The Death of Eddie Gardner

So, I am spending two blogs talking about a pilot who flew the air mail in the east for less than two years. But since Eddie Gardner found a home in Nebraska after his time flying the mail, and because he crossed paths with my dad’s life work I figure that its justified.

When we left Eddie Gardner he was working for an airplane manufacturer in Lincoln, Nebraska. This is noteworthy because private manufacturers provided the third major source of employment for pilots in the Post World War I era (the military and the Post Office being the other two). Throughout the 1920s, dozens of people tried their hand at turning aviation into a small business with varying degrees of success. Many of these companies eventually disappeared or consolidated to form larger airlines or were bought out by larger companies.

In May of 1921, Gardner got the chance to showcase his considerable skills and show off a company plane at an airshow in Holdrege, Nebraska. The Holdrege Progress noted that he performed several times throughout the day, and took off at about 4:30 to take part in a contest for stunt flying. He made a series of loops, then went into a tailspin. Imagine a plane streaking towards the ground, then at the last possible moment pulling up 90 degrees and making a textbook landing. Gardner misjudged the last possible moment. The consensus of the other fliers, according to the Holdrege Progress newspaper, is that Gardner started his dive at about 3,000 feet and began to pull out of it at about 50 feet…about 20 feet short of what would have been required for a successful landing. The plane plowed into the field.

Gardner survived the crash, seemingly in pretty good shape. He survived a train ride to Lincoln where he went to a hospital to be monitored for internal injuries. He died the following morning. Some newspapers mentioned that is wife was present, although the Holdrege paper states that he had no wife, and was survived only by his mother and sister in Joliet, Illinois. In any case, his relations brought his body back to his home state of Illinois, and he is buried in Plainfield.

**Special thanks to the Holdrege Museum and the Holdrege genealogical society for sending me information on Eddie Gardner.

Stanhope Boggs: More than a Crash

In January of 1921, Stanhope Boggs crash landed in downtown San Francisco at the corner of Gough and Hayes, hitting the trolley wires in the process.  He ran to a nearby fire box, summoned the fire department, and saved about half of his cargo.  Spectacular as it was, however, the crash tends to overshadow the rest of Boggs distinguished service.

Boggs was fortunate in that the air mail service brought him home.  He was born in Arizona, but raised in Oakland.  Census records list his father as a Civil Engineer, and the family appears to have been reasonably well to do.  In 1910, the census records a Japanese servant living with them, and in 1920 they have a gardener.  The first mention of Boggs in the papers did not inspire confidence.  In 1906, at the age of 11, Boggs and a couple of other boys decided to have some fun breaking into the neighbors homes and stealing some items.  Their stash behind Piedmont Hill was quickly discovered.  The police decided not to take further action based on the age of the parties…presumably their parents were trusted to correct the behavior.

Boggs joined the air mail service in 1920, and after flying most of the eastern routes, he flew the first mail along the transcontinental route into San Francisco.  He became one of the brave few who made the regular hop over the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  His actual flying career appears to have been short lived.  The Nevada Aviation Hall of fame reports that he suffered from altitude sickness, so accepted a job as a manager.  I can’t find specific corroborating evidence, but a cursory look at the available newspapers does not mention any flights after March 1921.

While he did not become the most famous pilot in the service, Boggs played an important role in the development of aviation along the west coast.  According to the San Diego Evening Tribune, by 1928, Boggs was an Airways Extension Superintendent.  Primarily he planned routes, and set up light beacons and emergency landing fields.  In May of 1928, he was working over Nevada.  In July of that year, according to Portland’s Oregonian, he was setting up the route from Los Angeles to Seattle.

In 1940, on the 20th anniversary of the transcontinental route, the San Francisco Chronicle said that Boggs, who had been the manager of the Marina field (sometime between 1921 and 1928), was currently an airway and lighting inspector.  He filled out a World War II draft card, and listed himself as an employee of the Department of Commerce Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA).  I don’t know if he enlisted, or why a 47 year old man would be filling out a draft card unless he had specific skills wanted by the military.

Boggs worked for the CAA, later the FAA until he retired.  He died in 1971 in Santa Monica, his life defined by his work in the expansion of air mail routes.  Certainly he rose above a public spectacle in downtown San Francisco.

L.L. Bowen – Answers and Questions

With many air mail pilots, I find that the more I learn the less I know. Or rather, I gain enough knowledge to expose the holes in the story. The Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum site shows that he worked for the Post Office from July 10, 1925 to April 5, 1927. He flew 946 hours and 93,948 miles and “little is known of L.L. Bowen’s career other than his dates of service.” In terms of his Post Office career, I agree. Which probably means that he showed up for work flew his route, and came home. It is likely that he was based in Omaha, possibly flying from Omaha to Cheyenne. But this is purely based on Omaha World Herald articles mentioning him flying that route for Boeing later on.  Census records and articles from the World-Herald and Chicago Tribune begin to paint a picture of his career, but there are several holes not filled in.

In the late 1890s, Bowen is born in Mount Sterling in Brown County, Illinois to a barber and his wife. The 1900 census shows them living in a rental house. Ten years later the family owned their own farm.  During World War I Bowen joined the army, learned to fly, and became a flying instructor at Kelly Field.  When did his interest in the air start?  What caused him to pursue such a dangerous career?  As I said, there are a lot of questions.

After the war, Bowen came home to Brown County and married Miss Naomi Jones. They prepared to settle down. In 1920, Bowen had his own garage, indicating an interest in mechanics.  Sometime between 1920 and 1925 Bowen heard about the opportunities available with the Post Office, and in 1925 joined their ranks.  In 1927, when the Post Office contracted the San Francisco to Chicago route to Boeing, Bowen began working for Boeing.  If he was not it Omaha at that time, he moved there.

Generally speaking, Bowen seems to have had an uneventful career, a testament to the increasing reliability of planes.  He did have a couple of incidents which did deserve mention in the newspaper.  In 1927 he landed at Wann when fog prevented him from reaching Fort Crook. After a few hours the fog cleared and he continued on. In 1928 he flew to Marquette to pick up the mail from Frank Yager’s wrecked plane. In 1930 he served as a pallbearer for Charles Kenwood.

Bowen adapted to his new environment. In May of 1928 he was involved in discussions for an aerial taxi service based out of Omaha. The next month thieves stole his car and when they forgot to set the parking break it went over a cliff in Mandan park. His wife became active in the community, and in January of 1929 Naomi Bowen was elected President of the auxiliary Martin-Graves post of Bellevue’s American Legion.

But the married couple went through some difficult times.  Between 1930 and 1934 the couple divorced.  Perhaps the strain of the pilot’s time away from home played a roll.  Perhaps Mrs. Bowen missed family and friends.  Perhaps Mr. Bowen got a roving eye.  The incident did not reach the front page status that the earlier divorces of William Hopson and L. Garrison had, so one can only speculate.  Mrs. Bowen and the children returned to Illinois, while she seems to have tried to find work and found support from her relatives.

L.L. Bowen ended up leaving Omaha, remarrying, and working out of Chicago for Braniff Airlines (in some order).  On December 9, 1934, he lost control of his plane near Columbia, Missouri.  Some pilots speculated that ice on the wings contributed to his crashing into a road embankment, but it is impossible to know for certain.  The fatal accident ended a solid flying career.

Despite the remarriage, someone arranged for Bowen’s remains to be returned to Brown County for burial.  Although flying had become safer, it still had its risks.  So tip your hat to another aviator killed in the line of duty.

 

 

 

 

Uncovering Treasure in a County Museum

County Museums are extraordinary places where physical remnants tell the stories of the land and people that lived in an area. Some are more cluttered than others. Some are small, some have several buildings over acres. Some are well funded, some subsist on time volunteered by a few individuals. But these are the places that tell the stories of a given area. Many museums have similar stories, but all are distinguished by the unique experiences of the people who lived in the area and the people who built the museum.

One such museum, the Plainsman Museum in Aurora, Nebraska, far exceeded my expectations both in its general collection and in my area of interest in particular. Most local museums have little, if any, information on the air planes that flew overhead during the 1920s. The major reason for this is the lack of physical evidence left behind. Long time- county residents and their children donate military uniforms, typewriters, saddles, dresses, dolls, tools, washing machines, cameras, and dozens of other items that have hung in closets, or lain in drawers, or survived years in the shed or the barn. But planes flew overhead, and those that landed took off again, or were hauled someplace to be repaired, leaving very little behind.

Nevertheless, when I go to a local museum, I ask about air mail…because sometimes you can catch lightening in a bottle. So when I had a free Saturday mom, dad, my nephew, and I went to the Plainsman museum. I asked the curator, Tina Larson, what she knew about air mail, and gave her my card. She said that the replica of the Post Office in back had something about the first air mail landing in town. I meandered toward that general area, taking time to appreciate how much work the small staff and many volunteers have put in over the years.

The murals in front are beautiful, and the museum is large and well organized. I read the information about the towns in the county, including Marquette five miles to the north. I walked into the replica of the sod house, then went through the bank and the other stores along the perimeter. I admired stain glass windows. And I protested the sign next to the rotary phone stating that this is how calls were made 50 years ago. I’ve got a little way to go to 50, and when I was very young our primary phone was a rotary dial. It remained the extra phone in the basement into the 2000s.

Anyway, I was talking about air mail. The small Post Office, as I suspected, displayed some pictures and newspaper articles about the plane that landed in Aurora during National Air Mail Week in 1938. (For more information see https://midwestairmail.wordpress.com/2015/10/23/national-air-mail-week/) It was a fine exhibit complimented by the old Post Office boxes and bundling machine in the room. But they didn’t have anything on those flying overhead in the 1920s.

When we had looked around, we thanked Ms. Larson, and I told her that I appreciated the tribute to the commemorative mail flights. She commented that it probably wasn’t quite what I was looking for, and that if I could hold on she remembered that the museum had a piece of a plane in the back room. And she came out with a wooden frame about three feet long that looked as if it had once been the interior of a wing. And the tag on it said that it had come from the plane, piloted by Frank Yager, which crashed near Marquette in 1928, killing its passenger.  (For more information see https://midwestairmail.wordpress.com/2016/05/07/a-life-lost-near-marquette/).  Ms. Larson also went to the Aurora newspaper and emailed me a digital copy of the article about the crash. It had a few more details than the Omaha paper…the name of the farmer who heard the engine catching a couple of miles before the crash and the name of those first on the scene, along with some great small town paper quotes.

Piece of plane (probably the interior of the wing) from the 1928 air mail wreck that killed Samuel Craig.  Artifact at Plainsman Museum.  Photo by Joan Shurtliff.

I didn’t know what specifically I would find at the Plainsman Museum when we started driving in that direction. And in the end, I got to take a good solid look at one of those rare tangible pieces of history.

 Original tag from plane piece.  Photo by Joan Shurtliff.

Boeing mail plane from January 1928, similar to the one which crashed near Marquette in February 1928.  Courtesy of the Durham Museum, BF794-100A.

 

Where you go down makes all the difference

My last blog on the Coalville, Utah area got me to thinking about the different circumstances that pilots faced when circumstances knocked them out of the sky.  Many crashes occurred while landing, usually the most treacherous part of a trip.  Pilots hit trees, radio towers, buildings, and other obstacles near fields.  But in those cases, the field staff could quickly get to the accident, recover the mail as best as they could, and provide medical assistance to the pilot.

Away from the airport, circumstances got more interesting.  Pilots landing over the plains, roughly from Cleveland, Ohio to Cheyenne, Wyoming, could usually aim for a field near a town of some size, or at least a farmhouse.  In 1930, RL Smith landed near Somers Wisconsin, walked to a nearby farmhouse to alert the farmer of the situation, and probably call the airfield, and took off again in the morning.  In November 1930, Jack Rose ran into a pasture in Illinois, and was able to easily find assistance.  Farms across Iowa and Nebraska have similar stories.  “pilot lands in field farmer sees/hears commotion then provides assistance and transportation.”

In the mountains, but east and west of the plains, and in the more remote regions of the western United States, a pilots life got more interesting.  In December 1928, HG Smith got in trouble in the western Alleghanies and landed near a hunting lodge in Curwinsville, Pennsylvania.  Luckily he was unharmed, and was able to seek shelter in the lodge.  Trappers found him the next morning.  He was feared dead…the newspaper stories of his adventures made it seem like they had begun to write his obituary.  In September of 1920, John Eaton was forced down in the Nevada desert.  When he failed to reach Rock Springs, the Post Office sent out search parties, and did find him, but he was missing for several hours.

Distressed pilots in the center of the country could usually find civilization easily, but pilots in the mountains could be missing for hours or days.  Trees, ridges, mountain valleys, and snow could hide planes and pilots from those searching for them.  This country is not the same from coast to coast, and the air mail pilots quickly found that out.

 

 

Into the Mountains: Coalville, Park City, and Salt Lake City

According to the local website (http://www.co.summit.ut.us/133/Coalville-City) an observant settler founded the town of Coalville in 1859 when he noticed “volunteer” wheat growing where grain had spilled off the trains that passed through.  The town also received a boost from being near a coal vein, the nearest to Salt Lake City.  Because of the industry, Coalville became the largest settlement between Rock Springs, Wyoming and Salt Lake City.  When the Post Office began flying mail across the country, Coalville became a key town in the mountainous region.  Coalville is less than 25 miles north of the famed ski resorts near Park City.

Oddly enough, the relationship between Coalville and the Air Mail Service began with a real life romance.  On November 3, 1920, James “Dinty” Moore had a forced landing in the area.  Myra French, the mayor’s daughter, went to the crash site along with other curious individuals.  A year later she married Moore in Coalville and moved to North Platte, Nebraska.  According to the Park Record, Moore was the son of a prominent midwestern rancher.

WWI discharge papers for James “Dinty” Moore.  Durham Museum, Bostwick-Frohardt Collection, BF794-036A

Unfortunately, the story ended with Moore’s death in a plane crash in Wyoming two years later. A Doctor French, presumably a family friend, along with his son and daughter went to North Platte to accompany Myra Moore home.  They brought Moore’s body to Coalville to be buried.

Several other pilots landed near Coalville, or in the canyons between Utah and Salt Lake City.  In December 1922, Henry Boonstra landed in the area (see prior post).  A month later the Park Record read “Boonstra Takes Another Tumble.”  Boonstra had crashed near Wanship, about 8 miles south.  Local residents got him to a cabin and stabilized him enough to get to Coalville to receive better medical care and get the mail on its way.

In 1921 a pilot by the name of Paine landed in Parley’s Canyon, just north of Park City, due to engine trouble.  Luckily, the manager of the American Theatre drove by and gave the pilot and his mail a lift into Salt Lake City.  Paine rewarded his assistant with a plane ride.

In 1929 a Boeing plane flown by R.T. Freng with one passenger crashed two blocks west of Main Street in Park City.  The town’s fire department and other citizens assisted the passengers from the wreckage.  They were also able to save 36 of the 42 bags of mail on the plane.

Pilots also assisted local residents from time to time.  In 1923, an air mail pilot dropped supplies to two men and a woman who were snowed in at American Fork Canyon.

Flying over the western United States was unlike any other part of the air mail route. Towns were few and far between.  Canyons could be dangerous places, particularly during winter snowstorms.  The stories of trials over the mountains make up some of the most dramatic history of the Air Mail Service.

**Note:  This blog makes use of Park City’s Park Record newspaper as found on the Utah Digital Newspaper website: https://digitalnewspapers.org/newspaper/?paper=Park+Record.  I am and continually remain dedicated to the thousands of individuals who devote their efforts, time, and resources to making history more accessible to all of us.

 

 

 

Omaha to Grand Island-settling on a route

Flying, by its nature, allows pilots to fly in any direction they choose.  But in order to successfully fly continually from coast to coast, pilots generally created a standard “road” to follow.  But between Omaha and Grand Island, two different routes seem to have emerged:  the northern route over Wahoo, David City, and Osceola, and a route ten to fifteen miles south over Ashland, Benedict, and Marquette.  The more southern route became the one used almost exclusively after 1927 when Boeing began serving Lincoln en route from Omaha to North Plate.

The northern route had several advantages.  It more closely followed the Union Pacific railroad tracks, so if pilots needed to transfer the mail to the train, it could be easily done.  Pilots also remained within view of the Platte River, which ran just a few miles north.  The Post Office’s official directions from 1921 actually skip Grand Island completely, and send pilots through St. Paul and Loup City.  But Grand Island became a large enough hub that it became more logical to go south.  Larger and more frequent towns also existed on that route.  And based on the Omaha World Heralds reports of pilots being forced down in or near places like Grand Island and Shelton, it seems likely that they didn’t fly north of Grand Island for long.  They followed the Platte River to North Platte.

The best way to sort out the routes is to look at the forced landings as recorded in the Omaha World Herald.  Although they could not keep track of all forced landings the newspaper took an interest in aviation, so there are quite a few references to pilots who failed to reach their destination, even if the landing did not result in extensive injuries or damage to the plane.

There is always the possibility that pilots got off course, which affected where they landed.  But pilots tended to land in the same general locations.  Grand Island is frequently mentioned.  In 1923, two pilots landed near Osceola  probably east of town since the western landscape is more uneven.  In 1924, two pilots landed in Benedict, which could indicate that both routes were used, at least until 1927.  After 1927, improvements meant that there were fewer forced landings in general, but those that did occur, such as Frank Yager’s crash near Marquette, were on the southern route.

Whether north or south, pilots continue to get the mail through, and towns continued to watch for them.

  A field near Benedict.

  The Benedict Post Office.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Charles Kenwood-The Next Generation

In over a century of flight in Nebraska, many planes have dropped out of the sky and many people have been killed. But from 1920 to 1927, before contractors took over the mail, no air mail pilots died in Nebraska. This include the early years when a string of deaths across the country dealt the Post Office a harsh blow and a publicity nightmare. The level Platte River Valley and fewer man-made obstructions contributed greatly to pilot’s life expectancy, but in those days Lady Luck definitely played her role. In 1929, the lucky streak broke and Frank Yager crashed near Marquette, killing his passenger.

Then the following year, in a pasture ten miles west of Sidney, Nebraska claimed its first Air Mail Pilot. Charles “Chuck” Kenwood found himself in a blizzard and crashed, causing the plane to burst into flames. No one knows for sure, but the farmer who witnessed the scene thought that in the poor visibility, Kenwood didn’t know how close the ground was. Kenwood lived in Omaha with his wife Mary and their two year old daughter, also named Mary. According to the 1930 census Mrs. Kenwood returned to her parent’s home at 25^th and J street, only a couple of blocks from Saint Luke’s Church where the pilot’s funeral was held.  In 1994, Mary Kenwood was laid to rest next to her husband.  Presumably, like Lena Woodward, she never remarried.

Charles Kenwood is buried in Gracepark Cemetery at the intersection of 42^nd and L Streets in Omaha. Its funny that it took me so long to seek out someone so close. But my focus has primarily been on the first generation of air mail pilots. Kenwood was born in 1902, too young to fly for the army in World War I, the experience of most of the “seat of your pants” fliers. Prior to signing on with the air mail service, Charles Kenwood, along with his brothers, were well known for flying around Omaha. They are mentioned several times in 1928 and 1929 and important local aviators. Charles became interested in flying while working in Detroit around 1925, and his brothers caught the flying bug, according to an Omaha World-Herald Article from July 28, 1929. Charles taught his brother Jackto fly in the spring of 1927. In August of that year Jack crashed near the Missouri River while Charles was flying near him in another plane. The youngest Kenwood brother, Manuel, learned to fly in 1928, according to his obituary.

Charles Kenwood’s flying record did have a noteworthy blemish. In August of 1928, he landed at the Municipal Airport and crashed into the plane of Joe Drapela of Stanton, Nebraska, who had parked on the field. In May of the following year the case came before a judge and, according to the Omaha World-Herald, the judge ruled that the fault lay with Kenwood for failing to avoid the plane rather than with Drapela for improperly storing his aircraft. This became the first airplane damage suit case filed in Douglas County.

Charles Kenwood lived to fly once he took up the lifestyle. He and his brothers created Kenwood Air Transport around 1926. In 1929 they sold the company to Pioneer Aviation, a local Omaha Company, and Charles became involved with its effort to create flying schools throughout the state. June of that year saw him trying to train fliers in Kansas. One can only speculate, but it would not be unreasonable to suppose that when a chance to work for Boeing came up Kenwood jumped at the chance at a regular flying job, particularly with a young family to support. Who could know that just a few months after his introduction to airmail in July of 1929, Kenwood’s new career would end, like so many others before him, in a pile of wreckage?

Kenwood’s fellow pilots served as his pallbearers. Reuben Wagner represented the old guard, while George Willingham, Louis Bowen, Robert Cochrane, Ralph Johnson, and JA Rose showed how much the air mail had grown and changed. Kenwood’s death reminds us that aviation will always have its risks, but it also showed how much a part of life airplanes had become, and how their importance could only increase.

 

A life lost near Marquette

Flying the air mail had ceased to be considered a suicide mission by the late 1920s. Planes had improved, the mail’s delivery percentage had increased, and pilots could be grounded in bad weather without talk of the service being discontinued. Yet even today a wrong gust of wind or unlucky circumstance can cause tragedy, and though it happened less frequently, tragedy still occurred.

The first death related to the air mail in the state of Nebraska occurred in February of 1928, very near Marquette, Nebraska. Marquette today has a population of a little over 200, primarily based in agriculture. The accident occurred very near to town, most likely no more than four miles…had it been any further away, a different town would have sprung into action.

Frank Yager had been flying low to avoid heavy winds at higher elevations when, as near as he can remember, a crosswind threw the plane into a tree, identified by the Omaha World Herald as a cottonwood. Nebraska is the home of Arbor Day for a reason…trees in the western part of the state exist for one of two reasons…either they are along the river or someone put them near a house as a windbreak or as part of the Kincade Act to increase the amount of land they could homestead. So he either hit a tree along the Platte River, which runs west and north of town, or he hit a tree near a house.

  A field west of Marquette.

Regardless, the impact of the crash ejected Yager from the plane, but his passenger, flying enthusiast F.H. Craig of Cheyenne , died either in the impact or in the ensuing flames. A local farmer found Yager dazed and wandering around the field, and called the Marquette’s doctor to patch him up, at least well enough for him to be moved to Cheyenne.  Yager suffered leg injuries, and they wanted to check for a fractured skull.

  A field north of Marquette.

Yager was an experienced pilot.  He had been flying the mail since 1920, most of the time between Omaha and Cheyenne.  Like many pilots, he had been a flight instructor during World War I.  Yager continued flying, as many aviators did after suffering accidents. But another random field, like many others across the country, became marred by tragedy.

Ira Biffle-He Also Flew the Mail

Ira Biffle’s name comes up more than most former air mail pilots, due to a detour career between stints in the air mail service. According to the Post Office museum website, Biffle flew the mail for about 10 months between 1918 and 1919 before leaving due to personality differences with his superiors, including arriving at a destination an hour late due to fog. I wish I knew more about the incident…he certainly was not the first or last pilot to be late due to either weather or mechanical issues.

For whatever the reason, in 1919, Biffle left the service and ended up becoming an instructor at Nebraska Aircraft Corporation where he briefly had a student by the name of Charles Lindbergh. Unlike Lindbergh, who had a brief stint flying mail for a private contractor before becoming the world’s most famous aviator, Biffle, in 1924 found his way back to the air mail service, flying between Omaha and Chicago.

He had the standard air mail service adventures. The Omaha World-Herald reported him missing in 1924, although it turns out he had landed in Des Moines to wait out a storm. In 1926, he hit a horse while landing in Des Moines, when a farmer failed to heed repeated warnings to keep his livestock off of the field. Luckily Biffle was unhurt.

In 1927, Biffle, one of six pilots stationed in Omaha, began flying for Boeing, and in July he flew Boeing’s first passenger, a female reporter from Chicago, into town. Later that month he carried a honeymooning couple traveling to San Francisco.

Unlike many of the other air mail pilots however, Biffle had a short flying career after the Post Office. His eyesight began to fail him, leading to leave the service in 1930. In 1934, Biffle died in Chicago and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. This is unique for an air mail pilot. Despite the fact that nearly all of the men who flew for the Post Office wore a uniform in World War I, Biffle is the only one that I know of who ended up in Arlington. Most were either cremated or buried in the communities where they died.

According to the AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association) website, one mile west of Marble Hill, Missouri (the home of Biffle’s sister), sits the Ira Biffle Airfield with a 1/2 mile long runway, mostly used by local pilots. A fitting tribute to a man who played a small but vital role in passing aviation’s baton forward.