Captain Leon M. Fox was the pilot at the controls of the Piedmont Airlines DC-3 as the new airline made its inaugural flight on February 20,1948. The flight originated in Wilmington, North Carolina, and terminated in Cincinnati, Ohio, after five intermediate stops and five hours of travel time. Soon after the flight's arrival in Cincinnati, the weather closed in and snow began to fall. Because the startup airline was not yet approved for flight by instruments, eight days passed before the weather improved enough for Captain Fox and his crew to make the return flight to Wilmington.
Six years earlier Captain Fox had been a student in the Civilian Pilot Training program operated by Piedmont Aviation Inc. under a contract with the Civil Aeronautics Administration. Soon after his flight training was completed, he joined the Army Air Corps, and from December 1943 to December 1944 he flew the C-47 transport providing support to Allied forces in North Africa. Upon logging his required 1,000 hours of flight time, he was rotated back to the states and served as an instructor pilot at a California air base until the end of the war.
After the war he briefly worked for a charter airline flying routes over the southeastern United States and to Puerto Rico before joining the newly formed Piedmont Airlines, which was a division of Piedmont Aviation Inc. He was among the first twelve pilots hired by the new airline and was one of six from that group who were designated captains based on their hours and experience.
During most of his career with Piedmont, Captain Fox held the number one seniority position among the company's pilots flying the line. Two days before his sixtieth birthday Captain Fox retired after piloting his last Piedmont Airlines flight on February 20, 1978, coinciding with the thirtieth anniversary of the airline. At the time of his retirement, Captain Fox was piloting a Piedmont Boeing 737, but over the course of his thirty-year career with the airline he had piloted most of the aircraft Piedmont operated including the Boeing 727 that began the jet era for the airline. Captain Fox accumulated more than twenty-eight thousand hours of flight time during his career as a pilot.
Captain Fox continued his association with members of the Piedmont Airlines family through an organization of retired employees known as the Piedmont Silver Eagles, and he served three one-year terms as president of the organization between 1982 and 1990. He also continued his military service following World War II as a member of the United States Air Force Reserve and retired with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.