Wiley Post of Oklahoma

It was the biggest thing happening in the world. 50,000 cheering people jammed Floyd Bennett Field in New York just before midnight, July 22, 1933. Wiley Post had just landed after circling the globe in his legendary airplane, The Winnie May. It was as if the whole world stopped for this moment. As Wiley pulled himself through the hatch on top of the plane, a tidal wave of screaming thousands in gulf the Winnie May. Wiley, a sixth grade dropout with a prison record and only one eye, had become the toast of the world, the first man to fly around the Earth alone, the father of modern aviation.

America in 1933 was in the midst of the Great Depression and desperately needed a hero. That hero was Wiley Post of Oklahoma. Wiley was born in Texas in 1898, but soon moved with his sharecropper family to Southern Oklahoma just before statehood. They settled near May'sville where Wiley in the sixth grade dropped out of school because he was far more interested in repairing farm machinery and adventure.

In the early 1920s, Wiley got on the wrong side of the law when he hijacked cars by throwing tires out into the road near Ninacaw in Grady County. He was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in the state penitentiary. But after 13 months in prison, two prison doctors diagnosed Wiley with melancholy or depression and he was paroled. Ever since he had seen his first airplane at age 13 at the county fair in law, Wiley knew he would someday be a pilot. He signed on with the burl tibs flying circus as a parachute jumper. Tibs in his pilots and acrobats barn stormed through many towns in Oklahoma and Texas. Between parachute jumps, Wiley picked up a few hours of pilot instruction. In 1927, Wiley desperately wanted his own airplane. He took a job in the booming oil field at Seminole, promising himself to work just long enough to buy a plane. Tragically, on his first day on the job, steel from a co-worker's sledgehammer struck

Wiley's left eye, infection set in, and the eye was removed. Wiley faced a giant hurdle in his dream of becoming a commercial pilot. With a sixth grade education, one eye, and a prison record, how could Wiley ever succeed at anything, much less become a commercial pilot? With his workers' compensation settlement, he paid $240 for a wrecked airplane and another $300 to have it repaired. Wiley post finally had his own airplane. Well, I was just a little started and those get in the 20s for every got to be famous and he lit at Marlow and picked me up and we were going to fly to Maisville and somewhere between Alex and Lindsay had all our plane quit and he had a forced landing and fixed it some way and we took off and went on the Maisville.

I went Wiley several times on the air strip so that's in the early thirties and in several of the air strips we'd land, there was no airport. We landed in strips and he had his old plane and I had mine and I just met him, it's just like we didn't know it he'd be such a celebrity at the time. He was just one of the barnstormers that I hadn't met. The pilots were generally calm, cool, collected type. He was definitely that, he was sort of bashful in our sense because it was hard for me to get to know him. I just couldn't run up to him but my dad would say go ahead, go talk to him because Wiley

would be out there helping with the plane and getting it ready for some flight or other. Wiley stored his plane and my father's hanger, I was out there at the old municipal airport. He did it because it was convenient and kept it out of the weather. As barnstorming became less profitable, Wiley landed a job as the chief pilot for Chickasha Oilman F.C. Hall, Mr. Hall sent Wiley to California to buy a new Lockheed Vega airplane and he named it after his daughter, Winnie Mae Hall. When Wiley was not flying for Mr. Hall, he was able to use the Winnie Mae for his own projects. Wiley post during the early part of the 30s with Royal Rogers was always in the background. Wiley didn't come forward, he sort of respected, I felt, the times that I photographed him

for Paramount News. He respected Wiley Rogers' position and he let him be center stage and be the actor and Wiley played the part of the quiet pilot. Very seldom did Wiley say anything or even get in the conversation. He just stood back and let Will Rogers do all the talking and of course, Will took care of that alright. I was working late at the airport, this was on Southwest 29th and Mae and we were waiting for an airplane to come in and it turned out to be Wiley and he was flying, I don't remember what it was now, but he held a flashlight out this window in order to see the land because he didn't have any landing lights out there and he was bringing some woman in who's to emergency flight to go to a hospital somewhere and that's when our first man at Wiley. February 4th, 1931 and Wiley called and told I did that him, Wiley and Will Rogers would

be down the duncan at certain time and for me to meet him. So I got my plane out and I went down and I met him down there at the airport and here he introduced me to Will Rogers that day. I guess that's the reason it stands out my mind. I've seen him fly the Winnie Mae a number of times and particularly out of the OK municipal airport at 29th and South Mae but then I've seen him fly in different places but most of the time it was at the municipal airport and while he was just a fellow who was trying to make a living with carrying passengers and eventually of course he got jobs of flying people here and there at Winnie Mae it was so slick that it landed real fast. It was polished out and well it didn't have the wing area that the other planes had so

naturally that met the juice flying pretty fast to keep it in air. No it was a real slick plane at Winnie Mae. Well it was just a big old monoplane by the day standards I guess the back seat would be like sitting on a van but I never was up. I never touched the airplane I was never that close to it or anything like that but in the Winnie Mae is probably two and a half times the size of a 195 session and they're pretty good size single engine airplane but it was a big airplane tires on it considerably better than what they put on now. The Winnie Mae was the first plane that we saw that appeared to be really what I'd call

a fancy plane. Now we had seen Art Gobels Woolerock and comparing it to they probably would have been somewhat equal in quality. By 1930 Wiley was bored with cross-country flying. He wanted to fly around the world and convinced FC Hall to back him in his attempt. In the spring and summer of 1931 Wiley and Australian navigator Harold Gatti spent much of their time preparing for the trip. The New York Times bought the exclusive rights to cover the trip around the world. The newspaper promised its readers a real scoop in aviation history. On June 23rd, 1931 Wiley and Gatti lifted off from Roosevelt Field in New York. For eight incredible days Wiley flew a path charted by Gatti through Newfoundland, England, Germany, Russia, Alaska, Canada and back to New York. They were instant heroes when they landed in New York.

Boyle boy, talk about excitement. The Winnie Mae is back safe and sound, less than nine days after she started from this very spot. A peach of a landing and the boys are home, home after one of the most thrilling episodes in the history of travel. As a strange scene, it's almost dark and the big plane looks like some prehistoric flying animal. Just a nine days for a trip that took Magellan three years to make in 1532. The crowds in a frenzy, the photographers' flashlights are sounding off like a battle scene from all quiet on the western front to welcome home the most popular heroes in the land. It's a wonderful ovation for the Wiley Post, the one-eyed oil driller from Chickasha, Oklahoma and his heat thirsty and Harold Gatti, the quiet navigator from Australia, with posed as his wife.

Mrs. Gatti is rushing in from California to greet her husband. It was an hour before they could get away from the crowd. They've gone through many a hardship and they got away from them in great shape, but their worst experience is in getting away from their friends and what they want now is sleep. Well, sweet dreams, boys. At the battery, the reception festivities are started off by the familiar fireboats salute in honor of Post and Gatti and their wives, a real family reunion for the first time since the flight started. They're greeting down at the tip of Manhattan Island as nothing but what's coming later on in the big parade up Broadway on the way to City Hall. They want to get a look at the men who made aviation history. They're bewildered by the reception and they can't believe that it's all in their honor. The ride up town is a triumph. Waste baskets are empty. Tick or tape fills the air. Torn up telephone books make the hot July day look like a snowstorm. Although every once in a while someone throws a phone book and forgets to tear out the pages.

It's the nearest approach to a Lindy reception since that other famous flight in 1927. That's one of the most astonishing sides in the big town and a great tribute to a couple of great boys. Everybody's just tickled to death except the street cleaners you have to clean up the mess and end to City Hall for New York's official greeting. And here they are now talking to our cameras. Well, we've got a lot more flying to do yet. Well, I'm glad of that I like the opportunity to get around the country and see all the people who have been kind and invited to come to their city. And Stanley, you have followed a more navigation idea too. Well, I think it'll do a lot of good to stimulate the interest and aviation all over the country. The unusual feature of the tour will be that we'll be meeting the people at the airports and not in halls. At the time this was happening in 1931, we lived in Rush Springs in Grady County.

And the brown-the-world flight of Wally Post and Harold Gatti had been finished on July the 1st, I believe. And so in the month of July, a little later, we bundled in the car and drove up Che Shae, which was 20 miles away in our county seat. And they had the Winnie Mae and Wally and Harold Gatti were all there on display, so to speak. They were barge storming around the state and attracting large crowds everywhere that they went. I was eight years old at the time and enjoyed the trip very much. And especially when we arrived in Che Shae, the Winnie Mae was, of course, the center of attention. We must have been a little bit late because it was already on the ground by the time we got there. It was a tremendous airplane and really thrilled all of us to see it finally. It heard so much about it.

After the first round the world flight, they was coming back. They had made stops in several places. And if I remember correctly, they was coming from Cleveland, Ohio, where they had stopped. The they had made several stops before that, after they got in here. I mean, before they got in here. And it was just something for a kid to say. We went out, drove out to the airport and, I say, they must have been eight or 900 people out there milling around and the airplane was the main item. Wily was a worldwide hero, yet when he and Mae returned to their hotel room, he asked the question, is that all there is, suffering from depression most of his life, Wily thought he was a failure and had given nothing to aviation.

No matter what Wily thought about himself, his mother and father, his closest friends, and his brothers and sister always believed in him. The oldest one was James, and then author, and then my father, Joe, and Wily, and Byrne and Gordon were the boys. One time, I see it was after his first round the world flight, he called somebody into letting him shoot coax at Fort Seal, and he flew down the waters in a biplane, two-wing airplane, and got my father to go with him to shoot coax on Fort Seal, and, after the first day, my daddy told him he didn't want any more of that damn flying, and when go, so Wily went, shot one of the struts out on the airplane, trying to shoot a coax and fly the airplane the same time and lit, and fixed it with some bailant wire.

He wasn't as tall as I am, I walked up the side of him, and I'd say that, you know, his height at that time, he made a couple inches shorter than I am, he was kind of a solid maid, small man, and he had a grin that would disarm you, you know, he was friendly, and he talked to people, Wily, he enjoyed performing, and he enjoyed the crowd that came to see him, and he enjoyed visiting with the people. He'd shake hands with you, you know, that's more than a lot of people will do, you know. Well, it was quite a man, quite a life. Of course, at ten years old I wasn't in any position to have a thorough knowledge of Wily post at all, he was simply a hero, a living hero, and I recall one day specifically

that stands out in my mind even more than the day of his death, and my dad was kind of stirring him around town as his promotion man and publicity person, and he brought him by the house on 17th Street, in Oklahoma City, and by prearrangement my sister will Anne and I came out there, and we had her picture taken with Wily, and we were, you talk about the show and tell, you know, for a separate-year-old kid, that's a pretty fine wine. He and my daddy would talk, now my dad was very intelligent, he lost his eyes both of them when he was 16, and he went ahead and went to that blind school and they were all, and

then when my daddy died, he owned 365 farms, rent houses, business houses, and he did that blind, and with Wily, with that one eye, you know, I had a bomb there, and they would talk, and I would sit and listen to them instead of being outside the plane, I would sit and listen to them talk. Wily always told me, he said to try it, if you want to do it by try it, and if you fail, why, ask yourself why you fail, and how come you fail, and then try it again, and you know, remedy that, and I can look back now at my life, and I had an impact on it, an awful impact, because he said, never give up. Wily had more dreams. In 1933, he developed a plan to fly alone around the earth in the

Winnie Mae. He bought the airplane from FC Hall. With the help of daily Oklahoma editor Walter Harrison, Oklahoma City business leaders such as Stanley Draper and EK Gaylord and Yukon Milling Company owner John Crotle, Wily was able to raise funds necessary to finance the around the world trip. 41 Oklahoma's, including a young newspaper reporter Mike Monroe, contributed the $40,000 Wily needed. Just three months before Wily was to make his solo flight around the world. An accident in Chickashay one afternoon almost changed history forever. With his friend Red Grey at the controls of the Winnie Mae, Wily was in the passenger seat. One day Red was there at Chickashay. Now they brought that plane into Chickashay because it was the only one that had an airstrip big enough to accommodate this Winnie Mae. It landed like a streamlined brick. Well, Wily and Red got in the plane and Red turned the key. Now this is, it's a single seat. You have one fellow or I close

to you but there's not like about where we have the two pilots in the front. This plane was narrow. And he turned the key on and of course anybody is flying. We always look if it has a gauge on it. Most of the planes didn't have gauges but his had a gauge and it showed zero. Wily said, well I just put fuel in there a day or two ago and it must be that the gauges are not a red string right. So the reds are okay. We'll fire it up and they got about 50 foot in the air and it quit. And obviously it ran out of gas. So due to his ability, he was able to get the plane down due to the speed and the shortness of this airstrip. There was a peach orchard at the end of that airstrip down there at

Chickenshade and he caught the right wing in a tree and of course it spun him around. What I'm about to read is taken from my father's book which is still in manuscript form hasn't been published and it portrays what happened back in 1933. I went Wily was wanting to go from around the world and the plane crashed in Chickenshade and I'd like to read. Ray calling my dad telling him of the crash. Dad immediately dispatched a truck and a crew truck the ship back to the hangar in Oklahoma City to be rebuilt. As a story goes by now Wily was broke and was out promoting while the plane sawed in the hangar. Dad put Luther

Gray, Claude Seton, George Brower and Sterling E. Barry to work on rebuilding the wrecked aircraft. They and my dad had the balance owed on the repairs against the Winnie Mae to be charged back against their back salary. Wily got off and commenced his round the world of flight. But Wily never forgot his friends and the proof of that is the checks signed by Wily paying back these men each one every cent old and possibly a little bit more. So I immediately went over to the old Kurdish ride airport and forgotten that Wily was over there and asked for a job and they said well go out the coffee shark out there and see the boss if I go out there and the boss is talking to Wily. Wily said what the hell are

you doing over here? I said well I'm looking for a job so he turned to this man and said put him on my airplane and said he's a good man. So I worked there until the airplane was finished. It was a plywood airplane as you know and I did repair work on replacing that plywood. Well the wing was damaged and the fuselage was damaged because it landed in the peach orchard had to crash through a tree or two so it needed some repair hell. He would sit out there in the airplane for hours on end was just tied down with the engine running to get used to the noise of it because he knew he would be flying so long. Part of my job was replacing the damaged wood and I just saved this piece of it and had watered aside it there which he did. There's another fellow had a larger piece of it and

I forget what his name was. So they removed about six or seven foot of that tip and then they removed it and threw it out in the back of that hanger out there in the weeds and I either flew in there one day or drove in and I was walking around that hanger and there was that piece of that wing out there. Well it was pretty well shattered and there was a piece of old 12-14 inch square that I just picked up and by the way that plywood is always covered with what they call balloon cloth. It's a tough fabric. The New York Times again bought exclusive rights to cover Wiley's flight around the world in 1933. The newspaper sent reporters to cities around the world, cities where Wiley would stop to refuel. Wiley wore a white patch over his left eye as a hint of daybreak

began to spread itself across the Swachland near Floyd Bennett Field in New York on July 15 1933. Wiley released the brakes and the Winnie Mae went charging down the runway. She was airborne and on her way around the world again. Wiley stopped in Berlin and Moscow and several cities in Russia and Siberia. Wiley flew from New York to Berlin in just under 26 hours. It was a far different Germany in 1933 than when Wiley landed in Berlin in 1931. Swastikus began appearing after young Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany just five months before Wiley's visit. Fatih was already wearing on Wiley. A New York Times correspondent described Wiley's physical condition as plainly

showing the effects of his flight across the ocean. His dark grey suit was spik and span, but his face was drawn and his one good eye was bloodshot. After a two-hour delay in Berlin, Wiley took off from Moscow and began having problems immediately with the sparey autopilot. He had to manually fly blind using the gyroscopes in the autopilot. From there, it was a stressful 13-hour and 15-minute flight to Novo-Sovirsk. I was in Russia with my father. My sister and I went over to Russia to be with Dad. He was building the only two electronic zinc plants in the Soviet Union. And so then when Wiley decided he was going to do this solar flight around the world, he knew I was still in Russia. And so he sent me a cable and asked me if I would help get his fuel dumps and his maps and the weather and all the visas and things he needed to get across Russia.

And then meet him in Novo-Sovirsk and then after we'd fuel there to fly with him to Habarovsk to help him on the other Eastern flight for Russia. And of course, he wanted to help him set his record and show what great people in Russians were. So they were very cooperative and there was no airline, no way of getting out there except on the railroad. So they let me fly out in the mail plane and they put me in the plane and they piled the mail around me and flew me out to Novo-Sovirsk. They made the maps and he told me where he wanted to go. You know, he wanted to go to Novo-Sovirsk and if he could, if he could go to Habarovsk until they mapped it out for him and tried and got the fuel out there for there for him. And then of course when he came into Russia, why he finally got to Novo-Sovirsk, he had to tell me that I couldn't go because the NAA had ruled that two pilots

in the plane would have spoiled his solo record so I couldn't go with him. So we kept trying to persuade him to stay and sleep a few hours, you know, but he wouldn't do it. He was buying his schedule and he wanted to make up the time. It was a wonderful, had the privilege of watching him cope with a situation like that that was a very difficult one. I mean, a lot of people would have said, well, I'll get a few hours sleeping and I'll be brighter and carry on, but that wasn't while he's attitude at all. He had a job to do. He went at it until he finished it and it was a great lesson for him. Another interesting thing he told me was that on the second trip around the world that the carburetor froze, he was up pretty high. And of course the engine quit. And he figured he was down about ten feet off the waves when the engine picked up again.

Truly flying by the seat of his pants, Wiley negotiated his way across Siberia, the varying straight and over Alaska where he was lost for seven hours. When he spotted a village and landed, the Winnie Mae tipped over onto the sand and bent the propeller with a hammer and a two by four, Wiley straightened the propeller and went on his way. The nation anxiously awaited Wiley's return. Live radio broadcast from cities along the route alerted listeners that Wiley was flying the Winnie Mae from Canada to the east coast. There was sheer pandemonium at Floyd Bennett Field as Wiley landed. Reporters from newspapers all over the globe sent dispatches that called Wiley the world's greatest pilot and history's most admired adventurer. Wiley was presented a gold medal and New York City gave him an even bigger ticker tape parade than that after his first flight in 1931. Wiley and Mae were received by President Roosevelt at the White House the next day.

Wiley asked himself again, is that all there is? He had conquered the world. He had flown alone around the world in an airplane made of thin plywood. What frontiers lay ahead for this one eyed pilot from Oklahoma? They just one knitted out about it. He was the world's number one pilot at that time. And we appreciated that. And the fact that he was from Oklahoma and taking the time to travel around the state with the Winnie Mae impressed us very much. Well, no, the only other time I was with him besides out at the airport was Keith Cale and I went over to his house one night. Well, we had started a little magazine called Taxi Strip. And Wiley called me and said that, I mean, the air heart was going to be there at his home and would be like to come over. So I got Keith and we went over there one evening. And Wiley was questioning him about long overseas flights and what

goes on how to stay awake and all this. And Wiley solved his problem by tying a wrench to one finger so that if he dozed off with his wrench would drop and wake him up. On the Wiley post subject at Maysville, I got a call from Collins, the editor of Pathay News in New York. He said, I want you to go down and get an interview of the Wiley post family, the father and the mother and ask them about Wiley post and get an interview from them. I understand they're foreign folks. So try and get something of their house in the background and show their way of life and then get their interview and get their talk and opinion. Let them talk. And we just posed them in front of the house and that was it. Because I wanted to get a background of their house to show their living facilities, how they live, typical foreign people.

Mr. and Mr. Post, what do you think about your son's flight around the world? I think it's just wonderful and I certainly will be glad when he returns. I'm so anxious to see you. I bet you are. Well, I can say that I'm still not much into the navigation. But I suppose if you make this flight safely it'll be a great achievement. But I'm hoping you satisfied in everyone taking animals such as this trip. But we were about him so much while he's gone. Wiley was employed by Frank Phillips and the Phillips petroleum company to promote the new Phillips 77 aviation fuel. Wiley believed that if an airplane could fly above 40,000 feet, strong winds could push the airplane to unheard of speeds. Wiley knew that the human body could not withstand the pressure at high altitudes. The Winnie Mae was made of plywood and could not be pressurized, so Wiley decided to pressurize himself. He

developed a pressurized flying suit, the forerunner of the modern space suit. With the help of the BF Goodrich company, a suit made from rubberized parachute material was constructed. Wiley looked like a man from Mars. Now a lot of people remember that the airplane was invented by the Wright brothers. But how many people remember that the space suit that the astronauts were was invented by Wiley Post. Wiley had to have a way to get his airplane to high altitudes. And what he did was take a navy full-pressure diving suit and replace the brass dome on it with an aluminum can and used air from the engine. And with that he was able to have a little bit of pressure in it and can fly at high altitudes. So every time I would put on my suit to make my space flights, I remember Wiley Post invented this device. It was a young reporter one year out of college. And I was interested in aviation because in those days I was stupid enough to fly on anything. And when I heard that Wiley

Post was going to be up in Bartlesville and try to set an altitude record, of course was obvious. I had to go up and take a look at it. It was a much more informal world, you know. He wasn't surrounded by press agents. He wasn't protected by a corporation apparatus. He was just a guy who was going to go up and try to get up higher than anybody else. And those of us who gathered around him at the Bartlesville Airport asked him any kind of questions we wanted. It was a very naive but kind of a nice year. When we came out here there was quite a group of people collecting around on the runway. And so in standing around for maybe 30 minutes we heard Wiley was preparing to put on his space suit. Well we could see a little of it through the doors but there was quite

a bit of crowd of people there. But when he came outside to put the hood on he had a couple guys helping him and they put the hood on and bolted it down all the way around that he sort of moved and bent over and did different things to see how much action or activity he could have in that space suit. And the Winnie May was already sitting there warmed up and he went out and climbed in the Winnie May. And when he took off he went up probably eight or nine hundred feet I would gas and circled the airport and then he just continued to circle the airport until he became just a little black speck in the sky. Well this sort of ended the excitement here and we bisted around and they had a couple of indoor selling hot dogs and such as that where we could get a little something to eat.

We thought probably in two hours this would be over. And so we waited and the two hours ended and it's one of those times in the winter when the days were pretty short. And long about four everybody was getting very worried and we hadn't heard anything from Wiley and everybody kept asking what's the latest report or what do you hear do you hear anything and nobody had heard anything. Finally just about dusk I'd say probably remembering that it was after four and before five o'clock a phone call came here to the airport that Wiley had got into a lot of turbulence in the air and he had taken him off course and that he had to just fly with it and so he came down at Muscogee and landed with a dead speck.

After five years of faithful service the Winnie Mae was tired. She had flown around the world twice and Wiley looked for a newer and faster airplane. Others were afraid for Wiley to continue to fly the Winnie Mae. What I fear is the loss of the Winnie Mae through a crack-up incident to a forced landing in ugly terrain after wheels have been abandoned. The ship ought to be slung up in the Smithsonian alongside of Lindbergh's Ryan Monoplane which made the flight to Paris. It's one of the most famous ships exited as a tremendous historic value. It should be a matter of great pride to the state of Oklahoma that so much was won for aviation and the Winnie Mae by an Oklahoma farm ad. I do not know what sort of a deal post has with Frank Phillips but I know that Phillips appreciates the relic

value of the trim white monoplane. Wiley bought parts from two crashed airplanes and combined them into a sleek new Orion Explorer. He was already planning a flight to look for additional air mail routes across Siberia. He came to New York and we had breakfast to the hotel and he asked me if I would go with him to Siberia and would I get to the visas for he and his wife and myself because I just come back from Siberia. I mean from the Soviet Union and he knew I knew everybody in the embassy and so I said sure I'd be delighted and so I got the visas for him and he said he was going to go by way of Alaska to cross the Bering Sea and down in the Siberia and in Damascus and we'd probably go round the finish the trip around the western way. And so I was in Detroit at an air show on my

way to California to go with Wiley and my husband called and said that he had just been hired by the New York Rail to be able to cover the Italian Ethiopian war from the Abyssinian side and did I still want to go with Wiley or did I want to have my honeymoon and Ethiopia to cover in a war and of course I thought about two seconds and I called Wiley and told him I was sorry I couldn't go and so I went to the war with my husband and I'm here and he went pick Wiley, I mean little Rogers and of course Wiley could have picked anybody he wanted everybody was anxious to fly with Wiley. So that was twice I got jipped out of flying with Wiley but I'm still here. Wiley and Will took their time in Alaska hunting and fishing and visiting old friends like Bush pilot Joe Croson who helped Wiley chart

a course for Barrow the northernmost point of Alaska. On August 15, 1935 Wiley and Will headed for Barrow because of the rain and fog Wiley was lost. Soon he saw smoke curling from an Eskimo fishing village he landed in a shallow river after receiving instructions for Barrow Wiley took off the engine failed and the airplane crashed into the river. At that tragic moment on a frozen tundra at the top of the world Oklahoma lost its two most famous citizens. Oh we were terribly shocked of course that was a really big news. Big news all over the world though. As a matter of fact much bigger news for Wiley post and for Will Rogers because most of the world had never read or heard Will Rogers most of the world couldn't speak English but everybody knew about Wiley post so as far as the death of the two people was concerned as a world story post death was much bigger

than Roger's dead. Keith Kale he was a reporter on Aviation Magazine the Taxi Strip and he and Barrow Tabs was here in Marlow and up at my daddy's office taking an interview with my daddy as Ben Wiley's first passenger and then me of him getting me started flying in and while we were up there they were up there and we was having an interview by somebody called and said that they had been killed you know well and well you could have heard a pin drop for a minute of course and well they all knew him of course Barrow was real buddies with him and we all cried. I think everybody was ready to lower their flag to

half-master and put on black or something to try to show their appreciation for two pine ears in in America in Oklahoma that had been lost and it was it was just something irreplaceable. There hadn't been any more well Rogers and we really haven't had any more Wiley post. The comments were what in the world was he doing up that far into the No Man's Land it was as far as you could go point Barrow wasn't it and they went up there and it was as I recall it wasn't good weather and they couldn't figure out why Rogers went to Washington and to this dad I don't know. I would have went because I'm just I guess I'm just opposed. At the time any big thing that happened the

newspapers ran an extra and the Hindenburg in New Jersey burned and I don't remember the date but seemed me like that was in May of 35 and Wiley and well Rogers was killed on August 15th of 35 which was my mother's birthday but I saw extras on both of those occasions. I don't know we made thirty or forty cents that day selling extras. I was at a camp in Wisconsin with my sister and there were some other Oklahoma City kids up there and I forget now how I heard it but I recall thinking well this is going to be something I remember all of my life. I think I learned to cherish those moments from

my dad who kind of beat it into my head was that this is important I remember it and surely enough from that vantage point I knew that was an enormous thing for my dad because both Wiley and Wiley had been very dear friends and I know that it really kicked the props out from under him. Fort Seylo Oklahoma August 16th, 1935. The news from Alaska is like a nightmare. The mind does not want to accept the ghastly word that will Rogers Oklahoma's most popular son and Wiley post Oklahoma's greatest aviator have been rubbed out in a moment like ordinary mortals who sometimes fall from the clouds.

Within hours after the deaths of Wiley and Will their old friend Charles Lindbergh took responsibility for getting their bodies home from Alaska. Joe Croson personally risked his life and flew in rain and fog from Barrow to California where Will's body was delivered. He then flew on to Oklahoma City. Eight thousand people met the plane carrying Wiley's body at the Oklahoma City airport. The funeral of Wiley post was the largest in state history. His body first was taken to his hometown of Mazeville and then lay in state in the rotunda of the capital. Biggest crowd in this country bunking had ever seen in mind the entire life in here in Oklahoma City and I remember the funeral in Mazeville at the landmark Baptist Church. Oh, it was a rather sad, sad feeling cozy that people knew each other real well. Well, as I recall being pretty young, there wasn't too much that other than the fact that

we went out to see him laying in state. There was a crowd of people there that, oh, I would say, numbered in the hundreds going around, taking their turns, saying them, and my dad and Tom and Bess and my mother Marie, we all worked around to where we could get close to him because they knew him very well. And I always admired a man because he was a pilot. He flew a plane. I remember the flowers, the flags being there, the casket with him in it, of course. The people wanting, well, straining to get closer. They had a rope

deal around to keep people out of distance, but they were pushing against their rope to get a closer look. It was a man that held a lot of respect from a lot of people and it showed up that day of his funeral while being in state, lying in state at the Capitol. They came out to see him from all over the state. All there was in the headline of paper that next morning was Wally and Will Rogers got out. So Chuck Burkett was a principal in the school here at Noble later on, but he's my teacher at Little Canada School up to eighth grade. And he and his wife asked me to go. So we went to the Capitol and I never saw as many people in my country, boy, really saw

something first time. Because I think there's 20,000 at one, maybe the baddest funeral, and there's people outside that couldn't get in. And I don't know what it was, it's the Capitol probably wasn't out. So they had him there in state at the Capitol. The entrance of the door returned to they call it. And we was, we was sure enough lying that we could make it because some never got through it. And we passed the review of him. And just as we was going down the steps, there must be 50 steps that's five, you know. They was a flight of aircraft. And I don't know how many of that was as most I'd ever seen in one formation. They flew over and they throw all the back, dropped flowers. And it was really exciting. And it kind of got you right here because you figured you knew him. And

then they throw all the back up and went on. And then you know, they have the flight of a missing, like in wartime. They have the three airplane to fly in. And then this one, they got a big place there for a missing plane. And that's supposed to been wallet. I think it's got, he's going to be a reference point now. And in the future, a lot of things that he did are being publicized more today than they have been for several years. They're beginning to realize that he brought forth a lot of ideas. And that he set a pattern for people to follow that were interested in flying. And I think probably you'd have to say he was a pioneer in a field. He looked to the future. And he told me, he said, when you do anything, and when you're doing it, don't think about just doing it then or tomorrow.

The next day, look way ahead and see what affected would have way ahead of you. And look to the future and never to look back, but look to the future. And not just the next day, the next year, but in the future, what would happen then. He was so far ahead of the average pilot, radiator. I mean, his vision of the high-pressure suit, the pressure suit, and his vision of getting up in the jet stream that was going to be the normal place to fly. I mean, we were still 200 feet off the ground. You don't try to make a landing somewhere. And he was way up in the heavens. And he was a very deep thinker. And he had visions, like Amelia said in 1934, that no new world to conquer this side of the moon. And at the same time, Wiley was breaking his pressure suits. They

were too extremely unusual people, both who had vision and both who carried them through. And I had a great privilege knowing both of them. He knew. He knew these things could come about. He could look in the future. It's somewhat of a dreamer. It takes a pilot to be a dreamer, to get where he's going. This man knew what he wanted to do. I mean, you know, there were any way in why they both, both together in my mind. It has been more than six decades since Wiley post flew alone around the earth. For the rest of time, whenever aviation buffs gather to sip coffee and talk about the magnetic topic of flying, Wiley's personal achievement of soloing around the world in the plywood

contraption known as the Winnie Mae will be called the most unique flight in all of aviation history. His pressurized flying suit was the forerunner of the modern space suit. His discoveries paved the way for man to visit the moon and beyond. Whenever you see an astronaut walking in space, safe within a pressurized suit, think of Wiley. The next time you ride in a jetliner, cruising along at ease at 35,000 feet, think of Wiley and his Winnie Mae, climbing into the stratosphere over Bartlesville. As man strives to build even better spaceships to reach farther into the universe, every advance will carry a bit of Wiley's dream. In terms of human endurance and achievement, Wiley post was the world's greatest pilot for all time.