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THE TIMES MAGAZINE, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1928 THREE
She Built Her Fortune In The Sky
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An Air Pioneer At 29, Mrs. Hattie Meyers Junkin, 4123 Packard Road, Is Rated As One Of The World's Biggest Plane Builders This Year Her Plant at Troy, O., Will Turn Out More Than 1,000 Ships-And She Made Her First Glider At The Age of Nine
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by  ALBERT C. NUTE
ONLY eight short years ago a Troy, O. girl neglected her housework long enough to make the upholstering for the three airplanes that the company of which her husband was president built that year.
She also acted as cook to the hungry mechanics who fashioned the materials into fleet planes. During her spare time she took her year old son for flights all over the Middle West.
Today she is a resident of Toledo but remains a member of the board of directors of one of the largest airplane plants in the world. This year her company will build more than 1,000 planes worth more than $5,000,000.
Mrs. Hattie Meyers Junkin of 4123 Packard road is thought to be the only woman in the United States actively connected with an airplane factory. Still she has never learned to be a pilot.
She has seen the aeronautical industry grow to its present position in the world and it is difficult to name a single notable pilot she does not know personally.
  William P. McCracken, Jr., now assistant secretary of commerce in charge of aviation, was one of the pupils of her first husband, the late George E. "Buck" Weaver, while he was one of the 27 civilian instructors at Waco, Texas, in those war training days of 1917.
  Another of his pupils was Lieut. Russell Maughan, the first pilot to span the American continent in a non-stop flight from coast to coast.
  Lester Maitland, one of the famous pilots on the Pacific hop, was another of his pupils, while he barnstormed for years with William Brock, the round-the-world flyer. Weaver was a mechanic for the well-known Katherine Stinson for years both in this country and abroad.
  So after the war was over, Weaver and his young wife landed in Troy with only their young son, little money, but a lot of enthusiasm over aviation.

Three Planes First Year.
  As has been said before, they built three planes that first year. They were aided by another young mechanic, E.J. "Sam" Junkin, who became the present Mrs. Junkin's second husband in 1925 following Weaver's death the previous year. 
  The training camp had been at Waco and that name was the abbreviation for the Weaver Aircraft Co., so that was the name they gave their planes. It is now the Advance Aircraft Co. 
  Planes built by the young aviators who were barely of voting age soon gained popularity and the second year they were built and sold. In 1924, they sold 50 and the days of struggles were over.
  Orders came in. One South American country ordered twelve, while the first planes ever to go into Alaska were the five send there by the makers in 1925. Year by year the output has increased until three are being made daily now by the 350 skilled mechanics employed in the growing factory at Troy.
  The prediction Henry Ford made seven
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years ago is coming true. "Some day you will occupy the same position in the aviation industry that I occupy today in the automotive industry," the Detroit manufacturer wrote after the company had delivered three planes to him.
  Today the only real rival, Mrs. Junkin says, is a British concern which makes the "Moth" in Canada.
  When only a small girl, Mrs. Junkin read about the flights made by the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, but little dreamed that some day she would know the surviving brother.
  At the age of nine she competed with the boys in her home city of Glen Ridge, N.J., in building airplane models and gliders. A glider she built broke the then existing world record by flying 255 feet under its own momentum. Thereafter the boys in the neighborhood thought her quite a genius.
  Mrs Junkin recalls that the glider was made from a bit of red silk for wings and that it ended its record-breaking flight by breaking a window. That year a contest was held in New York in which the sponsors sought to detemine the chamion glider maker of the United States. However, she couldn't enter because no provision had been made for girls entering the competition.
  Thomas Masson, the humorist, lived near the Junkin home, and the writer often peered over the fence to watch the girl's progress in trying to fly.
  But she didn't have to wait many years before she was soaring above the clouds. Those were the days when an airplane was quite a curiosity and none other than "Buck" Weaver came to town with his fragile ship to do exhibitions.
  They became acquainted, were engaged only a few weeks later, and so the pilot turned down the offer Katherine Stinson cabled from Japan for him to again join her as her mechanic on a world tour.
  War days arrived and when Weaver was sent to Waco, Texas, as a civilian instructor the 18 year old New Jersey girl followed and became his bride.
                 Taught Young Birdmen.
  Anxious days were spend by the young wife while her husband showed youthful Americans how to handle a plane. There it was that she met so many men whose names now are written indelibly in the history of aviation.
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Weaver home and left none other than George Charles Weaver, who is now called "Buck" Weave: If, by the hundreds of aviators who knew his father.
  Later the little Weaver family settled down in Troy after exhibition flights in many states. Meager meals were the rule so that money could be scraped together for materials for the first plane. The wife played the role of cook, mother, wife and assistant. It was she who made by hand the upholstering for the three planes.
  The plane makers knew that they needed publicity to get their planes before the public. So again they scraped and saved to obtain enough money to exhibit one of the planes in the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York.
  A few skeptics said the design was too radical to allow the plane to fly. So "Buck" Weaver took the plane out and showed them a few tricks in the air. New York newspapers provided the publicity.
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  From this point the success of the Waco was assured but many sacrifices had been made by the builders. Still other sacrifices were to be twice a widow at 27.
  Her family thought it terrible that she should take to the air, and above all things should take a baby along such dangerous flights. However, her older brother, Charles Meyers, also declined to give up his love for the aviation and last year was the winner of the Spokane derby. He is a member of the Quiet Birdmen, which is the Four Hundred of aviation. During the war he, too, was a pilot. 
             Romance and Tragedy
  There has been so much romance and tragedy in the growth of the big aviation company with which Mrs. Junkin is connected that she has been asked by a film company to write the scenario for a picture.
  She also has written many stories of those days of pioneering in the air, when she, her husband and the young son would be on the go month to appear in exhibitions. 
  It is safe to make the assertion that "Buck" Weaver II, who is now ten years old, has more hours in the air to his credit than any other youth of the same age in America. form the time he was a few months old  until his father died four years ago. In summer the Weavers would appear in the northern states and In the winter would go to the south. After the factory was started at Troy the boy continued to make many flights, all of which were without accident despite the forced landings made at times in remote places. 
  The test of a real aviator is whether he can make a forced landing, Mrs. Junkin said. He must show both skill, daring and good judgment or his life is the forfeit. 
  Following the death of Mr. Junkin, the factory had to call in experts to figure out the stresses and plans of the planes they were making, Mrs. Junkin recalls. He carried such figures in his head so that they could not be stolen from him. 
  His plans were drawn in chalk on the floor of the growing factory and then he would obliterate them by scratching them out with his shoes. 
  Mrs. Junkin has chosen Toledo as her future home so that she will be away form the city where she saw so much tragedy. 
  Pictures of airplanes in magazines attract thee attention of Janet, 2, her curly-haired daughter who watches her big brother put toy planes together in the basement of their home. The boy plans new models and at the factory in Troy he can do everything there is to do in making of a plane except weld. Next summer he wants to learn even that.
  Mrs. Junkin's recreation is that of driving out to the Transcontinental airport here to watch planes swoop in form all directions. Many of them are those made in her factory and she knows the majority of the pilots. When her two children are grown, she said, she, too, will become a pilot and take to the air lanes.