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Clara Grabau Adams

"They used to call me the world's historic first flighter, and let me tell you that to earn that title I used to be the world's most persistent first flighter."

Clara Adams represents a very precious commodity: the paying airline passenger. "It was a hobby," she says, "and the food was terrible in those days." The excitement, however, was glittering.

Mrs. Adams was the only woman aboard the 1928 flight of Graf Zeppelin from the United States to Germany, and her hobby cost $3,000-one way. The Graf was airborne 71 hours, with 64 men! Three years later she flew from New York City to Rio de Janeiro, just to fly back to New York as the only woman paying passenger on the historic voyage of the world's largest aircraft, the Dornier DO-X Flying Boat. The Rio-New York leg required "six thrilling weeks."

Perhaps the most memorable year of adventure was 1936, when Clara and 106 other persons (this time with 10 women), crossed the North Atlantic on the Hidenburg's maiden flight. A few months later she was zooming across the Pacific on the inaugural passenger flight of the famed Hawaii Clipper. 

Her 1939 round - the - world air voyage set a passenger record of 16 days and 19 hours. The record flights of Clara Adams have continued into the jet age, a memorable leap beyond her first takeoff in March, 1914, at Lake Eustis, Fla. 

[[image - small drawing of a propeller]] 

Clara Grabau Adams: born Cincinnati, Ohio, December 3, 1884.

[[image No. 16 - black & white photograph of Clara Grabau Adams]]

[[image No. 17 - black & white photograph of Clara Grabau Adams and old friend, Amelia Earhart]]

[[image No. 18 - black and white poster advertising the Luftschiffbau Zepplin, Hamburg-Amerika Linie]]

[[image No. 19 - black & white photograph of the DO-X Flying Boat in the air]]

[[caption]] Clara Adams arrives at The Battery, New York City (16), following her six week voyage from Rio de Janeiro on the DO-X Flying Boat (19), August 28, 1931. The largest heavier-than-air liner in the world had just completed a four continent flight, begun more than a year before Hudson River touchdown. Mrs. Adams, the first woman to fly the Atlantic in a lighter-than-air ship (18), chats with an old friend, Amelia Earhart (17), the first woman to cross an ocean in an airplane. [[/caption]]