McCoy Papers, 1944-2018 | UNA Archives and Special Collections

Jim McCoy, a former pilot, wrote a open letter to the AOPA Magazine in December 1990 to ask about the concrete runwaus located at Courtland Army Air Field and also if there wereany cadets that had trained here still living. To his amazement, he received numerous letters from many of those who has trained at Courtland. Very detailed letters and photographs are present in this collection.

Jim McCoy, joined the Air Force on June 15, 1950, in San Antonio, Texas. He was supposed to have a sixteen week training course, but after eight weeks, he was shipped to Biloxi, Mississippi for six weeks for radar training. From there, he was stationed at Tyndall Air Force Base in Panama City, Florida, where he helped train officers from allied nations. He was then shipped to a radar site in Sakai, Japan and spent two years there during the Korean War. After two years, he returned to Florence, where he attended Florence State Teacher's College. He spent the next twelve years in Dayton, Ohio as a foreman at the National Cash Register Company. He moved back to Alabama, where he worked from Teledyne Brown on the Saturn 5 Rocket. For the next sixteen years, he worked at Reynolds Metal Company and then became a general foreman at the Sheffield Can Plant until his retirement.