Word: beech
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...lined its streets in columns ten blocks long. Sober homesteaders built schools and churches instead of taverns, and Carry Nation carried her cause into the local saloons. The discovery of large oil reserves in 1915 produced another upswing and catapulted Wichita into the 20th century, attracting men like Walter Beech, Clyde Cessna and Lloyd Stearman, who turned the city into the "air capital of America...
...years since, Wichita and aviation have had a reputation of running on a steep boom-and-bust cycle. Explains Beech Aircraft's Bill Robinson: "When the rest of the economy coughed, general aviation got the first cold...
...Penny Stebbins, 34, of Branford, Conn., took special joy from the giant copper beech tree on the vacant lot next to her home. Majestically soaring 60 feet, the century-old tree had become a landmark for the area and a meeting place for lovers. A common boast around the neighborhood was that such trees live as long as 500 years. So when the lot's owners decided to build a house on the property and began cutting down the tree, Mrs. Stebbins launched a valiant holding action. Perhaps taking a hint from the premiere episode...
Local authorities finally acted in the name of private property. Police and firemen succeeded in coaxing Mrs. Stebbins down after seven days, and workmen then quickly felled the enormous beech. Though the tree was lost, Mrs. Stebbins claimed a kind of nuisance-factor victory: "I think we've made a point. People may now think twice about cutting down a beautiful thing like that...
PRIVATE-PLANE MAKERS could well be devastated. Aerospace-dependent Wichita, Kans., three years ago competed with Seattle for the nation's highest unemployment rate (12%), but it struggled back to prosperity because of aggressive development of executive aircraft by Cessna, Beech and Gates Learjet. They make six out of every ten light planes sold in the U.S. President Nixon, however, has now ordered a whopping 42% cut in fuel for business aircraft, a move that has hit Wichita with all the impact of an antipersonnel bomb...