October 31, 2017 Godtfred's Airport

The Liberty Gazette

October 31, 2017

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

The airport in Billund is Denmark’s second busiest (Copenhagen, the busiest). Its 10,071-foot-long runway serves airlines and private aircraft. Scandinavian Air first provided airline service there in 1964, when the runway was only about half as long.

Billund’s robust economy is thanks in large part to Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, who knew an airport was vital for businesses and communities. He had guaranteed the first five years’ financial needs to turn his little grass landing strip into a community airport. Godtfred had been using his Piper Apache, a four-seat, twin-engine propeller airplane, to travel to his father’s many business locations.

His father was Ole Kirk Kristiansen, the tenth son of an indigent Danish family. Hard times followed when Ole lost his job during the depression. For his family to survive, he put his master carpenter skills to work building stepladders, ironing boards, stools, and wooden toys. But too soon, his lovely wife, Kirstine, passed away, leaving him to raise four boys on his own.

It was 1932 when twelve-year old Godtfred came to work for him. Two years later, Ole had seven employees and decided it was time to brand the business, so he ran a naming contest.

The following year, the company introduced their first construction toy, a wooden duck proven by Ole’s boys to bring joy. They named the duck “Kirk´s Sandgame”.

There were good times, and bad. Ole and his company survived the German occupation of Denmark in 1940, and a fire that destroyed their factory a couple of years later. But his success in the toy business continued and he decided to make wooden toy bricks. Plastic was available, too, so Ole purchased a plastic injection-moulding machine that same year, 1946, and three years later, Ole’s company made their first “Automatic Binding Bricks”–sold exclusively in Denmark. The bricks came in two sizes–with four and eight studs–and four colors.

When Ole ran that company naming contest in 1934, he had declared himself the winner. His entry was a combination of the first two letters of the Danish words for “play well”: leg godt, and in 1953, Automatic Binding Bricks became LEGO Bricks.

A warehouse fire in 1960 ended wooden toy production, but the company was growing, entering the U.S. market in 1961, thanks to a licensing agreement with Samsonite Corp.

From what we could glean from their nicely organized website, it wasn’t until 1967 when they came out with their first airplane kit, a biplane.

LEGO is now sold all over the world, providing jobs for more than 18,000 people, and the company operates its aircraft fleet from the LEGO hangar at Billund Airport, once the grass strip with a wood hangar where Godtfred took off to help sell his father’s toys.

Ole Kirk Kristiansen passed away in 1958, inducted posthumously into the Toy Industry Hall of Fame in 1989. The man who started with nothing, faced setbacks and heartaches, still brings smiles to millions of children, while his son’s airport brings millions of dollars into their community.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com