 Would you like it please? First I'm going to take a drink of water because I've been talking too much I Heard that It's really great. I'm so happy to see all these people here. I didn't expect this many You know, it's always humbling to be asked to do something like this. It really is and the The fact that people actually show up always amazes me You should see what it does to my wife. They really came My wife Debbie's in the back back there now I'm going to be doing quite a bit of reading for this, but it will I'll be talking with you also the reason I do that and Is a lot of my slides have a lot of motion in them and I want to keep up with the slides if I could I want turn Think I'm a side all the one that says on This is going on YouTube you said Talk to you later, bitch I Told you he was assault listen This will probably go about 50 minutes, so I better get going because I'm sure John Kennedy doesn't have anything else to do One thing I would like to say to John He can't he was the first person to contact me when we sent the flyer out about this book and What was really interesting about it as we started discussing when I should appear out here And I was really anxious to come on out, you know, I've never been to Rhode Island beautiful love it here Not going to move here. That's not you know, that's no indication there But he said well, you know our weather out here. You might not want to come out in January And he discussed that maybe we should do it in May. So here we are we drove out here And I'm not going to go any further because I'll get off script as my wife often says I do Also want to thank Kathleen downstairs. I've met her in the bookstore. We do have books available down there And we can get more if you need them So let's see how this works. Let's make sure I've got this thing going Okay, we do now. I'm coming to you from a small town in Oregon I grew up from the age of 11 in San Francisco My wife and I moved to Oregon about 17 years ago There I was a newspaper reporter No booze And I was also a history columnist for the newspaper there And I also prior to that worked for the Southern Oregon Historical Society Now most of my ancestors really came from this area And that's the same area that Eugene Ely's relatives came from which was up there in Massachusetts and Connecticut And I know a few of us must have lived in Rhode Island And the only one I can remember offhand Is George Washington's second in command or one of his favorite generals Nathaniel Green I don't know what the relationship is. It's something like 36 cousin on the ninth Whatever Anyway, the family finally moved to California in 1930 So how did I get interested in Eugene Ely? When you push the button I've already I've already forgotten to push the button That's the small town we come from Shady Cove, Oregon So how did I get interested? That's a question I'm getting quite a bit lately One of my jobs at the Historical Society when I was there Was writing stories for the Society's magazine and about 14 years ago or something like that I came across this picture of this guy And hopefully I'm getting there somewhere and He was the first guy to fly in southern Oregon And his name was Eugene Ely And I started looking into his life just to write a short story for the magazine And I found out that there wasn't very much information Nobody had written a book about his life So I started looking more. Now there were brief articles you'd find everywhere, of course Most of them were wrong Most of those were on the internet And it just didn't make sense to me that nobody hardly ever Anybody remember Eugene Ely besides someone who was in the Navy? Probably not. Yeah, just a few I wondered how it was possible for someone Who almost single-handedly almost single-handedly pulled the Navy into the air Was ignored like this So that's that's all how it started Now his friends called him Gene And because I've spent so much time over the past 10 or 13 years Looking into his life I do too and I don't think he would mind because I really believe that he did want to be remembered He was buried the day After his 25th birthday Less than a half mile from where he was born And the threads of Eugene Burton Ely's life had been left angling for really what I think is way too long No sooner had he captured the world's eye gained the fame he sought And he smashed into the earth and was dead Until 1911 the last year of his life hardly anyone knew who this young man was And over a century later It's about the same if even less If he's known at all it's because he was the first to dare fly an airplane on to and away from a ship And you have to wonder how does an Iowa farm boy afraid of heights Do that To some he's the father of naval aviation the inspiration for today's nuclear powered aircraft carriers But like most pioneers the the what the why the how of his life pretty much disappeared And that's where I go. I like to see how a person lived. I'm not interested in the technical side that much For most of the world, Gene Ely is nothing more than a footnote a collection of a few dates few facts Probably no more humanity than that bronze statue on a courthouse lawn We may never know completely the real Eugene Burton Ely But I think it's about time we tried The cheers that sounded behind me as I sped away from the pennsylvania Were the sweetest music my ears have ever heard gene said I never regarded the undertaking as hazardous as the naval officers did But those cheers persuaded me that I had finally accomplished something real On january 18th 1911 gene Ely had flown from a makeshift airfield south of san francisco In a fragile bamboo Curtis by playing out over san francisco bay 10 miles as a crow might fly And he landed on Well, not an aircraft carrier because there was no such thing at the time He landed on and took off from a naval cruiser The uss pennsylvania An hour later after lunch on board with the captain he took off on the ship and he flew back those 10 miles to the airfield Now two months before that He'd already become the first man to fly away from his ship And we'll talk more about that later But this is the first time that anyone had landed on a ship and taken off And this at a time when the navy saw absolutely no reason to be in the aviation business Now gene at the time had only been flying for nine months Not always successfully As a matter of fact the first time was an accident Well, it could have been a practical joke too because no one was ever really sure It was just outside of portland, origan, and it wasn't even his biplane at the time He just came out to see the guy fly It was outside of portland, origan And uh While the mechanics were working on the engine Gene got permission to climb up on the wing and sit there and fiddle with the controls He listened to the mechanics, who even though they hadn't flown before Decided that they would tell him how to control the plane and flight While they fired up the engine And while those mechanics held on tightly to the wings because there were no brakes to speak of Gene began to rev the motor Big mistake The machine began to shutter Shake And just as gene pulled back on that wheel The mechanics let go Within seconds he was 30 feet in the air 30 feet, imagine that This is 1911 or 10 Full throttle It took him a moment to remember how to kill the engine And glide To a miraculous landing But when it was all over He'd flown his first 200 yards Well, he was a natural Or so he thought It was April 12, 1910 Gene Ealy had now become a dedicated aviator A bird man As they call them in those days His next three flights over the next three days were short Straight, and he never got up higher than 10 feet off the ground The fourth flight, at 30 feet, was straight into a stiff, northerly wind When the wind gust pushed him toward a clump of trees Gene turned back and lowered his altitude Thinking, well, I might be able to land safely But the airplane tipped on its side And began to fall Gene calmly shut off the engine Held on tight As the left wing tipped over And plowed a deep furrow into the field Then the entire plane flipped over on its side And jolted to a stop Now, it was his first crash But he was still alive And in those days, that was something It's like Bruno learning to ride a bicycle, Gene said I'm the key gone trine until I'm sure of myself Now, I believe I'll be able to make an extended flight Before the end of the week And he did In fact, he made six Let me make sure I'm on point here I am Gene had been working as a mechanic and car salesman For Robert Simpson, the Portland, Oregon automobile dealer For the Auburn Motor Car And when Simpson saw how quickly Gene was learning to Navigate the air He bopped by plane from the owner And had little trouble enticing Gene Into the Lucrative exhibition circuit Now, that's lucrative if he can fly Now, Gene's first public performance The first flight in Southern Oregon, by the way Took off in the brand-new town of Sutherland 165 miles south of Portland, Oregon It was a mild success of a few hundred yards A very successful demonstration Of what a modern flying machine is capable of doing Is that a reporter? The sart was made without delay or trouble And the biplane soared upward like a bird Got those glowing reports of this inspiring Spectacle and remarkable feet of the birdman Didn't know what to do But he did And he did And he did And he did And he did The birdman didn't last very long First Gene crashed into a fence And then after making some minor repairs Lost control And a wind gust while flying over the fairgrounds Now somehow He managed a successful hard landing Very hard landing In an open field But the propeller was battered The airplane had several broken ribs But in these days They'd all be repaired in three days And that was more than enough time for his next exhibition, which was 110 miles to the south in Medford, Oregon. Now, I'm not going to give you every one of his flights, but Medford was significant for him. These Sutherland, Oregon promoters were furious, saying that Gene's flights were all failures. They refused to pay his share of the gate proceeds. And on his way to Medford, Gene filed suit in district court. He demanded $480, which was his one-half share of the paid admissions that were guaranteed him by his contract. It was the first time, but not the last, that he would have to fight for his money. Now, it's probably good to mention here, you probably don't know this, that aviators were not flying from one exhibition to the other at this time. Airplanes just weren't that reliable yet. After the show was over, the airplane was disassembled, packed in crates, put on a railroad freight car, and shipped to the next performance. There they put it all back together again. Now, at the same time, it appears that Gene probably carried along a car, an automobile, so that he'd have transportation when he arrived. Now, everywhere Gene went, they were touting his considerable success in flying, even though most of those first few months he was just a beginner, and not always a good beginner at that. He's often credited with seven world records that were actually set by other aviators. Yeah, these mistakes were not unique to Gene. Myths such as these increasingly swirled around every aviator who was promoting themselves, or their selves, later even Gene deliberately lied to reporters. Imagine that saying that he had flown in Japan. Well, it probably boosted his reputation and with luck boosted his profits when it came to the next exhibition. The Medford exhibition would be much like Gene's first, a sizable crowd gathering in a farmer's field south of town, to watch him climb to 20 feet this time, fly about 150 yards, and suddenly be hurled to the ground by a rift in the wind. The airship's motive power ceased to flap and it lit in the form of a massive tangle wreckage, said a reporter. The fates and currents of air, some say hot air, were against this enterprise. Well, Gene took a few days to make repairs. The promoters quickly arranged to have Whipple Hall brought to the exhibition. Now, they hoped that two airplanes flying at the same time might give them better chance of actually seeing something in the air. Now, Hall was also a rookie flyer. He'd been flying for Glen Curtis for only a few weeks. Now, his claim to fame was that he weighed 230 pounds and he actually billed himself as the heaviest man who ever rode in an airship when he could get in the air. But more important, Whipple Hall would be the one who would introduce Gene Ealy to Glen Curtis. Well, over two days, Hall made nine tries and he never got off the ground. Now, Gene had three relatively successful flights, but never more than 15 feet in the air, no further than 250 feet down the wind. Gene vowed he'd return to show them that he wasn't a fake, that he really could fly. And exactly a year later, he did. By then, he was world famous, his flights spectacular. I had to wipe out my record made here, he said. And I had a machine with no power and I was new in the business. Eugene Burton Ealy was born October 21st, 1886 at the family home at a crossroads known as York Center, which is a few miles east of Williamsburg, Iowa. It was almost 10 months to the day after his mother, Emma Harrington, had married Nathan Ealy, a man eight years her junior. Now, Gene was named for Nathan's father, Eugene Hanson Ealy, and also for his mother's youngest brother, Burton. She, by the way, was a Harrington related to the Harrington up there in Concord and the American Revolution, for those who know. Emma was 13 years older than Burton, and after their mother was stricken with tuberculosis, she'd become less of a sister and more of a surrogate mother to the boy. Now, when Nathan Ealy married Gene's mother, he was described as the young man of finability and character who had captured the heart of one of our fair beauties. But when he divorced her, he suddenly was an opportunistic scoundrel who had married her for her money and began chasing after women. Now, it didn't matter to family and friends that, you know, Nathan had come from a relatively prosperous family himself, but the couple had been married nearly 20 years, and that they had conceived four children together. All that really mattered was Emma, Lois, Harrington had been abandoned and embarrassed. I wish I had a better picture. The divorce was very hard on Gene. He took his mother's side basically. Friends said that father and son did not speak for at least seven years, not until 1910 when Gene was erroneously reported dead in the Canadian plane crash. When Gene had been nine years old, the family had moved to Davenport, Iowa. There he would learn engine repair at an older friend's garage, and there he'd develop his love of automobiles, too. Internet biographers are going to tell you that Gene Ealy graduated from the University of Iowa, or Iowa State. He didn't. And according to Davenport school records, he didn't even graduate from high school. So where was he? What was he doing? At age 16, Gene was a chauffeur for Father Smith, a Catholic priest who owned a bright red $3,000 Franklin touring motor car. I was so few automobiles in Iowa at the time, you can only imagine the sight of a priest bouncing over the dusty roads. It was certain to draw quite a bit of attention. Gene's scorching commutes, as they called him, with Father Smith chuckling in the back seat, his hair rippling in the wind. Well, again, Gene, the newspaper reputation is the best driver in Iowa. Now, he said he had set the speed record between the city of Davenport and Iowa City in less than two and a half hours. Then a week later, while he was sick, he broke that record by half hour. Even seven years later, a reporter said, I don't think that record could ever be broken. In October 1905, Gene and his cousin, Orson Harrington, left on the train for the exotic city of San Francisco. Now, they were both talented mechanics by this time, and they figured employment wouldn't be a problem. If nothing else, they could drive cars for a living. They were sure that the wide streets of a big, big city offered more than enough opportunity for those boys to fulfill every one of their dreams. But they didn't dream about this. When the 1906 earthquake began to shake at 5.12 a.m. that April morning, like everyone else, Gene and Orson staggered their way out to the safety of the street and watched as parts of the city began crumbling around them. We never were so scared to death as we was that morning. Orson Harrington said in the letter home, most of the roof was in our room when we got up and a whole lot of several more. How we ever got out alive, I never can tell you. Well, the boys at the time were working as chauffeurs and ambulance drivers for a hospital, and as soon as the shaking stopped and the fire began, they hurried to work where the flames were quickly approaching. They loaded ambulances with patients and rushed them to emergency tent hospitals miles away. Three times, heroically running an automobile filled with sick persons and removing them from the path of the flames, said a reporter. Orson had had enough. He went home. But Gene, he'd stay still looking for the chance to be somebody or the chance to do something important. In San Francisco, after the earthquake, Gene worked as an automobile salesman and mechanic again at Max Rosenfeld's auto livery. He also raced cars for his employer, usually for long distances, speeding to Santa Rosa in the north, that's about 50 miles, or to the Monterey Peninsula in the south, which is about 130 miles. He was also chauffeur for Charles Connless, who was an executive with a gas and electric company, and also the personal business manager of the Hotlands estate. The Hotlands were very big in whiskey. As a chauffeur for Connless, Gene would have traveled many times to Marin County, which is just north of San Francisco, where Connless would meet with Richard Hodling, the heir to the family fortune at his luxurious estate and, of all things, a dairy farm. I don't think you do that in Rhode Island, but maybe. He called it Sleepy Hollow. These ferry trips to Marin County was probably how Gene met his future wife, Mabel Hall, who was living nearby in the city of Corda Madeira. Mabel was the daughter of Henry Clay Hall, a highly respected teacher and a previous candidate for California's superintendent of public instruction. He was now superintendent and principal of the Corda Madeira schools. Now, the eldest daughter of an upper-middle-class family, Mabel could have followed in the family's teaching tradition. She was surrounded by teachers, not only her father, but there were aunts, uncles, even a brother. But much like future husband Gene, she too traveled perhaps an independent, perhaps rebellious path. 1907, when she was 19, she and Gene married, a marriage to a chauffeur at the time. I mean, that would probably almost nobody to those people. It's doubtful her parents could have been very happy about that. At least not yet. Now, after their marriage, Gene and Mabel headed north to operate an automobile stage line, as they called them at those times, between Alturas, California, and Lakeview, Oregon. Now, the railroad was heading in that direction and had just reached Alturas. Gene and his partner took turns driving their 80 miles, plus miles actually, between the towns until the winter of 1909 when the snows closed down the pass and shut down their business. By the summer of 1909, Gene and Mabel had finally moved to Portland. Gene was again working as a car salesman and mechanic, and very soon would, of course, learn to fly. Henry Wemi, the man who had brought the first automobile to Portland, seems to always be important wherever you go. Who was the first one with the car? Wemi was in the process of bringing the first airplane to the Rose City. Now, the internet, again, is going to tell you that Gene Ealy worked for Wemi, and he didn't. Now, Wemi had already sent his men to the 1910 aviation show that was being held in Los Angeles at the time and ordered them to buy a Glenn Curtis biplane. Now, Wemi planned to use it to promote his pet project, which was a decent highway from Portland, Oregon to Mount Hood, a mountain resort. Well, when none of his men were able to ever fly the machine, he just, his interest waned. Let's put it that way. He sold it to Gene's boss for the price he had paid for it, $5,000. Glenn Curtis wanted to sell airplanes and felt exhibitions were the best way to do that. By the end of 1910, when Gene finally began to show some progress in his flying, Curtis took Gene under his wing and gave him personal instruction at Hammond's Port, New York, which was the Curtis home and, of course, headquarters for his airplane company. Gene had joined, thanks to Whipple Hall, the Glenn Curtis exhibition company, not long after that failed attempt in Medford. And for the next year and a half, nearly every day of the week, Gene and Mabel were on the aviation circuit. You can read train there, crisscrossing the country, performing at aviation exhibitions. And gradually, Gene's abilities, thankfully, his abilities and confidence improved. Now, Curtis knew that the best way to sell airplanes was to interest the Army and the Navy in how an airplane could best serve their missions. But the Navy had been much more resistant than the Army. Curtis was looking for a way to get the naval brass involved. I think I just hit that too soon. Well, the Navy had assigned only one man, you just saw him there, Captain Washington Irving Chambers, a former battleship commander, to study aviation. One man, study it and answer any inquiry that somebody might send to the Navy. It was Chambers who thought that maybe landing a plane on a warship and taking off again would be valuable, not as an attack aircraft, but as a means of scouting enemy ships in times of war. He'd asked the Wright brothers about that, and they said, oh no, that's too dangerous. He'd seen Gene Ealy fly and approached him. Gene said, well, I've wanted to do that for a long time. I find that hard to believe, but that's the quote. On November 14th, 1910, from a special platform mounted over the bow of the Scout cruiser, Birmingham, wooden platform, in a gathering storm and heavy wind, Gene Ealy flew into history with the first takeoff from a ship, the flight less than five miles over Chesapeake Bay near Norfolk, and as he left the ship, the biplane dipped down to the water. The wheels touched the bay, salt water splashed on his goggles, and temporarily blinded him. Somehow Gene kept on flying. I was absolutely satisfied with the test. We did what we were after, he said. I feel confident that I demonstrated to the Navy the practicability of airplanes as auxiliaries in wartime. I feel proud also of having the distinction of being the first aviator to accomplish such a feat. Two months later, in San Francisco Bay, Gene would accomplish even more. The flight that made headlines around the world, literally. Another platform was built on the cruiser, Pennsylvania. This time on the stern, the original plan was he was going to land on a ship that was moving, and they were worried that if he was on the front, the ship might be moving right over Gene Ealy. So they moved it to the back. My job is to fly from the field to the warship, land on it, and then rise from the deck and fly back to the field, Gene said. Now, merely to go from the field to the warship, I would not consider that a great feat. To land on the deck and then succeed in flying off, that will be something. The bay was filled with ships. The boys, and they had ships like this back then, relieved from duty so they could watch the flight, scrambled for the best onboard viewpoint. There were no reserved seats, said a sailor. It was every man for himself. If Ealy hit the water instead of a ship, said a reporter, he would be involved in a half-dozen collision so close to the smaller craft lie around that cruiser. The biplane had been modified slightly for the Pennsylvania flight. A central skid was placed underneath so that it hung about five inches above the bottom of the wheels. Now, three pairs of steel hooks were attached to each side of the skid. The hope being that those hooks would capture the ropes that were going to be strong across the wooden platform. It's kind of the beginning of the tail hook capture of airplane that, with obvious modifications, was used today. And in the book I discuss all the people that claim they were the first. But I ain't going to go there now. They nailed a couple of pond tombs under my machine, Jean said, and they tied a bunch of, well, bicycle tubes into a true lover's knot around my chest as a life preserver. Well, he had chosen the inner tubes to replace the Navy-issued pneumatic life preserver he'd used in that flight for the Birmingham. It had proved cumbersome, he said, interfering with the free use of my arms and legs. From the Pennsylvania's crow's nest, a sailor shouted, there she blows, he's 10 miles southwest, sir. Captain Pond, commanding the Pennsylvania, turned his binoculars to the speck in the sky. Ah, it's a seagull, somebody said. Now, Pond said, it's too steady for a seagull. The wind was directly behind, pushing Jean along at about 60 miles an hour. The Pennsylvania was a mile away, and her stern pointed south into the wind, and that was going to be a problem. Jean's landing was going to be much quicker than he wanted, meaning he'd hit that landing deck faster than he wanted. I had to calculate the force of this wind and the effect it would have on my approach to the landing, he said. Now, if he flew straight onto the deck, the wind would push him left, and he might miss that landing entirely. He decided to fly in a straight line toward the ship, but aimed slightly to the right. I had to take the chance that I had correctly estimated the wind and how it would blow me off course. Now, I missed the first rope stretched to check my momentum, but my grappling hooks caught the other strands, and I was brought up gently. Well, the moment Jean touched down, sirens shrieked. Hundreds of steam whistles blew, cheers, shouts, and applause echoed across San Francisco Bay, not only from the Pennsylvania, where every sailor was waving his hat in the air, but also from every boat on the bay, and believe it or not, if you've ever been to San Francisco, from the thousands and thousands of spectators who were watching this from the pier. As Jean stepped onto the deck, Mabel was there with a kiss and arms around his neck. Oh, you dear brave boy, she said, I knew you could do it, Eugene. It was far easier than I thought it would be, Jean said. My photographs were taken, and a motion picture film that no one seems to know where it is anymore. And after an hour's lunch in Captain's Cabin, Jean was ready for the return flight. Mabel took a small bouquet of California violets, which were her favorite flower. She took some of those violets from her corsage and fastened them to one of the supports at the front of Jean's biplane. While Jean did a careful inspection of his machine before taking off a sailor in search of souvenirs, pulled out a few of Mabel's violets. We're going to meet Mabel. He didn't realize that Mabel was back up on the navigating bridge looking down and seeing everything he did. Don't you dare! She screamed, put them right back. Well, he sheepishly did put them right back. And to make amends, he offered Jean the cap band from his hat that said USS Pennsylvania, and Jean asked him to help tie it onto his arm. The cheers that sounded behind me as I sped away from the Pennsylvania were the sweetest music I ever heard, he said. I never regarded the undertaking as hazardous as the naval officers did, but those cheers persuaded me that I had accomplished something real at last. Well, as he flew back over the San Bruno Mountains, which are just south of San Francisco, he began to daydream. In that moment of supreme joy and elation, he said, I came more nearly losing control of myself and my machine than ever before in my flying career. He's a thousand feet in the air over mountains that are about 3,000 feet high. He smiled and for some reason reached out to kind of see if he could touch Mabel's violets that were rippling in the wind up there. Suddenly, he was caught in swirling winds for three minutes. He struggled for control. I was wobbling and battling for all I was worth, he said. Now back on the ground, he made it. He received a medal and a hero's welcome. He had done what no one had ever done before. Now the public didn't really know Eugene Ely. He played the part of the daring bird man but only his friends and relatives really knew how shy he really was. Oh yes, he was proud of what he had done. Yes, he loved to fly but until recently he hadn't even saw the limelight and the public praise that came his way. It had been enough to make good money and be respected for his skill. Bright, determined, of high character, said Wemmy, Henry Wemmy, that man who had brought the first airplane to Portland. He needed only the opportunity to make a name for himself. When he was seized with the desire to become a pilot he went about that work with the quiet determination that presaged success. Of course, many people believed that Gene's quiet determination may well have been encouraged by the, let's just say, not-so-subtle prodding from his wife, Mabel. She was, wrote one reporter, Superintendent, Captain, Manager, Overseer, Boss, President, General, and everything else. She shows herself to be as proud of her high flying spouse as it's possible for a woman to be proud of anything. And he seems to be well aware of it. You're in trouble when you go home. With Mabel's ability to charm nearly every reporter she met she never seemed to tire of answering the same old questions over and over and over again. One reporter was talking about her. Mrs. Eley is young, said one scribe. In fact, she's so very young that one voluntarily looks for her hair ribbon and sailor collar, which was very popular for children at the time. She's pretty, petite, pecan't, and lots of other adjectives that go to epitomize radiant youth. Well, Mabel always made sure that everyone knew that Gene was her brave knight. Bravery, she said. By the nights of olden days were children in comparison with 20th century heroes. But reporters still wanted to know how it was possible for her not to worry when her husband was, as they said, suspended so high in the sky. What was her secret? Your desires are your prayers, she said. And I never allow the thought of an accident to enter into my mind. Let's back up. Or not. You must understand now that Eugene was the love of Mabel's life. Even after his death and even after she remarried. Okay. Until the day she died, she devoted her life to his memory. Now, she may have been domineering. She definitely spent too much of their money on dresses, hats, and jewelry. But Mabel was in love and she thought that it would never end. She was impetuous, always in control with an unwavering determination to see Gene succeed. Gene, she said, was her boy. And of course, she was the boss. I'm sorry, I'm going backwards or something here. Here we go. Reporters approached Gene as he was working on his biplane one day. You know, I'd like to know a little bit about your history, Mr. Ealy. Said one of them. He just approached with a large bundle under her arm and she spoke first. Oh, Mr. Ealy is one of the best in the business, she said. He has, and a proud Mabel went off rattling in every fact that she could think of in a detailed account of Gene's career. The man waited patiently. That's my press agent, Gene said with a big grin. I haven't needed a personal press agent since I've been married. My wife is my principal booster and my general superintendent. Mabel was visibly annoyed. I have to consult with her about all of my exploits, Gene said. Whatever you read about Ealy in the papers just append that Mrs. Eugene E is in back of it. It didn't go. Go. Mabel put on a courageous face to reporters but from the time he was erroneously reported dead in a Canadian plane crash while she was visiting with Gene's mother in Iowa, she lived with an unspoken fear. She stayed close to Gene and except for one trip to Texas to train army aviators by the way and the Georgia exhibition where he would die, she almost always traveled with him. Oh yes, I go with him everywhere, she said. I'm his good luck. Things go wrong when I'm not around. She scolded him when he flew recklessly and forbid him to fly in bad weather and because of that obsessive behavior and the way she always clung to Gene. Around the airfield the boys began calling her the little widow but never to her face. I don't know where we are here. A few months later Gene kept his promise and returned to fly in Oregon. Here we go. Mr. Wheely made his second flight here, you know, Mabel told reporters. And it was kind of a failure. The trouble was that the machine hadn't the power to get off the ground. He was very much disappointed and has determined that nothing will prevent his going up this time. Well this time he thrilled the crowds. A year earlier when he was laughed at and called a fake, one of his men had stood up for him. Oh go ahead, laugh, he said. Next year he may be one of the most famous aviators of the mall. Yay, even more. I predicted. And a year later, now the people around town said, you know, that guy might have been a prophet. Because he was. The cross-country exhibitions continued, the crowds swarmed to see the king of the air. But Mabel and Glenn Curtis noticed a change in Gene and they were worried. They warned him to stop. He had decided that he would start making some dangerous death spiral dives. Now that's the biplane at a high altitude rolling over, aiming straight down toward the crowd, spiraling toward those spectators and gaining speed. The motor shut off till the last possible second and then restarted a few feet above the ground. There Gene would pull up, fly away. The crowd went, oh. Now his mechanic said that he was copying an aviator known as Lincoln Beachy. A daredevil Curtis pilot who was gaining attention with these kinds of reckless flights. Gene was worried that if he didn't compete with Bert Beachy, no one would even want to see him fly. I understand you're making some very risky flights, Captain Chambers wrote to Gene. I want to give you the advice of a friend to cut out the sensational features. I don't want to hear of your meeting the fate of those other fine fellows. John Ston, Hoxy, Morsant, all of those aviators had fallen to their deaths and steep dives. Please remember me to Mrs. Ealy, Chambers continued and say that I shall expect her to continue keeping her eye on you for our sake and for the sake of the noble art of aviation. Gene was putting on a remarkably brave act and why he continued in this reckless behavior makes really little sense. A flying in Portland, Oregon where the flying had all begun, Gene had a confidential talk again with Henry Wemi, the automobile man who had originally bought Gene's first airplane. Gene told Wemi that the sooner he quit aviation the happier he'd be. It's a risky game, he said. I'm through with flying after the season has ended. Wemi said Gene had a constant dread of a fatal flight and that Gene had never felt quite sure of himself when he was in the air. Well, Gene and his father, now reunited, attempted to get him a government job but there just weren't any aviation jobs available. Gene and Mabel were on their way east again, the fate was waiting for them there. The boy in a hurry with dreams of glamorous success had finally found it, but at what cost? He was learning that these dreams and the reality were sometimes different and sometimes dreams had consequences for him who was already too late. Reality had taken firm control. In 1911, less than 18 miles west of Newport, sorry about that, Hillsgrove, some of you may have heard that, was the home of the Rhode Island State Fair. In addition to midway shows and sweating harness horses, the 1911 edition also included the state's first airplane flight. Gene Ealy made his appearance of the state his first appearance September 5th of 1911, the second day of the fair. He brought with him a new 70 horsepower engine in his Curtis biplane and would face no competition from other aviators. He had just left a disastrous showing in the Boston aviation meet where he had only won $150. Gene and Mabel arrived at the Hillsgrove train station just after noon and waited while the mechanics put the biplane together at the Hillsgrove Trotting Park, about seven miles south of Hillsgrove's Market Square. I think not far from where the Green Airport is today, the TJTR Green. Opened in 1898, this racetrack was called the fastest in New England because owners claimed it was unaffected by wind. On one side of the track was a forest shelter and on the other side was a grandstand in training facilities. Pardon me for a second, as he drips water. At six o'clock, Gene in the evening, Gene rose quickly from the infield of the racetrack into the scattered clouds at 2,000 feet circling over the racetrack several times. He'd invited two councilmen from Pawtucket who had told them that they wanted to see what would happen if an airplane lost its motor or its speed in the air. But they almost got their wish. Gene's motor ran so poorly that day that its occasional skipping, sputtering, the machine got like backfires, kept him from a promised flight over Providence. After 28 minutes, he finally gave up, shut off his engine, descended in a slow and graceful spiral glide, whooshed past the grandstand and landed outside the racetrack, concerned that he might injure some of the spectators who, despite several warnings, crowded the infield where he wanted to land. Even so, the crowd of a few thousand quickly swarmed over that machine, shaking Gene's hand, writing their name on his plane and patting him on the back. While trying to gain control of the crowd, well, police managed to rough up a few reporters, yes, they did, who immediately filed protests and got no satisfaction. Some of the boys from the local reform school waited all day to see Gene fly, but they never got the chance. They had to return to school well before Gene had arrived on the field. Two days later, after a delay for bad weather, Gene flew over the school where the excited boys waved up to their newfound aviator hero. From there, he flew over the yard filled with convicts at the Howard Prison, and then he returned to the racetrack. That was it. In October 1911, Gene made his last visit to Iowa. He spent some time with his family. He also flew an exhibition to Davenport. His father and Mabel, again, were not happy with those dives and what they called crazy flying. But the tens of thousands of spectators who came out were absolutely thrilled. Now, before he left town, the hometown boy was given a banquet in his honor. How long did he expect to stay in this flying business? Someone asked him. Well, I guess I'll do like the rest of them, keep it up until I'm killed. Well, it was the answer he always gave these days, usually with a grin. They said he didn't really mean it, but with eyes that really weren't so sure. Well, now he was on his way to Macon, Georgia for one more exhibition while Mabel returned to New York City to book passage for Russia where the czar of Russia had asked Gene to come over and perform. Now, Gene said they would spend the winter with his family in Iowa and then they would make the overseas trip. When they returned, they'd go to the west coast. I absolutely will quit flying, he told friends. There's big money in the game, oh sure, but it isn't worth the while. Something might happen when I'm hundreds of feet in the air. Well, there's always that possibility and that would be the last of me. He said he would take his money and invest it in an exclusive territory to sell Curtis airplanes from an agency headquartered in San Diego. I also managed an aviation school in Southern California, he said, and I'll have an interest in that business. But he said more than anything, he finally wanted to settle down to a quiet life. In Macon at the Georgia State Fair, Gene met Buffalo Bill, who was on another one of his farewell tours. Bill took a liking to Gene and the two promised to go hunting together in a few months. After a few days of successful flights, Gene decided to try and experiment. Now he took the front elevator from his machine. The Wrights didn't use one and he had seen Lincoln Beachy sort of that fast-paced fame without his. Perhaps removing the front elevator would maybe improve his performance. That afternoon he sent a telegram to Mabel and he told her that when he left Macon in a couple of days he would fly a three-day exhibition in Norfolk, Virginia that he had just picked up and then he'd join her in New York. Now of course he didn't mention that experiment. October 19th, 1911 was a beautiful day in Macon, Georgia. Gene had promised an extra day of flight to make up for a missed day earlier in the week, missed because of rain. On his way to his hangar, Gene met an old friend and they stopped to talk. His friend asked if he could hold Gene's cork-lined leather helmet. What do you wear this heavy thing for Gene? He asked him. Gene smiled and then he joked. Oh, that's just to protect my head in case I should fall. Well now it was showtime. In the air at Macon, Georgia, Gene had made one circuit of the racetrack below and was beginning his second when he pushed his biplane into the death spiral dive. The last one of his life said a tearful head mechanic, Frank Kalin. In those last seconds before he hit the ground, Gene must have experienced the same terrifying fascination felt by his friend and fellow aviator, Bud Mars, when a few months earlier Mars realized he was going to crash his machine and had practically no chance of coming out alive. I remember how my body pulled against my shoulder straps as I started down out of control, Mars said. The logical thing to do was pick up momentum and regain control, but the controls wouldn't respond. At that instant I knew I was in for a smash. I didn't feel any fear in the events of my life. They didn't go rushing past my vision like a panorama. All I thought was dodge the crowd if you can and tip or sideways so the motor won't land on you and smash you. Well, he was helpless, but he fought to the end, trying to gain control as he crashed. Mars woke up in the hospital the next morning, amazed. He never felt any pain at all. Gene wouldn't be so lucky. I believe I'm not afraid of death, Gene once said, but I cannot think without a shudder of those endless seconds when a man might be dropping, dropping, dropping through the air from the clouds to the ground. Those are the seconds I fear. Those are the seconds I never want to live. He was barely conscious when his machine shattered around him. I lost control, he said. I know I'm going to die. Gene lay on his back, eyes tightly closed, one arm covering his face, the other arm across his chest as if he had tried to protect himself when he fell. There were no apparent cuts, some bruising starting. The blood was beginning to trickle from his nose and mouth. His lips quivered and his breathing was hard and erratic for 15 minutes. He was a prince of a good fellow and the most daring man I've ever known, said one of Gene's mechanics. I've been flying with flying men for quite a while and I know most of them. He really was the best in my opinion. He simply made the mistake that others have made. He flew just once too often. Within the hour, Mabel received a telegram in New York. Ely is dead, meet the body in Davenport. She had been alone when that telegram reached her but was quickly surrounded by friends who found her so heartbroken that she couldn't stand or talk. In California, Mabel's mother suddenly found reporters at her front door. Oh, this would never have happened if Mabel had been with him, she said. He always inspected his machine before every flight. He called her his guardian angel and she wouldn't permit him to ascend when there was any appearance of danger. Mabel's father also sent a telegram. The whole Pacific coast mourns with you tonight, my dear. The press glows with touching tributes to your hero. Gene's body arrived in Davenport, Iowa, Saturday, October 21, 1911. What would have been Gene's 25th birthday? That evening Gene was resting in the parlor of his mother's York Center home. Early Sunday morning, friends and relatives dug his grave in the family cemetery. I well remember the funeral, said a neighbor. There were cars in the funeral cortege but the hearse was a wagon pulled by a team of black horses. Now, most of those in that slow moving procession drove wagons or carriages but there were at least 50 sputtering automobiles. This gathering was really so immense. If you've been there, it's a small town. So immense that as that hearse was entering the cemetery, a mile and a quarter from the Ely home, the tail end of that procession had just left the home. The day after his 25th birthday, Gene was finally home again. As the newspaper said, home and asleep in Iowa. Now once Mabel had admitted to reporters that there was only one thing that frightened her. The thought that her husband might someday be picked up out of a massive tangled wings, canvas and sticks. If he ever did fall, she said, she wanted to be with him in the machine. It would be better that way. Mabel returned to California to live near her aging parents. She lived the last years of her life in San Rafael, California, dying there in March of 1960, just two months before her 71st birthday. She was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery just south of San Francisco. He called her as good luck charm and perhaps, just perhaps if she had been in Georgia with him, she might have saved his life. Instead, she was forced to move on without him. Newspaper editor John Gallagher of the Williamsburg, Iowa Press, who knew Gene Ely fairly well, ended his story of Gene's death with a personal touch. As a rule, he said, the wife accompanied her husband on all of his tours and doubled the thrill and joy of his success by sharing them. To her, he was the hero of a new world, the daring mariner of an untried sea. And for him, her love and devotion were inspirations he prized above the world's acclaim. Mabel would never forget him. Even after, don't laugh at this, three more marriages and a lifetime of memories. She was always happiest being called Mrs. Eugene B. Ely. As one reporter said, the plucky little woman beside a tall man with an aviator's eye. This was Gene Ely and his wife. Thank you. I guess we are here for questions too. Somebody promised me some bad words. Was he ever in the Navy? No. But it says that he was on the Internet. He was in the California Air National Guard when they formed it. And he was supposed to train aviators. But he was too busy to do that, so he got away with that. But no, never a Navy guy. His father joined the Navy, I think it was about 1898, Spanish-American War, and got sick and had to leave. But he also became, about 15, 20 years later, he rejoined, but he became in the Army and went to the judge-advocate staff in Washington, D.C. He's buried in Arlington. Gene is buried in Iowa. We can go along and on and on with that. There was a big controversy. They were all worried that Gene wouldn't be buried near his mother and sister. Yes, sir? How did they originally ever learn how to fly a plane? He did it himself. He just got in there and did it. How do these things happen? I don't know. But Glenn Curtis himself, and I guess most of you know who Glenn Curtis was, and the book goes into the controversy with the Wright brothers. Not in great detail. But Glenn Curtis said that Gene Ealy did it all himself. Someone had tried to say, well, you really taught that boy well. He said, no, Gene Ealy did it himself. He taught himself to fly. This airplane that was brought to Portland, there were three other guys that tried to fly this plane. Of course, all of them were car salesmen and they didn't make it. But because this boy was so fascinated by mechanics and fascinated by automobiles, and also I believe he really wanted to do something important. My dad was a colonel, I think by the time he was done, a major colonel in the Army had gone to Washington, D.C., was a big shot, had been an attorney. He wanted to show his father, I've never heard this story before, not me, that he was something, he was somebody. So somehow he learned to fly. Who was the next carrier landing the Navy performed? That gets really, and I have that in the book here somewhere. The surprising thing is the Navy still didn't get in the air. They converted a bunch of ships with flat tops. They were literally flat tops, no conning tower or anything like that. And the Navy didn't officially build an aircraft carrier until about 1931, 1932, something like that. So the actual first landing after that, I don't know, the first landing after that I know is done by the British on one of these flat top ships that they converted. And I think that was just before the war ended. 1918, insurance office. Thanks. I have it in the book here. You know, I wrote this book a long time ago. There's always an expert, and I'm thankful for you, sir. Yes, sir. Just two quick comments. Excellent presentation of your graphics and whatnot. Thank you. The energy of your presentation was terrific. I teach a course here at the Naval War College, and last night we had a naval aviator speak. And he talked about the first landing on an aircraft carrier by a robotic aircraft. Oh, wow. It was 102 years after Jean made his life and whatnot. And it flew on to the carrier, George A.W. Bush. Nobody at the controls robotically landed and took off again and whatnot. Wow. It's an interesting kind of look into what we're talking about. Yeah, it is. There's still a lot of innovation going on in the Navy and whatnot. In the next generation, the pilot may not be in the machine, he may be somewhere else. Thank you, Mr. President. And tangential, tangentially to that, the George Washington, the George Washington, the George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier, the people in, and we need to stop, don't we? The people in Williamsburg, Iowa have been trying to get Eugene E. Lee's name out for years and years and years. And they've always wanted to have an aircraft carrier. They thought they had it nailed down that the George H.W. Bush was going to be named the Eugene B. E. Lee. You know, it was in their head. But their representatives were in Washington saying, hey, hey, hey, you know, it didn't happen. Yeah. Well, that's the way it's supposed to be in the Navy. My dad tells me. Anyway, that it? Yes, sir. Did the removal of that front elevator play a role in the fatal crash? That's what his mechanics thought. Because the aerodynamics were different and he'd only practiced one day. He did this the day before he made this flight and everything was fine. But he obviously, to me, it seems like he miscalculated when to hit that engine and pull up. But Beachy, the one I was talking about, about the same time he was flying under the bridge at Niagara Falls. Beachy was the nut who actually died in 1915, I believe, in a dive in San Francisco Bay. Poetic, I guess, I don't know. The aircraft shown where he died didn't appear to have any bamboo. It was pipe. It was some sort of wood, though, but it was still bamboo from what I understand. It didn't look like it. There were some metal pieces in there. Not many, though. Because they had to make these things very, very light, the engines weren't that powerful. Curtis started it with his motorcycle engine. Yeah. Yeah, but it's just an interesting guy. Whether he needs to be known forever, I don't know, but it's just amazing. Hardly anybody's ever heard of him. At the time, he was big news. Have we bored you to death yet? Thank you. Thank you. I would also like to say the guys that had that un-piloted vehicle had a much larger deck to land on. Better construction, too.