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Soaring (not WAR...ing) 1940's    Pa. 4    Hattie Meyers Weaver Junkin

C. J. Brukner had served as a private in Alabama where undulant fever from raw milk competed with Influenza. These three reconditioned a big desk for an office when the barnstorming money of 1919 could afford material for a first airplane. Buck wanted another pilot so when his turn to sit at the impressive desk came he prepared a cable. He put down the initials of the Co. W.A.CO.! At camp the town of WACO was from the old Indian name H. U. A. C. O. the soft "a" rather than the harsh long "a" sound. As Buck soloed his students, in great relief as they qualified he would whoop a WA.A.A.KO! After War one, this was the happy greeting of anyone who flew and or was able to walk away from a forced landing. The first WACO was named after a common denominator of war experience..Waco-Cootie. Made entirely of mahogany plywood, a monplane [[monoplane]] with two cylinder motor. The second one a biplane. 

  In 1924, after several months of failing health, Buck Weaver died. A post mortem showed internal injuries. After a drain appendenctomy [[appendectomy]] Aug. 1917 then still weak to Dayton, Ohio for Civilian Flying Instructor induction then to Texas, hanging on that belt teaching loops and stunts, the strangulation intestinal was inevitable. Chicago, raised all business stopped until the Airplanes flying over the funeral procession to the crematory landed.

It was so natural that in 1925, I should be again, "Mrs. WACO" as the wife of our best friend, Flwood, J. "Sam" Junkin. Aviation was as big a gamble as the report of the Doctors about Sam's heart. Six ft. 3 in. high energy inherited engineering skills, he was inspired to make WACOS support us and our dedication. The WACO Nines over 500 of them cost us $500 to build, sold for 2500 dollars, steel fuselages, quick take-off from short field. Bought the last of the OX5 motors form Horace Dodge, solving for a while the crisis in motors for advancing faster aircraft.