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175

On New Year's eve, Arch Hoxey had invited a number of his friends to join him for a party at the Alexander Hotel. He had kissed his mother that morning and told her not to wait up for him as he would be quite late. He had lunch with me at my hotel, [[strikethrough]] next day [[/strikethrough]], and left for the field without his usual dessert. I asked him to not make his flight until I arrived. Before I could reach him, he had taken off for another try at the world's altitude record.

Arch was a very good boy and attended to his personal business and did not run around or use liquor. Everybody was for him and was anxious to see him succeed. However, he was not well, very thin and under weight. Personally, I was of the opinion that he was tubercular.

I watched him as he gained altitude. He must have been fully eight thousand feet when he started to come down. I then noticed a storm rapidly approaching from the north west. He had evidentally discovered it about the time he started down. I could see that it became a race between the aeroplane and the storm as to which would reach the field first.

At about fifteen hundred feet he started to dive. It appeared that he was making an effort to reach the ground first. The machine commenced to turn over, the right wing lifting and turning over the left wing. About seventy five feet from the ground he could have pulled back on both levers and made a safe landing. Instead, the machine continued to roll and crashed on the left wing and front control. The machine was a complete washout.

It is my opinion that the excitement of his emergency had caused heart trouble and that he had blacked out at the time he started the dive. He was killed outright.

This was the second pilot I had lost. I made up my mind that