errands, well, good-bye to overhead power lines, traffic lights and store awnings.

"The World's Smallest Airport" is an upbeat, happy chronicle of men who created entertainment that was wonderful and memorable before anybody told them they couldn't do something so dangerous. It's a joyous testament to the possible.