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Even helmet and goggles seemed fetching on the photogenic heroine. In 1912 she flew the Channel, later fell to her death in a mysterious accident.
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Willard was a big man, of a volatile temperament and suffering from the heavy strain of organizing and running the meet. When he and Harriet got ready to take off, many friends joked that "Bill" was about to elope with his beautiful aviatrix friend. But Harriet's manager Stevens was not in a joking mood. Remembering the absolute necessity of having a passenger or approximately the same weight in the rear seat, he strongly admonished Willard to "sit tight." Bill agreed, and seemed to be attentive while Stevens lectured him on the deadly peril of upsetting the machine if he leaned forward to speak to the pilot after they were airborne.
They made a splendid flight out to Boston Light and headed back toward the field as the sun waned They came over the field at about 3000 feet and Harriet made a wide circle to lose altitude, then turned into the approach glide over the tidal flats at 1000 feet.
Suddenly the aircraft dipped sharply down, tail high, and Willard's body was seen to catapult from the rear seat. The Bleriot momentarily righted itself, then flipped over on its back and horrified spectators saw Miss Quimby, in her colorful purple habit, also fell from the cockpit and plummet to earth.
A motorboat from the Savin Yacht Club, where members had been sitting on the verandah watching the flight, was first to arrive at the scene and helped to bring Harriet's and Willard's bodies ashore. Meanwhile, the Bleriot, relieved of weight, had righted itself and descended in gentle spirals until the wheels touched the water and flipped it over on its back relatively undamaged.
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Back in New York Mrs. Quimby was at the half-completed Grand Central Station, arranging for her husband and herself to go by train to Boston the following morning, when a reporter from the New York Herald arrived at their apartment to break the news. The Quimbys took the next midnight train to Boston, and the next day brought their daughter's body home.
At Squantum, true to tradition, the show went on. The only reminders of the tragedy were streamers of black crepe flying from aeroplanes and arm bands worn by other aviators.
The cause of the accident has never been completely resolved. Stevens blamed an impulsive lunge forward by Willard that threw the aircraft into a violent nose-dive. Glen L. Martin sagely observed that probably there would have been no accident if the two had worn seat belts. (He always did!) Lincoln Beachey conjectured that Miss Quimby might have fainted, but nobody who knew her believed this. Earle Ovington asserted that a limp control wire had become fouled but this argument is negated by the stable flight of the craft once Miss Quimby and Willard were thrown out. Glenn Martin's comments were the most constructive and it wasn't long until seat belts were pretty much standard equipment.
Harriet Quimby was dead but her voice was not stilled. The current issue of Leslie's carried her article entitled "Flyers and Flying." In it she said:
"So many letters are coming to me every day from men and women who want to know something about 'how to learn to fly' and what financial oppor-
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tunities await the competent aviator that I have decided to tell in Leslie's all that my experience and observation have taught me on the question."
Her last article appeared in the September 1912 issue of Good Housekeeping magazine.
"In my opinion," she said, "there is no reason why the aeroplane should not open up a fruitful occupation for women. I see no reason why they cannot realize handsome incomes by carrying passengers between adjacent towns, why they cannot derive incomes from parcel delivery, from taking photographs from above, or from conducting schools for flying. Any of these things it is now possible to do."
Three days after her death the New York Sun carried an editorial entitled "Women as Aviators":
"Miss Harriet Quimby was the fifth woman to be killed while operating an aeroplane [actually, counting women passengers, she was the fourth woman to be killed in an airplane accident] and the number thus sacrificed is five too many...
"The sport is not one for which women are physically qualified. As a rule, they lack the strength, the presence of mind, and the courage to excel as aviators. It is essentially a man's pastime or profession..."
What entitles Harriet Quimby to be called the flyer who broke the sex barrier? In addition to being the first American woman to get a pilot's license and the first woman pilot to fly across the English Channel, Harriet was able to communicate her experiences to a world-wide audience. She seemed to be consumed with an obsession to write of all that she had seen and heard and felt. Like Keats, she seemed to "...have fears that I may cease to be before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain."
She never tried to be like a man, but she calmly matched her wits with the best of them. Her courage and determination equalled that of any man. She acquiesced to the feminine mores of her day but refused to be enslaved by them. Her "quick-change" flying suit is a good example of limitations she had to overcome:
Thus ends the story of a woman who in 11 short months achieved a lifetime of fame in aviation: the story of a woman who claimed she was born to the purple when actually her parents were poor; who claimed she was tutored abroad when actually she had to struggle hard for a common school education; who at the time of her death claimed she was 27 when actually she was 36! Her subterfuges only enhance the glory of her achievements.
What a woman!
Spring 1973
23
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