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Waco 77

Under a Mass. charter, Sam, Clayt, and Aiden Sampson, whose mother, Mrs. Wilson, put up the money, incorporated as the Advance Aircraft Company, locating in Troy, Ohio.  Same wrote letter bursting with enthusiasm, for he said now that he had made up his mind to make aviation pay, ideas fairly flooded his mind, and when he brought me back with him, I was going to be taken care of!They had retained the name WACO, from the Weaver Aircraft Co., in honor of Buck.  One thing I had to believe, and he couldn't bear the thought of my not believing it, was that "I couldn't see any reason for repeating the starvation days of Lorain and Medina. When you got off the interurban, so happy and glad to be back, all I could think of was, back to what? I made up my mind then and there, that if the summer didn't see things considerably better, than it even looked possible for them to be, that we would split up and when the company got to where it would support even ONE family, a thing it had never done, Buck was to come back into the company and re-assume his third interest, but....Buck didn't live long enough." (There was an ink spot on this latter part, which Sam said was sweat from using the bad post-office-type pen point.) I believed him, and remembered George telling me that last Tuesday morning "to trust Sam," I could always trust Sam. "The name Waco," continues Sam's letter, "was going to be registered as a universally recognized memorial to Buck."
From these wonderful, voluminous, humorous, letters I learned for the first time Sam's background. His parents were Protestant Lutheran ancestry who had located in Canada, and were until 1923, subjects of the British Empire. Dad, (John C.) Junkin and Mr. Dollar who founded steamship Dollar line, had been lumberjack buddies, as boys.  Dad Junkin followed his bent for motors, and to-day his inventions are many. His tractor successfully dredged the river at Drayton, North Dakota, so as to prevent floods.  Sam, (James Elwood, which he changed to Elwood J., for he didn't like the name Jimmy, but I do), was born in Drayton, North Dakota, March 3, 1896. Same always joked about the Ides of March. When Sam was nine years old, he had