Merrill Church Meigs (November 25, 1883January 26, 1968) was the publisher of the '' Chicago Herald and Examiner'' in the 1920s. Inspired to become a pilot by

Charles Lindbergh Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974) was an American aviator, military officer, author, inventor, and activist. On May 20–21, 1927, Lindbergh made the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris, a distance o ...

's solo flight across the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

, he became a booster of

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

as a world center of aviation. He gave flying lessons to President

Harry S. Truman Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...

Life and career

Meigs was born in Poweshiek County, Iowa, the son of Church Paddleford Meigs and Julianna S. (Burrell) Meigs. He grew up on a farm near

Malcom, Iowa Malcom is a city in Poweshiek County, Iowa, United States. The population was 270 at the time of the 2020 census. The city was named for an early settler. The town's major businesses include BASF, a restaurant, and Dayton Meat Products. History ...

, where he was more interested in the mechanical devices used to raise crops than actually farming. In 1901, he took a job as a salesman for the J.I. Case Threshing Machine Company in

Racine Jean-Baptiste Racine ( , ) (; 22 December 163921 April 1699) was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, along with Molière and Corneille as well as an important literary figure in the Western traditio ...

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

. Within a year, he was in charge of the company's sales for

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

. Despite not having graduated from high school, Meigs was allowed to enroll at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

, where he played

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

under

Amos Alonzo Stagg Amos Alonzo Stagg (August 16, 1862 – March 17, 1965) was an American athlete and college coach in multiple sports, primarily American football. He served as the head football coach at the International YMCA Training School (now called Springfie ...

and also played

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

and

water polo Water polo is a competitive team sport played in water between two teams of seven players each. The game consists of four quarters in which the teams attempt to score goals by throwing the ball into the opposing team's goal. The team with the ...

. He was the starting

left guard In gridiron football, a guard (G), otherwise known as an offensive guard (OG), is a player who lines up between the center and the tackles on the offensive line of a football team on the line of scrimmage used primarily for blocking. Right g ...

of the 1905 University of Chicago national championship team . While at the college, he would also be the campus correspondent for the ''Chicago Herald and Examiner'', of which he would become the executive later in his life. During World War II, Meigs served on the Office of Production Management as the aircraft expert. In time Meigs would become a senior vice president of the

Hearst Corporation Hearst Communications, Inc., often referred to simply as Hearst, is an American multinational mass media and business information conglomerate based in Hearst Tower in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Hearst owns newspapers, magazines, televis ...

, publisher of the old ''

Chicago American The ''Chicago American'' was an afternoon newspaper published in Chicago, under various names until its dissolution in 1974. History The paper's first edition came out on July 4, 1900, as '' Hearst's Chicago American''. It became the ''Morning ...

'' newspaper as well as becoming the head of the Chicago Aero Commission. Meigs insisted that in addition to Midway Airport (then called Municipal Airport) and O'Hare Field (then called Orchard-Douglas), the city needed an airfield within ten minutes of the

Loop Loop or LOOP may refer to: Brands and enterprises * Loop (mobile), a Bulgarian virtual network operator and co-founder of Loop Live * Loop, clothing, a company founded by Carlos Vasquez in the 1990s and worn by Digable Planets * Loop Mobile, an ...

. It opened in December 1948 and was renamed

Meigs Field Merrill C. Meigs Field Airport (pronounced , formerly ) was a single-runway airport in Chicago that was in operation from December 1948 until March 2003 on Northerly Island, an artificial peninsula on Lake Michigan. The airport sat adjacent to ...

in his honor the following year. Fifty-five years after the renaming, Meigs Field was demolished by order of then-Chicago mayor

Richard M. Daley Richard Michael Daley (born April 24, 1942) is an American politician who served as the 54th mayor of Chicago, Illinois, from 1989 to 2011. Daley was elected mayor in 1989 and was reelected five times until declining to run for a seventh term ...

. Meigs retired in 1962 and became a consultant to the newspaper industry. He died at age 84.

Sources

*
Meigs - The Man Who Loved to Fly
', Reprinted from Friends of Meigs Field, Chicago, IL. Accessed on Meigs Family History and Genealogy website, December 16, 2007

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Meigs, Merrill 1883 births 1968 deaths American football guards American newspaper executives Chicago Maroons baseball players Chicago Maroons football players Businesspeople from Chicago 20th-century American businesspeople