Before Amelia (30 page)

And what a career it would be! Beginning in Cheyenne, Wyoming, America's newest aviatrix would thrill and amaze the public, her appearance a sure drawing card. The first thing her agent did was drop three years from her age and bill her as “The Flying Schoolgirl.” Her demure manner and long brown curls added to that impression. For two weekends in July 1913, she performed with A. C. Beech, a new Wright flier, at Cincinnati's Coney Island Park, where the president of the Queen City Aero Club presented her with a box of chocolates and Beech with a box of cigars as tokens of their honorary membership in the Aero Club.

The weather was not ideal for flying, but Katie amazed the immense crowds with her long flight along the river and her low dive, fighting strong winds, to greet the
Island Queen
coming up the river. The anxious crew on the ground wished her down, but she was enjoying herself. The press reported she did aerial stunts, then glided down to “a very pretty landing.”

Actually, in 1913 Katherine did no sensational stunts—she knew the slow Wright machine wasn't built for that—and she was a careful flier. Curious spectators at county fairs were allowed to sit in the aeroplane, and she answered endless questions about it. Then two or three times a day she would make flights and land on a specific mark after a long glide, always a crowd pleaser. An unsophisticated public viewed aviators as people with otherworldly qualities; just to see Miss Stinson or stand close to her was a thrill. The stunts came later.

J. C. “Bud” Mars, the well–known Curtiss aviator, called flying in this period “a trick.”“The crowd came out to see a stunt and they never could realize what a genuine stunt they were witnessing if the ships flew at all. In the air, the pilot was constantly busy keeping his ship on an even keel. Those crates lacked the inherent stability possessed by modern planes, and responded unpleasantly to every little gust of wind. . . . Flying, in those days, required the ability of a balancing genius, the agility of an acrobat, and the brain of a lightning calculator.” When the press described fliers as “dare–devil” and “death–defying,” the writers “came nearer the truth than they suspected,” said Mars. Lincoln Beachey and Eugene Ely, who gave meaning to the press's adjectives, were taught by Mars. Both died early.

In France, as Katie was beginning her exhibition career, Adolphe Pégoud, a test pilot for the Blériot company, amazed the aviation world by performing a corkscrew twist and a looping loop upside down while testing a new machine. Secured with a seat belt, he dove steeply about three hundred meters and was carried upward in a circle of about one hundred meters by the impetus, until he was in normal flying position again.
Flight
hailed the accomplishment: This feat shows “the aeroplane is a safe, dependable machine in the hands of an experienced flyer.”

In America, Pégoud's achievement was hailed as the elixir to cure the doldrums in fairs around the country. Scientific men declared his flight a trick, an impossible feat, but fair managers offered large sums to the plucky Frenchman to loop in America. Pégoud declined. However, Lincoln Beachey, seeing the financial possibilities, ordered a new aeroplane sturdy enough to loop from the Curtiss works in Hammondsport. In the following year he earned an impressive eighty–four thousand dollars from exhibitions at fairs. William Pickens, the aviation agent and manager who handled Katherine, used an apt oil–well term to describe the Frenchman's effect on exhibitions: “Pégoud's feat sprung a ‘gusher.'” In time, Katie would take to looping, not to be outdone by a man.

In the meantime, she hit the exhibition circuit at full speed after her success in Cincinnati. She appeared in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and Helena, Montana, in August and September. During October and November she performed in El Paso, Texas; Helena, Arkanas; Phoenix, Arizona; Beaumont, Texas; and New Orleans, before going to San Antonio, where the family was now settled for the winter. Helena, Montana, was memorable: Katie became the first aviatrix to fly U.S. mail. With approval from Washington, a post office was installed at the state fairgrounds, and Katherine made daily flights during the week of the fair from the temporary substation to the Federal Building in downtown Helena. The altitude in Helena was a new experience for Katie. Ever cautious, she would not carry any passengers, because she was concerned about her motor's ability in the rarer air.

The young aviatrix quickly discovered that exhibition life was anything but relaxed. Each time she moved to another town, the aeroplane had to be cut down into three sections, wrapped in tissue paper, and put into three big crates. On reaching her destination, the crates were unpacked, the parts were assembled and checked to be sure all the bolts were in, then the machine was tested to see if it worked. It became routine—tedious but necessary. The thousand–dollar fee Katherine commanded for an appearance was not all profit. Part of that sum paid her mechanic's salary, maintenance, fuel, and living expenses in a series of hotels, yet over the years she earned a substantial amount.

The year 1914 proved even busier for the “school girl” pilot, who emphasized her girlish appearance with simple clothes and long brown curlstied with a ribbon. The Corn Show at Dallas featured her for fourteen days, she had two engagements in eastern Texas before returning to San Antonio for the Fiesta Week in May, then it was up north to Halletsville, Kentucky, and Cicero, Illinois. She flew for the Federation of Women's Clubs at Grant Park, Chicago, and exhibited her machine at the Coliseum. If she had a few days off, she carried passengers at Cicero for twenty–five dollars a flight. In July she flew at Alexandria, Minnesota, followed by an appearance at Valley City, North Dakota. Kansas City followed (her sister, Marjorie, who was just licensed, joined her there), then Lamar, Colorado. From August to October she had engagements in Chicago, three towns in Michigan, and Fresno, California. In November she appeared with Marjorie at a suffragette fund–raiser in Nashville, where the Nashville Equal Suffrage League was meeting. Undoubtedly, Katherine supported the suffragette movement—she was her mother's daughter, with a mind of her own. She used an aeroplane to prove women equal with men.

A reporter gave his impressions of a flight with Katherine at Overland Park, Kansas City. He could hardly believe his eyes; the famous aviatrix was a “girl who looked like a sophomore in high school. . . someone who might be wondering whether she might have to take Caesar again in the fall.” After introductions, he noticed “a peculiar and interesting cloud formation just above.” He kept his thoughts to himself. The pilot went up alone first to test the machine and an air pocket over the valley, leaving the uncertain reporter below. On landing, a strut was broken by one of the mechanics who caught the plane, and it was sundown before the strut was replaced. The reporter had plenty of time to imagine “more accidents than could happen this century” while he cooled his heels.

Katherine Stinson gassing up her Curtiss at Tanforan, California.
SAN DIEGO AEROSPACE MUSEUM

Finally, all was ready; he was strapped in and warned, “Don't touch the controls or that wire beside you.” The precaution was useless, for he wouldn't touch his ear “if all the chiggers in Swope Park had been encamped thereon.” The motor was cranked, they shot ahead for a hundred feet, and the ground dropped away as people, animals, buildings shrank to diminutive size. The feeling of security was amazing: “Even when we hit the air pocket, it didn't matter... . We talked in a sort of futuristic language that included only nouns and sounded like a whisper beside the noise of the motor.... Of course we laughed and hollered in unison, ‘This is the life.' I know I wasn't scared because I meant every word of it. It was glorious.”

Coming down provided the only real thrill in the air, when the machine dropped several hundred feet at a time, a bit like a roller–coaster. The lights on the field beamed up toward the aeroplane, and soon “the field itself was sliding under our wheels. The earth seemed indeed a mundane thing and life upon it prosaic and commonplace. I'd have gone up for the rest of the evening if the gasoline had held out.” Katherine had made another convert.

That winter she was in San Antonio, where her family was living. Sister Marjorie, just eighteen, had won her license at the Wright School in Dayton in August; the sisters housed their aeroplanes at Fort Sam Houston in a hangar leased from the U.S. Army, with the understanding they would vacate if the space was needed. The sisters continued practice flights, often carrying passengers for a fee, while their brother, Eddie, acted as mechanic and Jack was an occasional helper. About this time, Marjorie began to give Eddie flying lessons.

San Antonio was familiar territory; Katherine had made a night flight there the previous winter, when she was still gaining experience as a pilot. She had fastened two auto headlights on her biplane, then had four friends park their cars at four corners and shine their lights on a middle spot, which she aimed for when landing. That flight caused quite a stir. Newspapers were flooded with calls about “strange lights in the sky and a buzzing sound”; some people, shaken by the strange occurrence, were certain “Judgment Day was here.”

With the new year, the exhibition season was shaping up to be a particularly busy one.
The Billboard,
the publication that featured news in the entertainment world, printed the list of upcoming fairs for 1915. One page, which listed only states through Indiana, had thirty–five checkmarks indicating possible appearances by either Katherine or Marjorie. It would be a big year for Katherine, who had decided that if Beachey could loop, so could she.

She would need a proper machine; the slow, fragile Wright wouldn't do. To that end, she began to draw sketches of the kind of aeroplane she wanted, one that would be sturdy enough to withstand strain from speed and air pressure. It would be enclosed—no more sitting exposed on the bottom wing. She went to the Partridge–Keller Aeroplane Company in Chicago, which built an enclosed, single–seat tractor biplane with an eighty–horsepower Gnome motor salvaged from Beachey's machine after his fatal crash in March. (Katie had bought the damaged monoplane from Beachey's estate, but when it was repaired, she decided it wasn't right for her—too fast. She then went to Partridge–Keller to have a new machine built around the motor.) Walter Brock supervised the construction, incorporating some of Katie's ideas. It was hoped the more powerful Gnome motor would correct the danger of stalling at the high point of the loop ascent.

While Katherine waited for her new machine, she worked with youngsters in Texas, forming model–aeroplane clubs to encourage an interest in aviation. In July she was ready to test the new machine and coaxed Art Mix, Beachey's former mechanic, to join her on exhibitions, to care for the motor. (Katherine used several mechanics at different times: her brother Eddie; O. H. “Bud” Snyder, who served the Stinson family machines at Ashburn, near Chicago; Frank Champion, who accompanied her to the Orient; and Rudolph “Shorty” Schroeder, also at Ashburn.)

She practiced daily at Cicero, trying different acrobatic stunts as she became familiar with the aeroplane. She looped the loop there for the first time, perfecting and fine–tuning, until she felt confident to perform publicly. The unexpected provided an extra thrill for several thousand spectators, attending a Sunday program at Cicero.

The
Chicago Tribune
described the three loops the aviatrix performed before the motor suddenly quit on the fourth attempt, the valve snapped, and the purr of the engine stopped. Many people turned away to avoid the inevitable tragedy as the machine fell downward, three thousand feet. At the last moment, Katherine was able to bring the machine upright for a safe landing. The ground crew rushed to assist her and, weak from fright, she was helped to the shed. Interviewed later, she was still shaken. “The horror of the silence after that motor stopped will stay with me all my life. I didn't know what to do for just a moment. Then I began to fall. I knew it would be fatal if the machine ever lost its balance. So I just turned its nose straight down and asked God to help me.” When she felt the wheels touch the ground, she lay back in her seat, too weak to move. “I would have fallen if I had attempted to stand. I would have cried if I had opened my mouth.” As frightening as that experience was, it did not shake her resolve. “I'm going to loop the loop again, and then I am going to execute the ‘death drop.' And this time I am going to do it on purpose.”

From then on, the name “Katherine Stinson” on a program was sure to draw a crowd. A Pickens advertisement in
The Billboard
combined straightforward and upside–down wording to illustrate “little Katie Stinson's” acrobatic ability. In spite of the publicity generated by her daring feats, she was known in the flying community, especially among the mechanics, as a safe and sane flier who was meticulous about maintenance. Unfortunately, the same could not be said about her teacher, Max Lillie. The year after he had instructed his famous female student, he was killed in a crash, due to the negligent state of his machine. The Wright Company went out of its way to disassociate itself from his machine—it wasn't really a Wright biplane, Lillie had made too many adjustments on it, and it was in dreadful condition. Lillie's death underscored Katie's concern for maintenance.