To celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month (celebrated from September 15 through October 15), FAA’s historian went in search of the first Hispanic air traffic controller. This is the story of her search . . .

Who was the first Hispanic air traffic controller? Historical research can often be tricky and sometimes confusing and/or frustrating since documentation can be inaccurate, missing, or incomplete. Identifying the first Hispanic controller, for example, proved to be a lesson in perseverance, since imperfect documentation required piecing together vague parts of a historical puzzle using census records and newspaper articles.

FAA’s small history archives had no documentation on the first Hispanic controller, which meant research began by making an educated (or lucky) guess. In examining the original list of controllers hired by the federal government in 1936, a few names stood out for further examination. One in particular, L. Ponton de Arce, seemed worthy of investigation. The first step was to determine whether Ponton de Arce was of Hispanic descent. An internet search provided a first name for this early controller, Leroy. Although Columbia University did an oral history with him in 1960 (a 23-page transcript is available at the University), and the University of Wyoming holds 18 boxes of his personal papers, this material is not online and, hence, unavailable unless one can visit the repositories. As a result, research would have to rely on Internet sources and secondary sources.