July 18, 2023 The Extraordinary Beautician Pilot

The Liberty Gazette

July 18, 2023

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: Born in 1906, Jackie Cochran’s life before she learned to fly was spent largely in salons, helping women get all dolled up. At a party she was given advice on traveling the country to sell her own cosmetics: You should get your pilot’s license so you can cover more territory. 

Jackie left Saks Fifth Avenue Salon in New York City and built a cosmetics empire while blasting off into the world of aviation. Her accomplishments are too numerous to list in this space, but a few highlights include being the first woman to break the sound barrier (Chuck Yeager was a huge fan of hers), the first woman to take off and land on an aircraft carrier, and the first woman to make a blind landing. And she didn’t have anywhere near the sophisticated instruments we have today.

She flew stunts for a flying circus and somewhat stealthily flew airliners (allegedly the passengers didn’t know). She championed flying opportunities for women via Britain’s Air Transport Auxiliary, the U.S. Women Army Corps (eventually merged into WASP), and the Civil Air Patrol. She moved the game forward for women to become astronauts and even helped General Dwight D. Eisenhower win the presidential election. 

The guy who had given her that great advice at the party was Floyd Bostwick Odlum, one of the 10 wealthiest people in America at the time. He knew how to succeed in business and helped to finance her start-up, Wings to Beauty, because he admired her so much. Eventually, they married. 

Jackie was the only woman “allowed” to fly in the Bendix race in 1937 and won it the following year. In doing so, she opened the door for other women. Known as the Speed Queen, Jackie earned seven Harmon Trophies for aviation achievements. Then she joined the U.S. Air Force Reserves as a lieutenant colonel, and her mojo didn’t stop. She was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with two oak leaf clusters as well as a long list of other medals from the U.S., UK, and France for her contributions to our side during WWII. After 22 years, she retired as a colonel and went on to advise Northrop as a test pilot for their T38 Talon supersonic jet trainer. Just in that one airplane alone, she set 73 speed, distance, and altitude records.

It is said that she still holds more records than any pilot living or dead, male or female. And to be clear, she said she never intended to set records designated as female. She wasn’t trying to be a man or copy men; she was just herself and loved to fly. In fact, most of her records are absolute. In other words, not as the first woman to set a particular record, but as the first person. Case in point: her 1,300 mph speed record in an F-104 on a 100-kilometer closed course. No one else will ever be first. The Experimental Aircraft Association called her “The Record Holder of all Record Holders.”

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

July 11, 2023 The Beauty of a Sherman Tank

The Liberty Gazette

July 11, 2023

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: Okay, gals, this one’s for us. Mike and I were discussing the recent news about a certain P51C Thunderbird, and while it’s worthy that we should tell you all about it eventually, there’s one part that surprised me. 

This P51, serial number 2925, was co-owned and flown by former Air Force Brigadier General and Academy Award winner Jimmy Stewart. The other pilot-owner was Joe De Bona, who flew it to win the Bendix Trophy Race in 1949. At the end of that year, Stewart sold the plane to Jackie Cochran “for $1.00 and other considerations.” Jackie’s aviation success was phenomenal. She once said, “To live without risk to me would be tantamount to death.” Chuck Yeager called her “a Sherman tank at full steam.” 

Jackie was the first female pilot in the U.S. Air Force and set world records in flying from the 1930’s to the 1960’s. I was familiar with her flying fame, but in researching this P51C, I learned that she was also a savvy business executive. 

Jackie’s life before flight was spent largely in salons, doing up hair and make-up. She had worked her way up to a New York salon with highfalutin clients. In a casual conversation at a party, she mentioned to a new acquaintance that she was tired of being chained to the salon with fussy customers and wanted to get out, create her own brand, and travel the country selling it. The man to whom she said this gave her this piece of advice: You’ll have to cover a lot of territory. You’d better get your pilot’s license. 

It was 1932. Jackie promptly started flight training and had her license in three weeks. She had discovered a new passion. Flying would not simply be a vehicle for her business ventures. She would experience every opportunity flying presented while building her line, Wings to Beauty. What she could do better than her competitors was represent her brand for women on the go, women with an active lifestyle who wanted to look good but needed the products to be easy to travel with and quick to use. 

Jackie’s company made all the typical cosmetics: blush, eye shadow, lipstick, and the like. Advertisements and powder tins are now valued collectors’ items you might be lucky enough to find on eBay. The one that impresses me the most is this stick of sorts. It’s a slender cylinder broken into compartments that notch together. In each compartment is one element of a make-up bag. Perfect for female pilots who fly three- or four-day trips. So small, it fits easily in an evening clutch or pocket. No need for a bulky make-up bag. Genius!

Jackie took Jimmy Stewart’s P51C to France to blast out two more world speed records, then sold the airplane back to him “for $1.00 and other considerations.” When she passed away in 1980, she held more speed, distance, and altitude records than any other pilot. I can’t wait to tell you more.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

July 4, 2023 How One Kid Got to School in 1919

The Liberty Gazette

July 4, 2023

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Happy Independence Day! Last week we spotted five boys running a lemonade stand on a corner in Kingwood. They weren’t inside glued to a screen. Kudos to the parents. Before you know it, school will be back in session. Some kids will walk or bike, some will ride a bus or go by car. But over a century ago, one little guy flew to school.

His dad, Seymour Cox, had several airplanes. He had hired Glenn Curtiss to build the Curtiss-Cox, which he named “Cactus Kitten,” and which would compete in air races around the world. Cox owned another Curtiss-built aircraft which they named “Texas Wildcat.” But he wasn’t the only aero-head of the family. His wife, Nellie, caught the bug too, as did their son, Seymour Jr. Imagine living in 1919 when flying was new!

The Cox family lived in Houston, and nine-year-old Seymour Jr. was going to boarding school in New York, which made the New York Herald as well as Flying Magazine, quoting him as saying, “Hurry up, Mother! The aeroplane’s all ready! Let’s get started quick for school!” The novelty of their story took up three full pages in an article titled, “Mother Brings Her Son Through Air To School in New York.” They crossed the country logging 18 hours flight time over ten days. Nellie loved that “Earth looks like a miniature map spread out beneath. Everything is beautiful from the air.”

She is often referred to as an aviatrix, but at least for that trip, she hired Harold Block, a WWI Army pilot, to fly her and Junior in their three-seat bi-wing Curtiss Oriole. It was one of two Orioles with which, along with a Curtiss “Jenny,” that same year Seymour Sr. would start Southern Aircraft Company, the first commercial airline to serve Houston. 

On the way to school, they took a diversion to circle over Cincinnati and 30,511 fans in the stadium during the first game of the World Series. The Reds won 9-1, but that was the year of the Chicago Black Sox, so who knows what would have happened had they not taken a bribe to throw the series. But in the Oriole that day, no one knew of the scandal, and their trip garnered much attention at every fuel stop. 

They ran into weather around Indianapolis, where they had to circle to avoid rain and fog before finally landing on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. They left there as soon as the sky cleared.

Later, as they took off for their last leg, the clouds grew dark again. Lieutenant Block had descended, hoping to get beneath it, but suddenly there were trees just three feet below them. Block throttled up and climbed to 7,500 feet and returned to where they had just departed. They were weathered-in for three days in Binghamton. 

Nellie wasn’t fazed. She was all-in, saying, “Aeroplanes are the coming sport and coming convenience of the world. It’s the natural next step.” 

For Junior, what a ride to school! 

 

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

June 27, 2023 Life Gift of Dinosaurs

The Liberty Gazette

June 27, 2023

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Way back in the Mesozoic era, before there were airplanes, the Mastodon and Wooly Mammoth used to meet their dinosaur friends at a big watering hole about 500 miles west of here, so we’re told. More than a week later, Alvar Nunez happened upon it, probably the first European to do so. While the dinos left record of their presence in the form of bones, Nunez documented his journey on paper in 1585. An Eastern Apache tribe met him at the big water and offered him food and clothing. He’d been shipwrecked and traveling through what we now call Texas. The Comanches didn’t exist yet, but sometime later when they formed out of the Shoshone tribe, they too discovered this great big spring near a river. For the next 200 years that the Comanche ruled the area without rival, the big spring favored by dinosaurs became a holy site and the heart of Comanche existence. 

A little more time passed, all the while the remains of Mammoth and friends becoming geology, and the area was perfect for laying rails for steam engines. Towns like Midland, Odessa, Abilene, and Big Spring sprung up. Then all this development caused the water table to drop. So today we might ask why Big Spring is named as it is, and we can imagine Sabre-toothed tigers and Paluxysaurus Jonesi (our state dinosaur!) seeing their reflection as they lap up cool spring water. And then we can consider the whole circle of life thing and how over the millennia oil has formed and been discovered in that same area. This brings us up to what may have been about the time of your grandparents or great-grandparents, and you may have heard tales over Christmas dinners of the excitement when oil was discovered in the Permian Basin. The prospect of opportunity brought some wily characters to West Texas. Fellows like Seymour Ernest Jacobson Cox, living at an exciting time in history – the birth of the aeroplane. 

It was 1919 when Cox caught wind of potential gushers in Big Spring. He acquired drilling leases on 200,000 acres on the McDowell ranch. When one of his wells struck, Cox planned a Texas-sized celebration. Investors came from around the world, just as the dinosaurs had, hoping to get a piece of the action, and Cox was the kind of guy who could get them hyped. “This black gold,” he proclaimed to the crowd, “is a messenger of a new day in Big Spring and West Texas.” And with that, according to the Big Spring Herald, a local cowboy appeared overhead “riding” Cox’s single-engine aeroplane, “perched on a saddle in front of the tail and blazing away with his six-shooter.”

We don’t know which airplane it was, but Cox had worked with Glenn Curtiss to build the Curtiss-Cox, which he named “Cactus Kitten,” and which would go on to win second place at the 1921 Pulitzer Trophy Air Race in Omaha, Nebraska, flown by Clarence B. Coombs, and made possible by the life gift of dinosaurs.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com