William B. Rannells was born in 1909, and with his brother Holland grew up on his parent’s Belmont Farms, at Three Churches, north east of Romney, WV. Bill graduated from Romney High School in 1927 along with his friend William Milleson. Milleson later became well known as a West Virginia State Legislator and Hampshire County Banker and farmer. Bill Rannells graduated from West Virginia University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Reserve Commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1931.
Bill Milleson said that after finishing college, he, Bill and Holland Rannells played with an OX-5 powered Waco 10 in about 1933 on the Rannells’ family Belmont Farms. Doug Rannells, Bill’s son, thinks that it was at this time that his Dad learned to fly. According to Holland’s son, John, Holland and Bill Rannells flew a single seat Aeronca C-2 for a time in 1935-37 in the aircraft that Bernard Miltenberger had owned previously.
During the pre-war era Holland owned a J-3 Cub which he based on the Belmont Farm and was a frequent visitor to Mexico Farms. During WW II he entered the US Army Air Force as a commissioned officer and Service Pilot towing training and combat gliders for a period. For the rest of the war he flew B-24 Consolidated Liberator Bombers, with the Air Transport Command, delivering B-24’s to every theater of war. He became well known in the early 1950s, developing the Potomac Valley Television Cable System in the Cumberland area. Milleson, as a West Virginia State Delegate, was attending a session of West Virginia Legislature at Charleston when he soloed a float equipped two place Aeronca C-3, with the E-113 two cylinder engine. The flight was off the snow encrusted Ohio River and occurred in the winter of 1935.
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Wings Over Cumberland 