By Jack M. Willis
Journal Correspondent

When I first met Jimmie Guilliotte, I instantly suspected a French heritage. Then I found out he was a native of the Georgetown, Louisiana area instead of the Great Free State of Avoyelles, and so I wondered what a nice guy like him was doing now living in West Monroe. When asked about this geographical transfer, he stated that his family indeed was originally from the Marksville area in Avoyelles Parish, but his grandfather had moved to Tioga in Rapides Parish where his dad was born in 1917.

Somewhere in the 20's the family moved to Rochelle where his Dad later found employment at an early age at the Tremont Lumber Company mill located on the banks of Little River, near the juncture of Bayous Castor and Dugdemona.

Like a lot of mills in North and Central Louisiana that began in the 10's and 20's of the last century, this mill's operations peaked in 1932 or thereabouts, and had "cutout" by 1935. The Rochelle interests then spent the next 11 years or so scrapping what they had overlooked on the first trip through, and the sounding of the final mill whistle at Rochelle took place sometime in 1946.

Jimmie Guilliote's father had worked until the end at the mill and like a host of the local gentry, had to find other employment when the mill was torn down and moved to Joyce, LA, east of Winnfield.

Meanwhile Jimmie attended Rochelle Grade School through the eighth grade, later transferring down the road to Georgetown High School, where he graduated in 1954. Because of the lack of jobs he liked, Jimmie enlisted for a four-year hitch in the U.S. Air Force, but only served three years and six months. He was a member of a ground crew that maintained eight 20-milimeter cannon gun turrets on what was the U.S. Air Force's premier line of defense in the Cold War at that time, the huge B-36 bomber. Towards the end of the hitch the Air Force sent the C.O., a Lieutenant Colonel, around with a re-enlistment spiel and told the potential "re-uppers" that if the didn't re-up they could get out six months early. Jimmie opted to muster out, and then spent four years in the inactive reserve.

While he was in service he had begun taking flying lessons and had already soloed prior to discharge, so he signed up on a G.I. Bill-sponsored flight school at Northwestern State College and then Jimmie signed up under the S. L. Stuckey Flying Service where he obtained a Pilot Certification Certificate.

Then it was off to Great Barrington, Massachusetts to get under the wing (no pun intended) of Walter Kloandza, who was of Polish extraction, and a flight instructor of great renown on the Eastern Seaboard. Kloandza remembered as a lad when the great airship Macon flew over his boyhood home, and for a time considered following his father into the ironworks (which he did for a while). But Walt was constantly in awe of the patterns of flight of the Graf Zepplin, the Dornier DOX, or the big lumbering Pan Am flying boats in the skies around him, and even got to watch old Igor Sikorsky testing his first helicopter at his Stratford Connecticut home, resulting in flying becoming his consuming passion.

After World War II Walt went back to working as an instructor at the Lufberry Flight School for Raoul Lufberry, the World War I ace, who owned the school and had given him his first job a flight instructor. He, along with Charles Sharp and Louise Decker, (who later became his wife) eventually bought out Lufberry, and were operating the same flight school in 1962 when Jimmie Guillote came on the scene.

From Walt Koladza's personalized instruction Jimmie obtained his Private and Commercial License in 1962 with Walt trying every way possible to induce him into attending Purdue University to obtain an Associates Degree in Business, all the while training to pilot DC-3 aircraft, but Jimmie resisted the offer.

Then in 1966 Jimmie began attending crop dusting school at Great Barrington where he obtained his instructor's rating, and then it was off to Rayville, LA where he was employed by Lyle Adams Flight Service and eventually began flying Grumman Ag Cats and Super Cub aircraft.

The crop dusting services in the United States officially began on August 31, 1921 when a surplus World War I Curtiss JN-6H (Jenny), piloted by Lt. John A. Macready, took off from Cook Field near Dayton, Ohio to attack a new enemy-The Catalpa Sphinx moth, by dumping a load of powdered lead arsenate form a makeshift metal hopper attached to the Jenny's fuselage. Inspection of the action taken by Macready revealed that the moths had been virtually wiped out by the aerial assault and a new use for the relatively unknown airplane's services was born and became known as crop dusting. One of the major commercial powers in aviation, Delta Airlines, now on the financial ropes and faced with bankruptcy, began as Delta Dusters, a crop-dusting company in the Louisiana delta country around Monroe.

More sturdily built aircraft developed in World War II proved to be an acquisition treasure trove for crop dusting companies who picked up vintage workhorse aircraft like the famous Boeing/Stearman which were sold as post war surplus for as little as $250. The company built over 8,000 before shutting down production in 1945.

Piper's venerable J-3 Cub, in which a two friends of mine, Robert Wagner and Fred Holt developed their piloting skills, was popular because of its small size and agility in the air. The Cub could be operated from relatively short dirt/grass runways, and for their size, the Cubs could carry a good-sized payload consisting of 1,000 lb. or 454-kilo crop-dusting loads.

About this time the Grumman Aircraft Company, drawing on their wartime experiences in fighter planes, decided to enter the crop-dusting competition with Piper and came out in 1958 with a plane tailored to meet the requirements of the agriculture industry with a presentation called the G-164 Ag-Cat. Sometime later a more popular upgraded version powered by a 450 hp Pratt & Whitney radial engine, was introduced which could haul a whopping 3150 lb. payload while flying at speeds up to 138 mph.

Piper's success at modifying the Cub led to the development of a specialized plane aimed at the agri-aero market called the Piper PA-25 Pawnee. It was a designed to offset the obvious dangers of crop-dusting by incorporating many new safety features. These two types of planes are what Jimmie Guillotte flew in his 12-15 years of crop-dusting, and instructing other pilots.

Later on in his career as a pilot, Jimmie began flying pipeline patrols for the C.B. McMahon Aerial Services, which took him over a large segment of the South Central United States from Texas to Indiana with the longest day he ever put in being 12 hours and 55 minutes due to adverse weather conditions.

In 1977, due to his son's illness he was forced out of the skies he loved to a job with the U.S. Postal Services so he would have insurance coverage for himself and his family. He retired in 2004 with a total of 31 years and three months, including service time.

So after over 23 years of flying in which he crashed, or rather, was forced down a total of only eight times, he only totaled one plane and was never badly hurt. Today Jimmie Guillotte realizes his days of "zooming" are over, and has hung up his cap, goggles and white scarf and now contents himself with gardening and cutting his own firewood.

He knows that the days of attaching a 55-gallon drum of chemicals to a rickety airplane have vanished into the annals of history, but the thrill of piloting a crop duster as it roars low and speedily across a field, mere inches above the ground, remains one of Jimmie Guillotte's most pleasurable and enduring memories.

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