Biography & Autobiography

Tucked along the north bank of the Columbia River lies Pearson Field, thought to be the nation’s oldest continuously operating airfield.

The golden age of aviation in the Pacific Northwest began at this spot with the touchdown of a dirigible bearing airmail letters, but that was only the first of many remarkable moments. From its conversion into a sawmill to provide spruce for World War I warplanes to hosting unexpected Russian airmen, Pearson Field adapted to serve the region through wars and peace alike. The Army Air Corps called it home for decades, and it attracted aviators like daredevil Silas Christofferson and Tex Rankin, who ran his own flight school.

Author Martin Middlewood dives into the stories of the men and women who turned a grassy field into the historic site it is today.

Midwestern aviators changed the trajectory of flight itself—from barnstormers and military pilots to hot air balloonists and NASA engineers.

When Mother Nature made American prairies, she created one vast airfield. It’s not mere chance that so many aviation pioneers are from the Midwest—farm kids, small-town kids—who grew up accustomed to vast expanses of earth and sky. Barnstormers, flight attendants, NASA engineers, crop dusters, World War II bombers and Vietnam helicopter pilots were dispatched from areas of the heartland, places like Central Illinois. Their stories, big and small, bear testimony to America’s enduring fascination with flying machines, a fascination that has taken prairie flyers to every corner of the world. Edith Brady-Lunny, Denis Hambucken and John Warner offer a ground-level view of aviation history in the nation’s heartland, including personal stories of the flyers and the global legacy of the Flying Farmer organization. 

From hot air balloons to home-built aircraft, the people of Oregon pursued every opportunity to explore the skies.

 

By the late 1800s, air travel had captured the imagination of the entire nation. From hot air balloons to home-built aircraft, the people of Oregon pursued every opportunity to explore the skies. At the 1905 world’s fair exposition, held in Portland, audiences gazed in awe as dirigibles claimed the title of first controlled flight in the state. Soon after, airfields began to dot the countryside. In 1910, Charles Hamilton became the first pilot to fly in Oregon, and by 1926, regular air mail deliveries were commonplace. Daring early aviators like Eugene Ely, Charles Walsh and Silas Christofferson lost their lives but have never been forgotten.

 

Author Arthur H. Redman explores Oregon’s aviation history. 

At the beginning of the twentieth century, aerialist Ivy Baldwin had achieved celebrity status as a premier tightrope walker, aeronaut and aviation pioneer. He executed astonishing and perilous performances across America and internationally, including Mexico and the Far East. First by flying balloons, he went on to pilot dirigibles and, finally, aircraft. In his later years in Colorado, he became famous for crossing canyons on a tightrope. Historian Jack Stokes Ballard deftly captures Baldwin’s colorful and hazardous life from childhood runaway to aviation record holder.

In the beginning of the twentieth century, women were demanding more freedom. What could bring more freedom than a chance to fly? Women went up in those early wire-and-fabric contraptions to gain independence, to make money, or to make their names as pilots. They sought to prove that women pilots could do just as well as men—and some did far better. Flying High: Pioneer Women in American Aviation tells the story of Blanche Stuart Scott, who made $5,000 a week and broke forty-one bones; of Harriet Quimby, who flew the English Channel handily and then fell to her death in five feet of water near Boston Harbor; of Ruth Law and Katherine Stinson, who set American distance flying records—all before any of them were allowed to vote. Flying High: Pioneer Women in American Aviation also tells the tales of women behind the scenes—the financiers, engineers, and factory workers—from the earliest days of flying to victory in World War II. These stories of the first female flyers are told in rare, vintage photographs, many previously unpublished, from the archives of the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum.

Viola Gentry of Rockingham County, North Carolina, learned to fly in 1924 and quickly achieved greater heights. In 1925, the aviatrix took her first solo flight. The following year, she flew under the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, and in 1928, she established the first officially recorded women's solo endurance flight record. She became the first federally licensed female pilot from North Carolina that same year. She was a national celebrity, and her job in a New York restaurant secured her the nickname the "Flying Cashier." Gentry became personal friends with fellow pioneers of aviation Amelia Earhart, Wiley Post and General James "Jimmy" Doolittle. After a near-fatal crash, Gentry focused her efforts on championing aviation for women and preserving its early history. Author Jennifer Bean Bower reveals the life of one of the great women in Tar Heel State history.