OLD NEWS: 'Girl' flier is proudly claimed as Arkansan

Front page of the June 26, 1917, Arkansas Gazette, showing report on former Arkansan Katherine Stinson's flight to DC for the Red Cross
Front page of the June 26, 1917, Arkansas Gazette, showing report on former Arkansan Katherine Stinson's flight to DC for the Red Cross

Residence in Arkansas comes with an unwritten guarantee: Live here for any amount of time -- nativity not required -- and in return, should you go forth to accomplish something on the national stage, anything, we claim you as one of our own for the rest of your life.

photo

Library of Congress

Katherine Stinson aka, “The Flying Schoolgirl”

Here's a bit of evidence, published 100 years ago on the front of the Arkansas Gazette. The American Red Cross had just wrapped up an eight-day campaign to raise $100 million for relief work in war-torn Europe. As the clock ticked down, a fearless pilot flew from Buffalo, N.Y., to Washington, stopping along the way to pick up donations.

Aviatrix Brings Money

The first money reached the Red Cross treasury by aerial messenger. Miss Katherine Stinson, a young air woman, descending upon the capital at the end of a two-day flying trip from Buffalo, Albany, N.Y., and Philadelphia, carried to Secretary McAdoo, treasurer of the Red Cross, money and pledges gathered from cities she visited.

Alighting near the Washington monument at dusk, Miss Stinson was taken to the treasury, where Secretary McAdoo and a throng of sightseers were waiting.

"You have made a remarkable and daring trip," said the secretary as he took the envelope containing checks and pledges. "You have typified by your act the spirit of the Red Cross which is to dare anything, even death itself, for the sake of bringing relief and comfort to suffering humanity."

The opening of the article came from the newspaper's wire services; the ending was added by someone on the Gazette staff (who misspelled Stinson's name):

Miss Catherine Stinson formerly lived in Little Rock, Hot Springs and Pine Bluff. She attempted to arrange for a flight in Little Rock, but was unsuccessful, although she flew in Pine Bluff as part of a Labor Day celebration four years ago.

Miss Stinson is a quiet, modest little girl and to see her away from her airplane, no one would ever suspect that she is an aviator.

In fact when she made her first appearance in the Gazette office about four years ago, the city editor greeted her as follows:

"Well, sister, what's the matter? Are you high school girls giving another pink tea?"

I had to look up pink tea to learn it was a luxurious and fancy social gathering, especially one attended by women and so a good cover for suffragists. But already I knew enough about Stinson from her bio in the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture to question that term "little girl."

The woman was born Feb. 14, 1891.

By 1917 she was 26 years old, co-owner with her mother and siblings of a flying school in San Antonio and a well-traveled professional entertainer. She was the fourth human and first woman to do the aerial loop-de-loop, and she'd invented a rather risky version of sky writing done at night using flares over Los Angeles.

She'd flown over London and in Japan and China -- in an airplane she built reusing the motor of the plane in which stunt flier Lincoln Beachey died.

The "little girl" was already 22 during that 1913 Labor Day show at Pine Bluff. And she was paid for her work.

The Gazette wrote about her often and always underestimated her age -- because she fibbed about it. Her persona was "The Flying Schoolgirl." For instance, from Nov. 3, 1912:

Slip of a Girl Will Fly in Little Rock

Just a slip of a girl, Miss Katherine Stinson, known as the only woman aviator now actively engaged in flying in America, arrived in Little Rock yesterday and began arrangements for a series of flights to be given later in the month. ...

Miss Stinson might be described as a "kid sort of a girl"; she wears short skirts and her hair in pigtails down her back. She says she's 18 years old; one has to be that old to get a pilot's license, though she doesn't look it. ...

"I don't like playing with dolls. They're silly. I know I'm a tomboy, but I cannot help that. Anyhow, I ought to have been a boy."

Cute, but she was 21.

In April 1915, reporting on its front page that the "19-year-old aviatrix" intended "to undertake a transcontinental flight of 3,000 miles through the air from New York to San Francisco," the Gazette said:

Miss Catherine Stinson's home is in Hot Springs, where her parents live, although she spends much time traveling about the country giving aeroplane flights. Also she spent much time two years ago visiting in Little Rock.

Actually, no, the family had already moved their Stinson School of Flying to San Antonio, where, by the way, Stinson Field eventually became Stinson Municipal Airport. And no, her parents had not ever lived together in Hot Springs.

They hadn't lived together since 1900, having separated after her baby brother, Jack Beavers Stinson, was born in Canton, Miss.

"Katie" Stinson was the oldest of four remarkable children of a remarkable woman, Emma Beavers Stinson. All the kids became record-setting pilots. In her book Before Amelia: Women Pilots in the Early Days of Aviation, Eileen F. LeBow says Emma Beavers married Edward Stinson in Fort Payne, Ala. Katherine and Marjorie -- "Katie" and "Madge" -- were born in Fort Payne; Edward ("Eddie") and Jack in Mississippi.

Emma left her husband and moved the children to Jackson, Miss., starting a business printing city directories. She owned a car. Next she moved to Hot Springs, where she printed directories and also took in boarders.

"The two older children attended private schools at different times," LeBow writes, "and when Katherine became interested in aviation, Emma was supportive and gave her money for lessons and the purchase of an aeroplane." Some accounts say Katie took up flying to pay for music lessons, but her sister disputed that, saying their mother gave her "fifteen thousand dollars" for aviation -- whether that was $15,000 or $1,500, money was no problem.

In 1911, a Gazette freelancer in Hot Springs interviewed a 20-year-old Katherine before the third annual convention of the State Association of Elks, which would include "aeroplane" demonstrations by (25-year-old) Jimmie Ward, "the youngest aviator in the world."

The local committee having in charge the aviation features today announced the name of the young woman who will make a flight with Ward. She is Miss Katherine Stinson, one of the popular leaders in the younger social set. Miss Stinson is determined to make this flight, which will take place in Ward's machine.

"To be sure I'll go up with Mr. Ward, if he will take me. I look forward to this experience with a great deal of pleasant anticipation," said Miss Stinson today, "and I sincerely trust that nothing will occur to prevent me making the flight."

The ride thrilled her. Early in 1912 she traveled to St. Louis where Tony Jannus took her up in one his employer's planes; but that boss, Tom Benoist, wanted no part of helping a woman fly. LeBow writes that by May, Katherine was disgusted. She quit St. Louis for Chicago determined to enroll in Max Lillie's flying school at Cicero Field.

"He was not an easy sell, but Katherine could be very persuasive, and she didn't take no for an answer," LeBow writes.

Supposedly she gave him her last $250 for lessons. After three weeks, she passed the test for Federation Aeronautique Internationale certification on July 19, 1912 -- at Pine Bluff -- and was issued license No. 148 on July 24 by the Aero Club of America. She was the nation's fourth female pilot.

She traveled with Lillie's school to St. Louis in the fall, then home to Hot Springs for winter. In spring 1913, she and her mother formed a corporation to buy an airplane and unleash "The Flying Schoolgirl."

A PBS documentary on her life reports that in 1916 and 1917 she applied to join the U.S. Army Signal Corps Aviation Section many times -- including the day she made that delivery of Red Cross money to Washington -- but was rejected because of her sex. Frustrated, she applied to deliver the U.S. mail, becoming the Postal Service's first female pilot.

Finally she joined the Red Cross as an ambulance driver. Working in hellish conditions in France, she caught the Spanish flu, and then in 1920, tuberculosis. She sought treatment at a sanatorium in New Mexico, where, according to the documentary (see bit.ly/2sZOsmU), she met her future husband, Miguel Otero, a combat pilot, when he gave up his bed for her.

Somewhere about this time, in Long Beach, Calif., Amelia Earhart took her first ride in an airplane.

Miguel and Katherine married in 1928, and, according to her obituary in The New York Times, they promised each other never to pilot a plane again.

Katherine Stinson Otero, architect, was 86 when she died in bed at her home in Santa Fe on July 8, 1977.

ActiveStyle on 06/26/2017

Upcoming Events