His name was Eugene Cobbs and Eugene was the only reason why, 19 years ago, most residents in East Ohio and the Northern Panhandle realized Ohio County operated a two-runway airport just a few miles away from West Liberty University.
That’s because Cobbs, who was flying a twin-engine plane, crashed the aircraft near the facility in December 2004 with a little more than 520 pounds of cocaine on board. Cobbs’ co-pilot of the Piper Aerostar apparently was 327 pounds of the Schedule I narcotic, and authorities discovered nearly 200 additional pounds of cocaine in the plane’s storage areas.
The cocaine at the time had an estimated worth of approximately $24 million.
But Cobb sneaked away and although sightings were reported, the Martinsburg, W.Va., man was a fugitive until he was captured in Mexico four years later. Eugene was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison in 2010 after admitting to flying the loaded plane without a pilot’s license.
And then the airport, known only as “Stifel Field” when first opened in the mid-1940s, fell back into the obscure in Ohio County and it has stayed that way for more than a decade.
But if Kevin Price has anything to do with it, the Wheeling-Ohio County Airport will become a bigger destination than it was when TWA, All American Airlines, and other private companies conducted commercial business there from 1947 until 1970. If Price’s vision comes true, Ohio County will have an aviation campus with high school and university students preparing to join an industry desperate for a new generation of employees.
Because, as Price says often, “Why not in West Virginia?”
“I spend a lot of time on my phone on calls about the airport, and the aviation partnership between Marshall University and West Liberty, and I spend a lot of time on Zoom and Teams meetings because that’s what I have do right now,” explained Price, the new development director for the airport. “That’s where we are in this process. So many conversations have to take place so the T’s get crossed and the I’s get dotted, and so we can get people to come here and join us in this development project.
“We just have to get all of the right people in the room so we can grow,” he said. “And that’s what I do every single day.”
The Ohio County Commission announced in May the WLU-Marshall University partnership and Price believes a groundbreaking for new construction is possible within two years.
“Realistically, I can see that happening for our universities, and that may sound ambitious, but I have seen the people at Marshall University move very quickly to get things done,” Price said. “That’s what I believe we’ll see here, too. They know how to get this done because it’s been done once already.
“I’m the biggest cheerleader in the world when I know it’s real,” he said. “One of the little things that was a ‘Check the Box’ thing for me was when the official address of the airport was requested because that’s how we get the FAA certification for the flight school. So, yeah, that was great to see, and for me, it made what’s happening here very real.”
Book of Secrets
The first floor of the airport’s terminal is an aviation museum featuring artifacts from the nine decades of flight in Ohio County, and the second story is crowded with offices. Rusty Escue is the facility manager of six employees, and Price’s office is located on the same level.
Model airplanes are scattered about on the few pieces of office furniture in his space, but he also has a “Hula Girl” toy statue on the shelf of his credenza.
“It makes me laugh and I look at it every day for that fact,” Price said. “And when I look at it, I think about what’s possible here. And I think everything is possible here. I know that’s a big statement, and I’m not purposely setting the expectation bar too high, but I know there’s so much that’s possible. Literally.
“There is a very, very high demand for people to get into the aviation industry, and that’s across the board. There are shortages in every field there is that is connected to aviation. Pilots, mechanics, techs … everything,” he said. “All you have to do is want to do it and get the education.”
Price is a note-taker. He scribbles down in one of his three notebooks what he believes are the most poignant parts of the conversations he has, and then he reviews them most evenings while setting his agenda for the next day.
“My brains. That’s what’s in my notebooks. Trade secret stuff,” Price said with a snicker. “I’m old school. I still work in my notebooks. And there’s a lot about the future of the Ohio County Airport in that book, and I have two others. When I’m in meetings, I take notes so I can reference key points again. It’s just the way I got about it.
“I think we all have our own systems when we work on our things, and the notebooks are part of mine,” he explained. “If I write it down, I know it’s important to me. That’s the way it works.”
And Ohio County Commissioner Don Nickerson has been impressed with Price’s progress.
“I am very encouraged about the conversations that have been taking place, and about the developments taking place in a very short amount of time,” the commission president said. “That’s why, when I first joined the Commission, I tried to get some interest going but I was unsuccessful, but now that (Commissioner) Zach (Abraham) has come on board, we’ve made a lot of progress.
“I knew it was time to take a look at what’s possible with the airport, and with the property, too,” he said. “There are so many possibilities and that’s what makes this all very exciting.”
Abraham made the airport part of his commission campaign in 2020, and he meant every word because of what he realized when visiting the facility for the first since he was a child.
“Listen, I’m not an airplane guy, and I don’t know how to fly, but what I saw here at the time was nothing but potential,” he insisted. “That’s when we started the thought process and included a lot of people, and that was the right thing to do.
“So, we had a decision as a Commission to make. Do we do something new with the airport to make it an aviation center, or do we leave it alone and let it just exist like it has for years without many people even knowing it’s there? I believe we’ve made the right decision,” Abraham added. “Now, we’re figuring out exactly what the facility can become.”
