Mic Smith Photography LLC
Photo by Mic Smith
Guy McClary
Age: 70
Resides in: Kingstree
Claim to Fame: Veteran crop duster, owner of Williamsburg Air Service, and two-time recipient of the Williamsburg Hometown Chamber’s “Agriculturalist of the Year.”
Ace Pitcher to Ace Pilot: Before becoming an agricultural pilot, McClary thought he might become a professional baseball player. “I had about eight professional teams looking at me, but I got bursitis in my shoulder,” he says. “So, I went to the school of hard knocks and got a Ph.D. in the business of people."
Danger Zone: For all his ups, McClary has had some literal downs. But each time he’s run out of fuel or clipped a propeller, he’s managed to land the aircraft successfully in fields or on nearby roads.
Co-op Affiliation: McClary is a member of Santee Electric Cooperative.
On one of his very first flights as a crop duster, the engine in Guy McClary’s plane shut down.
“I crashed it over there,” he says, pointing to a field beside the Williamsburg County Regional Airport, where he now operates Williamsburg Air Service. “But I got out and went and got in another one.”
You can call it courage or craziness, but McClary calls it hard work—the kind he knew growing up farming tobacco, corn and beans like his father and grandfather before him. His aerial career path took flight in 1980 on the day he went to the local airport to help load pesticide into a friend’s crop-dusting plane, a Cessna 188.
“I never had flying in my mind until then,” he recalls. “I caught on pretty quick because I’d run all kinds of farm equipment as a kid.”
Nearly 50 years later, McClary now runs one of the most successful aerial application outfits in the state. He does all the mosquito control for Georgetown and Charleston counties with two sleek, state-of-the-art Air Tractor 502XP planes. In season, work may take him to Florida and the Midwest, but he always flies home to Kingstree and his South Carolina farming roots.
“People think it’s fun work, but let me tell you, it’s hard work,” he says of crop dusting. “There’s many a day I’d rather be out there in the tobacco field.”