Before Amelia (36 page)

In December, Murray Hulbert, a Democratic congressman from New York, introduced a bill in Congress to let women serve in the military. While he wasn't urging women to join up, he felt that some “intrepid, persistent spirits, like Miss Law” would be of greater value to the government using their flying skills in some capacity. Ruth, for her part, lobbied members of Congress, wearing her modified uniform, with little success. She flew over the White House upside down and landed on Pennsylvania Avenue (she had walked its length the day before, looking for hazards), hoping to change the male world's thinking, but without success. She had set two altitude records for women, 11,200 feet (1916) and 14,700 feet (1917); she could loop, dive, and spiral with the best of them. The army missed a good pilot.

The previous summer she had written a provocative piece for the
Chicago Herald
—“Go Get the Kaiser”—telling what she would do if she had a chance to bomb the kaiser, and how she would do it. Her visit to France provided her with solid information on conditions at the front and, as an experienced acrobatic flier, she had the know-how to fly combat missions. Ruth used the article to argue that women could play a vital aviation role by ferrying supplies and men behind the lines and delivering messages, if not actually assigned to the front, releasing men for frontline duty. She admitted that most women were not prepared for the “intense nervous strain of flying and fighting,” but were perfectly capable of “plain, unspectacular flying.” In her enthusiasm, Ruth sounded as bellicose as any man; she itched to serve in a meaningful way. Fast-forwarding to World War II, the military finally saw the light; women learned to fly and performed the kind of service Ruth had envisioned.

On June 8, 1918, an article in the
New York Times
highlighted a publicrelations problem Ruth was having: She was accused of being a German spy. Apparently the accusation originated in Birmingham, Alabama, shortly after she appeared there the previous October. Sources claimed that Ruth was arrested in Atlanta as a spy (she had never been in Atlanta), and from there the accusation followed her around the country wherever she appeared. A schoolteacher in Indiana reported she was a German spy and really a man disguised as a woman. Finally, Ruth addressed the rumors in Washington, where she was arranging for a license to make further flights for the Red Cross. It is hard to believe that people gave serious credence to such a bizarre tale, but during wartime people frequently become phobic. Possibly her experience in England prompted the rumors and, as happens in the childhood game of telephone, distortions grow by leaps and bounds. In Washington, officials ignored the rumors. Her patriotism was unquestionable, and she was issued licenses to make flights for various causes and to lecture by no less an entity than the War Department.

In 1919, after the war ended, Ruth traveled to Japan, China, and the Philippine Islands, giving exhibitions in Japan and the Philippines. In Japan, she was enthusiastically greeted by massive crowds. In an interview years later, Ruth said that interest in aviation was great—“literally millions of people” attended. She had never seen such crowds in her life. Like Katherine Stinson, she found women were particularly keen; she was invited to address a women's club there.

In China, unsettled conditions did not encourage Ruth to fly. She and her group of five, which included her husband, visited Gunn Tom, who had learned to fly in America as Tom Gunn, before returning to China.
Traveling by riverboat to Canton, the party became aware of armed guards near them as they sat on the deck after dinner. Tom explained that guards were customary to keep pirates from boarding as third-class passengers and, when the boat crossed a certain point, coming on deck at the same time a boat from the shore came alongside to kidnap the passengers.

Hardly more reassuring was an invitation from a provincial governor, who offered payment in gold for an exhibition in his hometown and assured Ruth it would be perfectly safe—he would send a group of soldiers to protect her and the aeroplane. Ruth decided it “wasn't a very good place to give an exhibition, if one had to be protected by soldiers.” The Filipinos, by contrast, were friendly and enthusiastic about aviation. Ruth performed the same stunts and flights as in America. During one exhibition, on April 4, she was asked to carry mail by José Topacio, director of the Bureau of Posts, who organized booths to sell postcards, printed by the Aero Club with a two-centavo stamp, for Ruth to carry. The cards were canceled with a special mark: “Aerial Mail Service Bureau of Posts, Philippine Islands. Miss Ruth Law.” With more than a thousand cards gathered in a bag, Ruth took off and, flying over the Manila Hotel, dropped the bag on the roof twenty feet below, where the cards were then distributed through regular channels. This performance was such a success, it was repeated the following day with cards for sale at several places around Manila.

Home again, the expected interest in aviation with the end of the war did not appear. Ruth flew in Canada on a short tour notable for racing Gaston Chevrolet, a famous automobile racer, and signed up with stunt pilot Al Wilson to fly for the season. By 1921 she had her own flying circus, complete with three aeroplanes and two male pilots. The constant demand was for new and more daring feats; Ruth and her troop tried to oblige. Stunting on a rope ladder, hanging from an aeroplane, then dropping into a racing auto was one; wing walking was another. The two male pilots' specialty was having a man step from the wing of one machine to the other without a ladder. The two aeroplanes flew close enough together to allow the walker to stand on the top wing of one, grab the lower wing of the other, and climb in.

Ruth's specialty was climbing out of the Curtiss Jenny cockpit, up over the front and the motor, onto the top wing, where she stood up while the pilot looped the loop three times. Verne Treat, an ex—army pilot from San Francisco, piloted the aeroplane. Ruth had complete confidence in him—“he could handle any situation.” Several times, centrifugal force flattened Ruth against the wing, until she and Treat came up with a solution, a small harness over her shoulders. Four very thin woven-steel wires, attached to the wing, had hooks on the end of each to fasten to the harness. Ruth performed this chore while sitting on the edge of the wing at fifteen hundred feet. Standing up, she was held upright while the pilot looped. Three loops were fine, but when she tried a fourth, there was too much pressure on her knees—she went flat.

Another time, performing with a fireworks display, the promoter of the show, concerned about rain, fired the works off early just as Ruth flew by. In a curtain of rockets, bursting bombs, and Roman candles, the startled pilot did her three loops as advertised. She remarked afterward, she felt like “a participant in the last days of Pompeii.” Of all the stunts, car racing was her favorite. She liked the challenge of flying as low as possible to the auto on the ground. She confided, “I could always beat the autos on a half-mile track, but on a mile track they often won.”

Ruth Law racing Gaston Chevrolet, the famous automobile racer, in Montreal, 1919.
NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

In October 1921, a tragic accident, resulting in the death of Madeline Davis, a stunt performer, hastened the end of Ruth's circus days, and her flying career. Davis had hoped to join the Law circus and promote a career in the movies. Her death was the final straw for Charles Oliver, who had watched a career of unnerving performances. The
New York Times,
commenting on the tragedy, editorialized that the accident caused indignation as well as horror, justifying the demands around the country for regulation to prevent “any repetition of accidents like this one.” One could see that the days of flying circuses were numbered.

Ruth finished an exhibition in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1922, where, one morning, she picked up the newspaper and read that she was retiring from flying. Charles Oliver, devoted husband, backer, manager, and staunch supporter, had given the announcement to the press without consulting his wife. Reportedly, he explained to Ruth, “I can't stand the strain of seeing you in danger. You've tempted luck long enough. To please me, give it up!” She did, on the spot. His loyalty and hard work over the last ten years had helped build a successful career. Ruth knew she owed him something and gave up flying.

In an interview in 1936, she admitted she would have liked to try for the $150,000 prize offered before World War I by Lord Northcliffe, the British aviation enthusiast, for a flight from Newfoundland to Ireland. Ruth's brother, Rodman, was working on plans for this when the outbreak of war in 1914 made such a flight impossible. Ruth regretted that she did not try after the war. “I could have been the first to do it.” But when Charles Lindbergh succeeded, she cheered.

The sudden end of a life of suspense and constant motion was too abrupt. After ten years of living on excitement, Ruth struggled to keep her nerves under control and had a nervous breakdown. In one of many interviews years later, she confessed, “The nervous strain of exhibition flying in those days was intense.” To combat it, she did fancy needlework, keeping hoops, scissors, and floss in her machine to make eyelets while waiting on the ground. “It was very soothing.” It was an unusual admission from a woman who had said that a real aviator lacked nerves: “What is called bravery is simply lack of nerves.”

The Olivers settled in California, first in Beverly Hills, then San Francisco. Ruth kept one memento from her flying days, the walnut propeller from the Curtiss that made the distance record. She remained interested in aviation and attended various functions to talk about the old days, but kept her promise to stay out of aeroplanes as long as Charles was alive.

One day in 1947, after Charles had died, she accepted a ride in a new private plane with a friend. Flying at one thousand feet over the California landscape, the pilot suggested she might like to handle the controls. Ruth's first reaction was to refuse, but she didn't want him to think she was afraid, “so I took the controls and flew that airplane.” A rush of memories came back as she handled the stick. For a time, she thought of buying a machine and flying again, but she resisted the temptation. Her days were filled with club activities and bridge. Flying had been too long ago.

Ruth Law Oliver died on December 2, 1970, at age eighty-three. She is buried in Lynn, Massachusetts. Her obituary in the
Lynn Item,
December 5, 1970, closed with these fitting lines:

Come take a trip in my airship

And you can flirt with the sun and the stars.

MARJORIE CLARE STINSON did not take easily to the role of little sister. The third of the four Stinson children, she had an independent mind, a common trait in that family, that caused rumpled feathers on occasion. She held strong convictions that all the honeyed, southern tones in the world could not hide.

Born in Fort Payne, Alabama, on July 5, 1896, she moved with the family to Canton, Mississippi, where life was pleasant, if uneventful. Once her mother, Emma Stinson, separated from her father, Edward, and moved the family to Hot Springs, Arkansas, the tempo of life picked up. The comfort of life in a town filled with relatives disappeared (Marjorie's first-grade teacher was an aunt), but as Marjorie stated more than once, “We children never lacked for anything” in the world outside the cocoon.

Marjorie saw her first aeroplane in 1912, a Curtiss biplane piloted by Jimmie Ward, “right there in Hot Springs.” She was in high school—to go to the racetrack for the exhibition was out of the question—but an understanding teacher allowed her to stand at the window, where she saw the aeroplane fly, not very high or far, but it did fly. It was on this occasion that sister Katie was allowed to go see the aeroplane and make arrangements for a ride. Dressed in a hurriedly sewn white serge suit, Katherine made her first passenger flight with Ward, and the rest is history.

Marjorie was still a schoolgirl, busy with Shakespeare and the social antics of high school, but once Katherine went off to learn to fly, Marjorie's interest in things aerial perked up. Her brother Eddie was eager to fly almost from birth. One day, left to their own devices as youngsters, she and Eddie cut up sheets, attached them to pieces of wood, and rigged up a flying machine on a wagon, which they planned to race down a steep hill the next day. Fortunately, the weather saved them from disaster. A storm that night reduced the aeroplane to a mass of tattered cloth. After high school, Marjorie spent a year at Millsap College in Mississippi before deciding what she wanted to do.

With Katherine's example before her, she persuaded her father to let her take up flying at the Wright School. Traveling to Dayton, Ohio, in mid-June 1914, she had time to plan her approach: She would introduce herself, offer the check for tuition, and ask to be accepted in the school, explaining that she had flown six times with Katherine and was used to the air. To her dismay, she was told she needed parental permission because of her age—she was not yet 18. While she waited for a telegram from her mother, Marjorie met Orville Wright, who took her out to the flying field and showed her the original hangar, the old launching device used before wheels were added to aeroplanes, the school machine, and introduced her to the man who would be her teacher, Howard Rinehart. Since 1910, Orville had changed his mind about women flying. The Wright School had graduated its first woman pilot, Mrs. Richberg Hornsby, a few weeks before Marjorie appeared.