COMMERCIAL AVIATION PIONEER KEITH KAHLE DIES AFTER ILLNESS BY GINGER D. RICHARDSON Star-Telegram Staff Writer Saturday, July 5, 1997 FORT WORTH - Keith Kahle, an aviation pioneer who founded the first commercial airline to fly out of Meacham Field died yesterday after a long illness. He was 88. Mr. Kahle founded Central Airlines in 1949 with backers and board members including Fort Worth oilman F. Kirk Johnson, former City Councilman R.E. Harding Jr., Don Earhart and actor Jimmy Stewart. The carrier served more than 1 million passengers in 41 cities and six Southwestern states from the 1940s to the 1960s. In 1961, Mr. Kahle moved Central Airlines' headquarters from Meacham Field to the new Amon Carter Field, which was later named Greater Southwest Airport. In 1967, Central Airlines merged with Frontier Airlines, and Mr Kahle joined LTV Aerospace Corp. of Dallas. In 1984, he became an adviser to Bob Buzard, the president of ElectroCom. He retired in 1992. Jean Kahle, his wife of 20 years, tearfully remembered her husband last night as a high-spirited and proud man, who always lived life to its fullest. "It's still such a sh6ck," she said. "I wasn't through loving him." Mr. Kahle was born in West Virginia but moved to Oklahoma when he was a year old. After his mother died in 1924 the family moved to Norman, Okla., where his brother attended the University of Oklahoma while Mr. Kahle was in junior high. Watching the OU football team on the practice field began Mr. Kahle's lifelong devotion to the team. Yesterday, one of Mr. Kahle's longtime friends, former House Speaker Jim Wright, A University of Texas at Austin fan, remembered sparring with his friend. "I remember about four years ago, Keith had injured himself and he was in a wheelchair, but he absolutely insisted on going to the UT-Oklahoma game at the Cotton Bowl," Wright said. "He loved that school." For 47 years, Mr. Kahle met the OU team when it arrived for the annual game against UT. And Jean Kahle met her future husband at one of the games. But Mr. Kahle went to Iowa State University and graduated in 1932 with a degree in engineering. After college, he worked in the Oklahoma oilfields, where he first met barn-storming pilots and began writing about aviation. During his time as aviation editor for The Daily Oklahoman, he operated the Oklahoma City Flying School, where he became friends with pilot Wiley Post. After Post and Will Rogers were killed in a plane crash in Alaska in 1937, Kahle's story in the newspaper was about fellow pilots gathered at Municipal Airport waiting for the plane to bring Post's body home. Yesterday. Wright remembered his friend as a person of integrity with "a powerfully strong sense of loyalty." "Keith and I had been very good friends for a long time," Wright said. "I met him about the time I was running for Congress for first time. and I just instinctively liked him because he was a guy who was putting something together from nothing. "It's a sad day, but Keith leaves many friends and a long legacy of friendship and constructive service to this community and aviation." Mr. Kahle's interest in politics and his friendship with Wright led him to serve as a delegate to the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, where he paraded in a cowboy hat 6 feet in diameter. The hat is now in the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin. He was a strong supporter of both Johnson and John F. Kennedy, Wright said. Mr. Kahle, a member of the Civil Air Patrol during World War II, was inducted into the Oklahoma Aviation Hall of Fame in 1982. In Fort Worth he was a member of Travis Avenue Baptist Church, River Crest Country Club, The Steeplechase Club and the Petroleum Club. Funeral arangements are pending. Former Star-Telegram columnist Cissy Stewart Lale contributed to this report. The honorary pallbearers at his funeral were the ex-employees of Central Airlines.