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Toledo's first flight instructors, teaching other young daredevils to fly the early box-kite planes, with a pusher propeller.

During World War I, Mr. Nassr was a lieutenant in the navy. He helped construct and served as commander of an air defense base in Rockaway, N.Y. He was injured in an observation balloon crash in Florida.

In 1927, Mr. Nassr, by then a 25-year veteran of aviation, was appointed superintendent of Toledo's first municipal airport. The port was on Stickney Avenue, south of Ten Mile Creek.

Under Mr. Nassr's supervision, more than 1,000 trees were dynamited out of the field, the land graded and 

When his engine conked out, aeronaut Nassr could only control the drifting craft by opening and closing the bag's gas valve as he clung to the fractured frame.

He finally maneuvered the ship to within 200 feet of the ground over an open field on a Wood County farm nine miles from Toledo. He crawled down below the frame, grabbed a drag rope, slid to within 50 feet of the ground, and dropped off. He escaped with a slight hip bruise.

His first heavier-than-air craft was a biplane he built in Pensacola, Fla., as a cost of $15,000. Its frame was of tough spruce. The 38-foot wings were covered with varnished silk cloth. Suspended between the wings was a 36-horsepower motor.

Always Cracked Up

Mr. Nassr admitted he never learned to land this plane. He got it up to 400 or 500 feet, several times, flew for 12 or 15 minutes, but always cracked up. Cracking up a plane in those early days was as expected as blowing an auto tire.

Both men were their own design engineers, fuel experts and test pilots, he often recalled.

Mr. Nassr's interest in aviation was sparked in 1902 in Paris when he watched the great Santos Dumort circle the Eiffel Tower in an airship. Back in Toledo later, he spent two years building his own ship. His experimental laboratory was a huge tent on a farm east of the city. 

The airship consisted of a hydrogen-filled Japanese silk balloon, underslung with a triangular pine-slat frame supporting a four-cycle, 15-horsepower gasoline engine. The entire outfit cost $9,000, and was made by Mr. Nassr.

Wood County Landing
It was on Aug. 30, 1907, that young Nassr took his frail craft off for its first flight. It started successfully from the Walbridge Park. Then, as the pilot was circling the old waterworks tower on Broadway, the framework broke, the engine became disabled, and Nassr and his balloon drifted 10 miles into Wood County.

Mr. Nassr, in his late years, used to reminisce about how he and Mr. Knabenshue both had many brushes with death as they tried to master aerial navigation. 

Tony Nassr was among the first in the United States to take aloft a powered lighter-than-air craft. He did this in 1904, and continued to become one of Toledo's pioneer airplane pilots.

Roy Knabenshue called Toledo home when, on Oct. 25, 1904, he made what is credited to have been the first really successful airship flight in this country. This feat was at the World's Fair in St. Louis.

City's 'Dern Fools'
Together, they contributed much to the reputation Toledo had back in the early days of aviation-the aerial center of the U.S., with more than its share of "dern fools," as aviators then were dubbed by their earthbound compatriots in the area when flights at treetop level were viewed as daring ventures into space.

Both Mr. Nassr and Mr. Knabenshue helped focus the aviation world spotlight on Toledo only a short time after the Wright brothers' epochal flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C.