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Fiscal Expert Honored for Early Flying

N. Y. U. Professor Got Wings in 1910

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and three in the United States as instructor, test pilot, racer barnstormer and exhibition flyer for the National Aeroplane Co.

Then, in 1914, after several crack-ups and bereavement in seeing many of his friends killed in plane crashes, Dr. Studenski bowed to the pleas of his wife, Esther, and grounded himself in favor of an academic career. He received his doctorate from Columbia in 1921, taught at N. Y. U. for twenty-seven years, became a hecognized authority in public nance and in administration, and is still active as consultant.

iDp part of his heart stay in the air during all those bookish years? Has he ever flown a plane since?

"You never get it out of your blood," Dr. Studenski said. "I wouldn't have missed it for anything. Sure, I've taken the controls once in a while over the years in a friend's plane. But modern pilot ger scared when I try to land. I have a tendency to take her down steeply, the way we used to do. Today taht would be disastrous."

Sorry Memories

Some of his memories are quite nerve-wracking. In 1912, after making experimental airmail flights from the United States ost Office, he was demonstrating a plane over Chicago for some Japanese militarists who were thinking of organizing an air force.

"A junior mechanic," Dr. Studenski remembered, "had used too thin a bolt in fastening on the steering wheel There I was, way up over Chicago and suddenly I am holding the loose steering wheel in my hands. It was attached to nothing, a distressing realization. I trashed in somebody's backyard and I had another newspaper clipping for my collection."

Earl Birds Plaque

Dr. Studenski, who tonight received a bronze plaque from the "Early Birds," the airmen's club, all of whose members flew before 1916, was born in St. Petersburg (Leningrad) of a well-to-do Polish family. He was studying at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1910 when flying machines diverted him and he shot his entire inheritance in a year on flying lessons at the Bleriot School and repairs of cracked-up planes.

"Best money I ever spent in my life," he said. "If I hadn't squandered all those thousands of francs, I wouldn't have come to the United States, or met my

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[[image - Paul Studenski in biplane]]

PIONEER - Paul Studenski at the controls of his Curtiss-type biplane with which he barnstormed throughout the country in 1912.

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Chain Letter For Road Safety

LONDON, NOV. 12 (AP). - The chain letter craze is sweeping Britain again, but this time in a good cause - reducing the toll of road accidents.

The British Safety Council sent out two weeks ago 6,000 letters urging drivers to be careful and asking them to write five similar letters to their friends. The number of letters produced thus far is estimated at close to 20,000.

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wife or had the career that I've had."

France was the world's air center in those days and the issuer of international pilot's licenses. Dr. Studenski was No. 292 on a list on which the Wright brothers stood fourteenth and fifteenth. When he arrived in the United States in 1911, he had only $100 in his jeans, but pilots were so scarce in this country that within a few days he had a barnstorming job and was averaging about $250 a week three years later when his wife convinced him that the air was strictly for the birds, that he was living on borrowed time.

NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE

Sunday, November 13, 1960

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