Sunday, April 1, 2012

Phoebe Fairgrave


The "roaring twenties" had just begun when Phoebe Fairgrave graduated from high school and asked an airport manager to let her go up in a plane. It took a while to convince him, but finally, thinking he could scare her off, he sent her up with a pilot who had been instructed to do aerial manuevers until she was sick. Four flights later, she used part of an inheritance to buy her own plane and an aviator was born.

Within a year, she grew bored with "just" flying the two-winged biplanes that were popular at the time and started going up with another pilot at the controls so she could walk on the wings, hang by her teeth from the bottom of the plane, and do the charleston on the top wing. In your face? Absolutely! In the clouds? That too.

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