An American Eagle commuter jet, parked at Mena Intermountain, awaits maintenance.
at Mena Intermountain to visit his good friend, a man known as Hendrix. Hendrix, as Ogden recalled, had gone through pilot training during World War I, but the war had ended just as his training did. Another well-known aviation tale from Mena is that of the Geyer Brothers, Walter and Hartzell. A doctor and an undertaker, respectively, the two brothers were fighter pilots during World War II. Upon their post-war return to Mena in the late 1940s, the brothers started an unofficial flying school, where they gave flying lessons to the locals. When the field that would later be home to the Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport was designated an emergency field by the CAA, the Geyer Brothers moved their school to the more official, then grassy-field, area. In the 1960s, Hamp Edwards, one of the most renowned pilots in Mena, began to establish an aeronautical franchise in the small town, Ogden said. Edwards started a fixed-base operation (FBO) in the area outside of the airport. This FBO allowed individuals to charter a flight, buy gasoline for an aircraft or rent a hangar in which to store an aircraft. Edwards’ influence was pivotal in establishing the groundwork for what would soon become Mena’s thriving industry. “Everybody knew Hamp,” Ogden said. “One time, he was on the field and a mail courier ran near and handed him an envelope. All it said was, ‘Hamp: Mena.’ That was it. There was no street address, no ZIP code, no state. I don’t know that a post office would even try that nowadays, but since
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