The cow pasture near Whitakers, North Carolina, was one of the finest East-coast rocketry sites for eleven years, from 1994 to 2005. With no crops in the pasture itself, we could fly year-round, and the mild winters in North Carolina ensured great crowds all year long. Hundreds of flyers certified at Whitakers over the years, and countless children (and adults!) were introduced to rocketry. This pasture was surrounded by almost 4000 acres of crop-land. That, and the heroic work of the amazing John "Bird-Dog" Hamill combined to ensure that almost no-one ever lost a rocket. Whitakers was host to several fabulous "SmallBALLS" events from 1997 to 2000, where the growing East-coast Experimental rocketry scene was nurtured into being. After 2000, the extremely exciting Whitakers Experimental Launch Days (WELD) events provided a twice-yearly EX gathering that was usually very big, and always exciting.

When the right combination of "The Right Place" and "The Right People" come together at the right time, the whole scene develops a life of its own, where the reputation and the atmosphere inspire the people to contribute, to reach inside themselves to grow and dream big. This article is a brief biography of that life. We will describe the birth of rocketry at Whitakers, the growth and life of the high-power scene at that site, and the death of the that fragile personal relationship that made it all possible. The first-person narrative is from Dennis Hill and the framework and closing comments are from Alan Whitmore.

In 1993, I was talking with a work buddy of mine named Billy Suggs about my new hobby – high power rocketry. In those days, I had to travel to Culpeper, VA, to fly high power and I lamented the lack of an adequate flying field locally to even fly low power. Billy said his brother, Joe, had a farm in Whitakers, NC, that could accommodate my low power activity and he agreed to ask Joe if I could fly my rockets there. Joe said OK so the next weekend I packed my Cheetah and my Viper IV rockets in the van, grabbed some G and E motors, and eagerly headed out to Joe’s farm. I flew at Joe’s farm for the next 6 months or so for my low power fix.

One day later that year, Billy and I went to a home-style country cooking place in Whitakers for lunch. Within a few minutes of our arrival, a group of farmers came into the restaurant and Billy’s brother, Joe, was among them. We invited them to sit with us. Eventually the conversation turned to the rockets I was flying at Joe’s farm. As I talked, Joe turned to me and said "Well, if you’re looking for some really wide-open spaces you should talk to that guy" and he pointed to the farmer sitting next to me, Walter O’Neal, Jr. Walter owned the farming lease on the Etheridge farm which was located about 3 miles from Joe’s farm. He described the 800 acre pasture he operated and the 4000 acres of surrounding crop fields that he and a friend farmed. Walter gave me his card and wrote down his cell phone number and told me to give him a call if we ever wanted to fly out there. After lunch I convinced Billy to drive me out to Walter’s operation to see if his field would do for our purposes. As soon as we came upon it, I knew we had struck the mother lode! Oh, yeah, it would do….just fine, thank you!

The rest is history. This article is not the place for a complete listing of the many launches held at Whitakers and their highlights, thousands of people have flown here and visitors have come from Florida and Texas, Quebec and New Hampshire, and as far west as Iowa to fly with us. The Rocketry Forum has made our spring 2-Day Sport Launch the site of their annual reunion. Mark Lloyd and Kelly Mercer’s Bigger Dawg, Steve Mashburn’s Titan IV, and several flights of Sterling Edmund’s MMX3 have all made headlines in the various rocketry magazines.

Over the next 9 years we cultivated a relationship with Walter and Mrs. Mary Smiley, one of three sisters who inherited the land from their father and lived on the property at the home place. Walter’s lease terms were 3 years and he made us welcome as long as he held onto the lease. We flew every month in his fields and got to know Walter and Mrs. Smiley, her sisters, and the estate executor very well. Walter often visited the launches just to hang out and talk with the flyers. He usually showed up at launches with "lost" rockets he had found somewhere on the farm or had been turned in to him by other farmers, hunters, or neighbors. He would even help us retrieve rockets that had floated out of the area. Once he helped me recover a nose cone and parachute that had separated from my rocket and got hung up in the top of 50’ pine tree. He got it down by shooting the top of the tree off with a .22 rifle with one shot! We never paid rent for our use of the field and Walter never asked for any. Every Christmas, however, we used some of the club’s funds to buy gift certificates for Walter and Mrs. Smiley. When hurricane Floyd devastated Eastern North Carolina with record floods, Walter’s daughter lost all of the contents of her house and had to completely rebuild the interior. Walter had to find a boat and rescue his daughter and granddaughter from the flooded house. We took up a collection within the clubs that flew at Whitakers and we were able to present Walter with a check for $1800 to help his daughter get her house back together.

Walter was a fine host and we did our best to be good guests. During one launch held after a few days of rain, the entrance to the field was muddy and slippery. Ken Allen of Performance Hobbies could not get enough traction to get his truck through. He backed up and got a running start with his truck to navigate the entrance but his tires slid and he clipped the entrance gate pole, knocking it down. We called Walter and advised him of the accident. We told him we would pay for any damages to repair it but Walter was calm and said he would be out later to take care of it. At the end of the day, 6 or 7 of the flyers and Ken stayed to help Walter repair the gate. Walter told me later that of all the things we had done before to be good guests, that was the one thing he would always remember that showed we were "good ol’ boys" – how so many of us stayed to help him. I don’t think anyone knows it, but that incident and our response to it is what cemented our relationship with Walter in his mind.

Walter was always accommodating, gracious, and kind. As a farmer, he was fighting a losing economic battle. It was interesting to hear his stories of life for the average American farmer. The small, single-family farm is extinct in America: the profit margins for farming have become so narrow that the only way to make any income is to farm big: the only economies are economies of scale. Small land-owners lease their property to large farmers for what little the farmers can afford to pay for the use of the land, sometimes just barely enough to pay the property taxes. The big farmer gets to keep all of his equipment working almost all of the growing season, all of his labor busy, and, if the weather is good, he may make a fair amount of profit. Even in the good years, the margins are very narrow, and every land-owner is looking for any possible way to make more money from his property. Here’s where the hunting leases come into this story. While leasing the farming rights to one person, the land-owner may also lease the hunting rights to another. Eastern North Carolina is full of deer, dove, quail, a variety of waterfowl, black bear, turkey, wild hogs, and lots of other "fun stuff to shoot". This is a big money proposition: hunting clubs and the well-to-do will pay top dollar for exclusive right to hunt a particular property.

Eventually, in 2003, Walter O’Neal lost the bid for the farming lease on the Smiley farm. He told me that in his last lease term, he lost money and the only way he could hold onto the property was to bid a lower figure than he had paid the previous three years. According to Walter, the new operator, Joel Boseman, bid 3 times the amount he paid in the last term of his operation when he lost money. He said the money behind the deal and the driving force on the bid price was the farm operator’s partner, Steve Wordsworth. Steve and his brother own MBM, the largest privately held food distributor in the country. They also co-own the Carolina Panthers. Steve wanted the property solely for the hunting rights. As the new farm operator took over, it was touch-and-go for a while, but with Walter’s help in the transition, we were able to hold on to our permission to continue flying. That is, until April of 2006.

For several years, the productivity of the Whitakers field as a pasture had declined, inedible weeds were spreading and the nutrient level was declining. Joel Boseman decided to turn the pasture into a corn field for one season to kill off some unwanted grasses in the pasture. However, he didn’t think to inform any of us. So, when I drove by the field a week before the Spring WELD event, and saw the fences down and the whole field plowed, I was shocked. When we finally were able to contact him personally, he told us once the corn got too high we could fly at another field he owned about 5 miles away, and then return to the pasture after the corn was harvested. Until we could get a waiver and insurance details worked out, we were forced to move WELD to the crop field across the road from the pasture. Joel had no objections and on April 8, we descended on the crop field, unaware that a friend of Steve Wordsworth was hunting turkeys in the woods that bordered the crop field about a half mile away. It was a windy, rainy day so we only launched 5 small, lower powered rockets, before calling it a day. Apparently that was enough to upset Steve’s friend who complained to him. Steve called the land owner and suddenly we were homeless after 11 years with no problems whatsoever. I tried to negotiate and search for an alternative solution that would satisfy all parties. The landowner was sympathetic and sorry but, in his words, "There’s just too much money involved". That leads me to believe that Steve threatened to not renew his very lucrative hunting rights lease with the landowners so we were at his mercy. The sad part of it all is that we have rules against disturbing the hunters and had we known they were there, I believe we would have done something different that day and we would still have Whitakers as our flying field. If only they had communicated to us the way Walter did.

End remarks: The spark that brings a launch site to life is the meeting between someone with land and someone who can present our hobby to that person in a positive way. The landowner can think of a thousand reasons why he doesn’t want to get involved: what the rocket flyers need is someone who can connect with the landowner personally, communicate the excitement of a high power launch, and think of some way to let the landowner feel that he is involved and appreciated. The forces that drive the continued life of the site are the same forces that keep good marriages and friendships alive: mutual respect and compromise. When the life of the launch site finally comes to an end, the reasons are usually the same reasons that break up marriages – lack of communication and financial problems. The lessons of this story are clear. If your TRA or NAR club currently enjoys a good relationship with your landowner, do not take it for granted. Treat them the way you would wish guests in your own home to treat you. But most of all, communicate with them. Tell them what you want to do, and after the launch tell them what happened, and express your gratitude for the use of the field.