Airplanes were a part of Asa Candler, Jr.’s life from the earliest days of flight. And like bicycles and automobiles, the aeroplane, as it was known at the time, was destined to become an obsession.

The earliest record of a connection between Buddie and flying goes back to 1910, when he invited daredevils of the air to do exhibition flights from the mid-field at the Atlanta Speedway during races.

Biplane before takeoff, Atlanta Speedway 1910

Although manned flight was new and imagination-grabbing, the aeroplane demos weren’t sufficient to keep crowds coming south of the city to watch. Due to a lack of attendance and poor cost structuring the track closed after the 1911 races and the Candlers moved on to more profitable ventures.

Following the foreclosure on the land, Asa Sr. held the title for future use. In the meantime Asa, Jr., convinced him to lease it to a couple of local pilots who wanted to offer flying lessons and test the idea of air mail in the region. These two pilots, Beeler Blevins and Doug Davis, erected hangars on the land, and if not for their tenacity and vision, what is now the busiest airport in the world may have never been.

As interest in air mail and travel grew, the city of Atlanta requested the right to lease the former speedway and turn it into an official airfield. Buddie was in charge of the Candler Investment Co.’s real estate holdings and approved favorable terms for both himself and the city, given that the land had no better offers.

In early 1914, Buddie’s uncle, Warren Aikin Candler, approached Asa, Sr., with a proposal. He had recently lost out in a power struggle at Vanderbilt College in Nashville and was looking for a way to build his own Methodist school that would put Vandy to shame. His alma mater was an obvious choice. But if Emory was to be a competitive institution it needed to move out of the tiny hamlet of Oxford, GA, and relocate in the big city.

Asa, Sr., was interested in the proposition. He and Warren worked quietly to devise a plan to convince the church that a premier Methodist school was just what the Atlanta community needed. He considered the Hapeville land tract, no longer useful as a track and earning only a modest income from the city’s flying activities. The people of Hapeville were on board and helped to raise $50k in support of the proposal in August of 1914. But the church’s governing organization wasn’t convinced and the opportunity fell through. In the meantime Asa, Sr., had started eyeballing his other major land tract, the Druid Hills development. By the close of 1914 Warren got his wish and with a generous land donation and a $1mm endowment, Emory established its new home in Druid Hills, leaving the former Atlanta Speedway in Hapeville to the flyboys once again.

In August of 1919 Buddie was appointed to the executive committee of the Southern Aero Club, with the goal of promoting flying activity at the now-named Candler Field. The club proposed converting the on-site former Atlanta Automobile Association clubhouse into a clubhouse for pilots and flying enthusiasts, as well as a gun club. A suggestion that intersected with another one of Buddie’s growing passions.

The plans were typically grandiose.

“The club which we expect to make one of the livest organizations in the south, will establish a training school for flyers, and will operate a regular flying course with rides for the public at graduated prices, according to the length of time a passenger stays in the air. We have been given the use of the Candler field, and here we propose to put up a clubhouse for the use of the aviators and a gun club. It has been suggested that we have a ladies’ auxiliary, and plans for this will probably be worked out a little later. There are undoubtedly many women in Atlanta who are enthusiasts over the possibilities of air transportation. We now have under consideration contracts furnished by plane manufacturers, but their acceptance will be determined by the executive committee.”

— Southern Aero Club President R.E.L Cone, August 3, 1919, The Atlanta Constitution

In 1928 city Alderman William B. Hartsfield, chairman of the city council aviation committee, drove a hard campaign for the city of Atlanta to acquire Candler Field permanently, since Candler Investment Co. had leased it to the city for 5 years with an asking price of $100k when the deal ended in 1930. April of 1929, Buddie signed the deal, making the land officially Atlanta city property. His father, Asa, Sr., was severely incapacitated by a stroke in 1926 and passed away in March of 1929, making this Buddie’s sole decision.

“It was one of the most important transactions by the city in years. With one airplane factory and an airport, Atlanta is in a dominant position in the aviation of the Southeast.””

— Mayor Isaac Ragsdale, speech to the Atlanta City Council, 1930

In October of that same year Buddie purchased his first private airplane. A Waco open-cockpit biplane with a 165hp Wright engine, maroon with "Briarcliff" stenciled on the side. If you want to get technical, it was likely a BSO-A with a Wright R-540A engine. As he did during his pathfinder days, he hired a pilot to operate the vehicle. In Atlanta, if you wanted the best you hired Beeler Blevins. So he did. Blevins became his private pilot for the next 5 years. Buddie’s wife Florence claimed she had no idea her husband was planning to buy an aeroplane.

On March 4, 1930, a mysterious fire at Candler Field destroyed Beeler Blevins' brand new hangar that he and Buddie’s son John had erected to house a new airplane company. Buddie’s $20k Vega was destroyed, along with sixteen other planes. Three of the airplanes belonged to Beeler. All totalled the fire caused $140k in damage and the cause was never determined, although a heavy implication suggested arson. Mysterious fires happened not infrequently during the Great Depression. Unfortunately for John, the hangar was not insured.

Buddie’s replacement plane was an upgrade, a closed-cockpit Lockheed Vega Model 5B NC49M purchased in April of 1930. This was the same model airplane as the one Amelia Earhart flew. Buddie modified the plane to close off the cargo bay, and then Charles Lindbergh ended up flying in that same Vega after it changed hands. Read more about this airplane’s life here, but overlook the incorrect information about Asa, Jr., and Coca Cola’s history.

It’s important to remember that this was well before the advent of passenger planes and casual air travel. The first plane, the Waco, had an open cockpit, which meant helmets and goggles and wind and cold were all limiting factors. This wasn’t a commuter plane, it was for joyriding at high speed and daredevilry. But the purchase of the Vega greatly increased his range. In May of 1930 he was reported as one of the many wealthy men who had taken fondly to the hobby of magic, and that he frequently hopped into his airplane to fly up to New York City to shop for the latest and greatest magic tricks.

In June of 1930 Buddie added another plane to his collection when be bought one for his daughter Martha for her college graduation present. At this time only 6 women in the state of Georgia had a pilot’s license. Martha’s twin sister, Helen, Jr., kept her feet on the ground and received a shiny new car. Their older brother John got his own plane, too.

In July of 1931 Buddie sold his Vega and bought a $25k Lockheed Orion, a superspeed monoplane, his third personal plane. Charles Lindbergh also flew an Orion, but Buddie’s was reported as the first and only Orion purchased for private use for the purpose of ferrying business associates around. While standing on the tarmac, preparing for his maiden flight in his new vehicle, he announced that he would try to break Lindbergh’s transcontinental flight record by forging a path from Los Angeles to Atlanta in record time.

The flight was daring. Buddie and Florence took no food and packed no bags. They intended to fly from Los Angeles to Dallas, TX, stop for lunch, then continue on to Atlanta. Unfortunately they ran into a storm and put down hard at Love Airfeld in Dallas, nearly crashing on touchdown when the left wing dug into the ground and took damage. The wing needed repairs, ruining their chance at the record. Buddie never attempted the record again.

But he did send Blevins out to fly on his behalf in races all over the country. It was the auto racing days all over again. And when the governor of Georgia needed to appoint someone to represent the state’s interests at a three-day aviation law conference in St. Louis in December of 1931, he asked Buddie and Blevins to promote the need for uniform aviation regulations and bring results back to the Georgia legislature.

Unfortunately those days came to an end in 1934 when Beeler Blevins died in an automobile accident. Rather than replacing him with a new racing pilot, Buddie withdrew from racing and used his planes for ferrying important associates around and taking hunting trips up to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and other wildernesses. He hired E.W. Hightower, a former Blevins Aircraft Corporation employee, to ferry him around until Hightower signed up to join forces with the R.A.F. and served in WWII over Northern Africa.

Even with uniform aviation laws early air travel wasn’t without risk. In 1952 in the book “These Found the Way: Thirteen Converts to Protestant Christianity, he told a story of a close call.

“At one time a group of friends were flying with me in my plane to Alaska on a hunting expedition. We were flying at 16,000 feet in a heavy fog to clear the mountaintops. But the ice formed rapidly on the wings, and we had only a limited supply of de-icing fluid. We were cruising at about 220 miles an hour.

After a time my pilot, who had been with me for fifteen years, came back into the cabin and said, ‘Mr. Candler, we are out of de-icing fluid. At this altitude, ice will form rapidly, and slow us down. We cannot maintain a safe altitude when the plane slows to 160 miles an hour. When that happens, we have exhausted the possibilities. I want to ask you to be prepared for the end.’

I knew my pilot. and I knew exactly what he meant. HE was not emotional, and there was no emotion in his voice. Nor did I feel any emotion. I was prepared to die, and had been since I asked God to take away my self.

...The plane began falling, and I settled back into my chair, with my mind and heart surrendered to God. The pilot thought he saw something through the fog, and on a long chance headed toward it. Presently we flew out into perfectly clear air; we were not higher than three or four thousand feet. The clear area was formed by a cone of lofty mountains. Their common valley, a huge circle, was as clear as day.

Flying blind, we had miraculously cleared the mountaintops. We simply flew around in the valley till the ice melted off of our wings, then flew back up to 16,000 feet and on to our destination, without trouble of any kind.”

— Asa Candler, Jr., as told to David Wesley Soper, These Found a Way: Thirteen Converts to Protestant Christianity, 1952

In the early 1930s Buddie took a controlling interest in West View Cemetery and in the 1940s purchased a plane for cemetery business. Of course, he blurred the lines between business and personal use, so the West View plane may have been the one involved in the story above.

His love of flying never waned like his other hobbies. All the way until the end of his life he enjoyed flying himself and others around. In March of 1950 he helped the city of Atlanta rally to raise funds for the Grant Park Zoo to replace their beloved elephant Coca. He chose two children to fly with him to a wild animal reserve to personally choose their elephant. He was there at the arrival of Coca II to welcome her to her new home. Following this excitement he went into the hospital for more than a month. That autumn he made headlines when he sent his private airplane to pick up the gravely ill daughter of a local pastor to fly her to an Atlanta hospital, a generous decision that likely saved her life. He passed away a year and a half later, having never lost his love of flight.