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Paging Women

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Artist Hopes to Save Aviation Mural

By Audrey Clinton

While U.S. pilots reach for the stars probing the secrets of space, flying artist Aline "Pat" Rhonie works to save her artistic tribute to the ones who started it all - the pioneers of the open cockpit days of aviation.

The Sands Point artist, something of an aviation pioneer herself, is now at the end of a six-year fight to rescue her 120-foot mural of flying history which dates from the Wright Brothers to Lindbergh. The mural is painted on the wall of a doomed Roosevelt Field hangar, slated to be torn down this fall. The countdown starts Sept. 5 when an Italian art expert arrives to see if the painting can be removed from the wall on panels.

"It was a thrilling era in aviation and I came just three years after (Lindbergh made his historic flight from Roosevelt Field to Paris in 1927)," Miss Rhonie recalled on a recent visit to see her mural. "I painted it because I wanted to contribute something to aviation."

She has a lot of memories wrapped up in the mural, which has pictures of every major pilot who flew on Long Island. She spent three years of her life on it back in the 1930s when Roosevelt Field was a bustling flying center. While she painted, planes were being trundled in and out of the hangar, propellers hammered into shape, and pilots yarned with her as she worked.

"In winter I had to paint wearing my fleece-lined flying suit from my open cockpit days."

She nostalgically looked over the dirt-encrusted portraits of great names in aviation she painted long ago - some of whom she knew - Lindbergh, Doolittle, Sikorsky, Fokker, Bellanca.

"I painted Bellanca with a green tie just by accident," she said. "When he saw his picture he said 'how did you know I never wore anything else until I married?'"

She pointed out Ruth Law, one of five women pilots on the mural. "She was the first person to fly a flimsy open Curtiss airplane over the Alleghenies. The were called the 'flyer's graveyard.' No mad had the nerve to fly it."

She pointed out Claude Bonney, who made a gull-winged plane. "He killed 1,000 gulls to study the theory of flight and when he tried to fly the plane, it plunged into the pile of gull feathers at the end of the runway and he was killed."

She told about another pilot in the

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[[image - Aline Rhonie standing with her mural at Roosevelt Field]]

MEMORIES IN PAINT. Miss Aline Rhonie of Sands Point nostalgically reminisces about the first men of flying whom she depicted in this mural on a Roosevelt Field hangar. A pilot herself, she paid tribute in paint to the forefathers of the space age. She is trying to save her work from destruction when the hangar is demolished.

mural who was flying the Alleghenies with a friend in a water-cooled engine plane.

"Suddenly the engine didn't have any water. So the pilot crawled onto the strut high over the mountains and pourt a thermos bottle of coffee into the engine. They just made Roosevelt Field."

She mentioned Earl Ovington, who flew the first "mail" plane back to 1911. "He flew from Mineola to Garden City and dropped it onto the roof of the post office."

Another pilot five times tried to cross Long Island Sound in a plane and finally made it on the sixth. "It was a Bleriot plane with no cockpit.

"Roosevelt Field used to be called The Meadows," she recalled. "Pilots used to fly from Flushing to Belmont Park and

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land here. Then they would turn the planes around on the ground and go back. They couldn't make a turn in the air."

Describing the scene at Roosevelt Field when she and her husband flew there, she said, "There was no control tower. There would be 40 or 50 planes landing and taking off at the same time. We used to just skim over the wires and land right in between these two remaining hangars.

"Thousands of people used to show up every Sunday to watch us. They used to treat pilots like movie stars.

"The flyers didn't care about making money in those days. They just wanted to fly."

During Miss Rhonie's own flying days she flew to Mexico City in a 90 horse-

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power plane to study with Diego Rivera to learn the fresco technique she used on her mural.

She put it on the wall at wing-tip height so flyers could stand outside and see it just over the wings of the planes parked in the hangar.

Miss Rhonie was quite wistful as she pointed out "Lindy's" hangar and spoke of the colorful aviation days of the past and the possibility of saving her mural.

"It isn't just me," she said. "Several early flying groups and the Smithsonian Institution have been interested in acquiring the mural."

Then she told about a man from Arkansas, an early flyer on the mural who is slowly going blind. He made a trip to the hangar this summer to take a last look at the mural before his sight goes.

Mercy Angels Take World Health to Heart

By Penny Fox

What's worrying Ethel Ford and Ann Sachs? The fact that "half the population of the world goes to sleep hungry or never sees a doctor between birth and death . . . or suffers from diseases long since wiped out elsewhere in the world."

The two are spearheading a drive in Nassau County to raise funds for MEDICO, the Medical International Cooperation Organization, which sets up medical service programs and projects in the world's underdeveloped areas.

Miss Ford, of Hempstead, a medical secretary for a cardiologist, and Mrs. Stanley Sachs, of Farmingdale, a medical assistant for a dermatologist, teamed up on the MEDICO effort last year. Both are members of the Nassau Association of Medical Assistants which sought a charity toward which to direct a special events project last year.

"We decided to select an organization outside the Nassau County community and ended up with a larger community - the world," Miss Ford explained.

"We recognize the importance of work of established charities in this country, but that doesn't give us the right to close our eyes to what is going on throughout the world. People in underdeveloped countries - in the jungles, the hills, the deserts - are dying every day of

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diseases readily dealt with or long wiped out in highly developed countries like our own."

After meeting MEDICO pioneer Dr. Thomas A. Dooley ("doctor of democracy"), and looking further into Medico's purpose ("to fight disease and communism"), the Long Island pair told Dr. Dooley they'd raise, in Nassau County alone, $2,500 - the cost of building, equipment and maintaining one MEDICO hospital.

In addition to the three hospitals supervised by Dr. Dooley in Laos, MEDICO has set up hospitals in Kenya, Viet-Nam, Cambodia, Gabon Republic, Haiti, Peru, Afghanistan, and the Middle East.

"The closest thing to medical facilities some of the people in those areas had before MEDICO stepped into the picture was a witch doctor," Miss Ford explained.

She stressed that none of the people are treated for free. "MEDICO doesn't want them to feel like charity cases or to feel loss of pride. Payment comes in whatever the commodity the people have at the moment - from chickens and pigs to fresh fruits and vegetables."

Miss Ford and Mrs. Sachs pointed out that MEDICO efforts aren't as distant from Long Island as people may assume. Long Islanders have been part of the MEDICO teams - which include Dr. Giraud Foster, formerly of Huntington, and Dr. Renold B. Lightson, formerly of Jamaica, Queens. Dr. Gordon B. Granger, formerly of

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Rockville Centre, recently joined an Afghanistan hospital medical team.

Whatever time the two women have outside of work and home chores, they invest in MEDICO - chiefly in paperwork. They recently sent letters to persons throughout Nassau County in the medical and allied fields, seeking support and contributions for MEDICO.

Because every cent received goes directly to MEDICO "and isn't spent on paperwork," the two donate more than their time to the cause. "We generally split phone pills and throw in our own money whenever we can towards out stamp fund."

The letters sent by the two are edited and sanctioned at the Manhattan office of MEDICO by executive director Malcolm N. Dooley, brother of Dr. Thomas Dooley.

Miss Ford and Mrs. Sachs hope to make more Long Islanders aware of MEDICO's existence and needs through a special film service. In the fall, they will have a film about MEDICO, prepared by Dr. Dooley, available for showings to large organization audiences throughout the country. The two plan to appear with each film showing to provide further facts, figures and information. The initial showing will be Sunday, Sept. 25, at 7 PM in the Bethpage Methodist Church, at the church's annual covered dish supper.

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