Born on May 10,1890, Willis Heath Proctor flew more than 19,000 hours in the air without scratching an airplane.
Heath, as he was known, received his commission and flying wings in the US Army Air Corps on May 9,1918, and joined a provisional wing on Long Island, where he trained other young pilots at Mineola, New York until World War I came to an end, and then accepted a reserve commission as 1st Lt. in the Officer's Reserve Corps.
In December 1927 Heath began flying open-cockpit mail planes with Colonial Western Airways for $50 a week. Pilot Proctor flew Colonial Western's inaugural westbound airmail flight, on Dec. 17 from Buffalo to Cleveland.
Heath also flew the first Buffalo-Albany route in June 1928, in an FC-2 "cabin" plane. Newspaper clippings hailed his "several months" experience as an airmail pilot, calling him "one of the Colonial veterans."
Colonial Western was later absorbed into what would become today's American Airlines. Heath was assigned payroll number 02 and based at Newark, then Cincinnati. Following a transfer to Chicago, he flew the first nonstop from that city to Washington, DC, aboard a DC-3 in a DC-3.