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Democrat [[image - logo]] Chronicle 
ROCHESTER, N.Y., TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1948

About WOMEN
By PAT FALLON

'Early Bird' May Realize Her Wish

WITH 43 mended bones and two plane crashes to her credit, Blanche Stuart Scott is thinking of "soloing" again. If she does-and she isn5t at all sure she will-per formance will be the "show-stopper" at the Cleveland Air Faces this coming Labor Day.

One of the nation's first women flyers, Mrs. Scott (or Roberta as she is known to WARC's radio listeners) hasn't set the aviation world on its ear since last Labor Day when she became the only woman ever to fly a jet prozipping along propelled plane, at 600-mile-an-hour clip. It was a much slower rate of speed that she drove an automobile across the country as a girl many years ago, making headlines and mechanical history at the same time.

[[image - PAT FALLON]]

This year, she is toying with the idea of thumbing back through the calendar to 1911 and the days of the old-fashioned "pusher" planes. A "pusher" plane, let it be known, is on the style of the "Kitty Hawk," the revolutionary creation of Orville and Wilbur Wright. The pilots seat, better known in flying jargon as the "undertaker's seat," is out in the open, surrounded by nothing but stray breeze which happen to be blowing through the rickety frame.

It was this kind of ship which Mrs. Scott first learned to fly and this kind of ship which she may take up for a "solo" flight at

"Now I didn't say I was going to do it," Mrs. Scott cautioned hastily. "In  fact, I'm getting cold feet already. I only said that I might and I'm beginning to wish I hadn't said that. Down in Washington last December when they turned the "Kitty Hawk" over to the Smithsonian Institution, I had to open my big mouth and say I wished I could fly one of those ships again.

"And no sooner had I said it than they told me they would have one of the "pushers" out at the next Cleveland air races-just for my stunt. But believe me, I"d rather back out of the deal than back out of the plane a few hundred feet above ground."

At any rate, Mrs. Scott will receive a royal welcome at the famous meet. She is known to nearly every pioneer flyer in the country and is one of the Board of Trustees of the "Early Birds," a national organization composed of a handful of flyers who were airborne before World War 1. The Ceveland races marked their annual reunion, giving them a chance to reminisce and look ahead to the still-unbounder horizons of aviation.

The Labor Day weekend will mark Mrs. Scott's first vacation from her "Roberta" role at the radio station in 24 months, and she is looking forward to it with all the enthusiasm of an air cadet on his first mission. Accompanying her as a fellow-member of the "Early Birds" will be Russell Holderman, chief pilot for the Gannett Newspapers.