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Los Angeles Examiner

Section Three
Los Angeles, Wednesday, October 5, 1955
PCC

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In This Section:
Classified Ads
PAGES 6 TO 19
Financial News
PAGES 2 TO 5
Vital Statistics 
PAGE 6

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Famed Flyer Wants Old Jenny

1st U.S. Woman to Solo Seeks Relics

By Marjorie Driscoll
  Have you an old Jenny or a Curtiss pusher tucked away in your garage? 
  Or one of those pointed helmets aviators used to wear?
  Miss Blanche Stuart Scott, consultant for the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, would like to know about it. 
  Miss Scott, staying at the Biltmore, is on her perpetual treasure hunt for items of aviation history. 

20,000 ITEMS ------
  Glen Curtiss taught her to fly, and on September 6, 1910, she became the first American woman to solo. In those days, a flyer not only knew what went into a plane; half the time he put it there or helped make it. 
  Miss Scott - who still flies occasionally - talked yesterday of the old times that are being preserved in the museum; a place, now open to the public, that houses some 20,000 items of aviation equipment from the days of the Wright brothers to the days of the jets and more than 675,000 documents and photographs.
  She was in her teens when she learned to fly. As to her age now, she says:
  "What difference does age make?"

THREE ACCIDENTS ------
  Until 1916 she flew with an exhibition group, the only woman - "not barnstorming, we had regular dates" - and in 1912 was a star of the second aviation meet at Dominguez Field, Los Angeles. 
  "I still remember what the gateman said one day when I'd forgotten my pass," she laughed. 
  "I gave him my name, and he said cheerfully: 'You're going to get killed today.' Well, I wasn't."
  She had only three accidents in her flying career - "and two were my fault" - and refused to be discouraged because the first one put her in a cast for four months. 
  Nor did the fact that she had to wear "perfectly horrible" flying clothes daunt her. 
  "It was a terrific creation of brown satin, with baggy knee breeches and high boots and a brown plush helmet. And I always wore my lucky red sweather [[sweater]] - but I didn't have it on the day I had my bad crash."
  In the early days, the public used to write her weird letters, some of which she has kept, occasionally accusing her of violating divine laws by flying. 
  "But the men in aviation were and always have been wonderful," she said. "You never hear the phrase 'woman flyer' the way you hear 'woman driver.' You were just a flyer and it still holds true. As a matter of fact, women had equality in aviation before they had equality in the vote."

[[photo description]]
SHE WAS THE FIRST - Miss Blanche Stuart Scott, first woman to make solo plane flight in 1910, recalls early aviation history during visit in L.A. - Los Angeles Examiner photo. 

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