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advertisement which read "Wanted - young lady to learn to fly for exhibition purposes." She was interviewed by Fred A. Bennett and one of his aviators John Bryant of the Bennett Aero Company of the Palms, California, who had placed the ad, and she was accepted for instruction. 

Alys was delighted, because she was about to satisfy her long-time dream to learn to fly. When she was only twelve years old, she had written a composition for school about an imaginary flight from New Jersey to California.

Alys began her instruction on one of Bennett's two Curtiss biplanes, the same one used by Glenn Curtiss in his 1909 flight down the Hudson. She soloed in November 1912 and made her first exhibition flight at North Yakima, Washington, May 3, 1913. She was the first woman ever to fly in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

While the Bennett Flyers were performing in Boise on May 29, 1913, Alys and Johnny Bryant were secretly married. Marriage to Bryant seemed to make Alys want to prove herself even more as an aviator and not just as Johnny Bryant's wife. [[margin] Which was no easy trick! [[/margin]] At Seattle on July 17, she set a new woman's altitude record of 2900 feet. She then went with the group to Vancouver, Canada,