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Robert Campbell Reeve

"Bob Reeve looks like a tramp," one clean-cut onlooker exploded. 

"So would you," snapped Reeve. 

So would you. If you were a bush pilot in Alaska's grizzly country, away from bath and brush! Bob Reeve has a heart as big as a bear's paw, a spirit as high as the North Star, and a kind of history that would make Dan'l Boone red-faced. He formed Reeve Airways at Valdez, in 1932, did vital work for the military during War II, and established Reeve Aleutian Airways in the post-war boom of 1948. 

Reeve Aleutian? If you want to fly to Adak or Atka, or Shemya and the Pribilofs, you fly Reeve Aleutian. And while Bob still happens to be president, at one time he was President & Superintendent of Operations-—just in case.

But that is only the Northern Hemisphere side of the frame. Reeve's Southern Hemisphere side is just as important, for he was one of the great pioneer pilots of South America, flying with Panagra, and Pan American, 1929-1931. With Panagra, Bob flew the mail route in green and silver Lockheed Vegas, and Fairchild 71s, from Arica, Chile, to Santiago. He flew the route alone, along a 1,200 mile run of mountains and sea, without a radio, and precious little in the way of instruments. It was a five-day-a-week grind, and all the bananas you could eat.

His marvelous career has also been enriched with barnstorming in Arizona, Texas, and Oklahoma.

[[image - small drawing of a propeller]]

Robert Campbell Reeve: born Waunakee, Wisconsin, March 27, 1902.

[[image No. 115 - black & white photograph of Bob Reeve in the Canadian Yukon]]

[[image No. 116 - black & white photograph of Bob Reeve in front of his Fairchild 51]]

[[image No. 117 - black & white photograph of Bob Reeve at Lima, Peru 1929]]

[[caption]]Bob Reeve in front of his Fairchild 51, at Valdez, Alaska, 1933 (116), and caught in a Canadian Yukon crevasse, 1937 (115). At Lima, Peru, for 1929 inaugural mail service (117). [[/caption]] 

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