“Flying Peace Corps” Gets State Charter

United Missionary Air Training and Transport (UMATT), the Dayton-based “flying peace corps,” has been granted a nonprofit charter by Secretary of State Ted W. Brown.

The articles of incorporation established under an eight-member board of directors, which elected Hyde E. Ruble, vice president of the Srepco company of Dayton as chairman.

Other members of the board are local businessmen Victor G. Reiling of the DuPont corporation; James J. Smiley Jr. of Graphic Services; Col. Stephen Bettinger of the USAF; Rev. James M. Darby, provincial superior of the Cincinnati Province of the Society of Mary; and Marianist brothers Robert Thomson and Michael Stimac.

Stimac, who spearheaded the organization of UMATT in early 1965, said becoming a corporation means “we have formally become an interfaith, non-denominational organization.”

Until now, UMATT has been under the direction of Marianists at the University of Dayton.

The organization flies equipment, doctors, nurses and mercy missions to some 150 isolated locations in east Africa.

In the past two and a half years its fleet of aircraft has grown to five – all of which are based in Nairobi, Kenya.

Stimac said UMATT is successfully demonstrating that aircraft – “which have not been used as they might have for peaceful purposes – can be used to overcome the problem of isolation and resulting retardation which has occurred for so long in Africa.”