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WILLIAM A. DENEHIE
Pioneer West Coast Plane Builder - Aviator 

William A. Denehie was born at San Jose, California, October 22, 1891. He attended ^a local grade school there. Following the San Francisco earthquake and fire ^in 1906, the family moved to Riverside, California, and later to Los Angeles where he finished his schooling. [[strikethrough]] This consisted of [[strikethrough]] ^He ^attended the Los Angeles Auto School, Y.M.C.A Business College, and a night school course in Mechanical Engineering at Los Angeles Polytechnic High School. 

During his youth Denehie was interested mechanical things, first auto-mobiles, then the reports of the Wright brothers flights, Montgomery's gliding experiments, and local ballooning all [[strikethrough]]of which [[strikethrough]] influenced his desire to get into aviation.

In 1911 Harvey Crawford [[strikethrough]] at [[strikethrough]] ^of Tacoma, Washington, moved his aviation operations to Dominguez Flying Field, Los Angeles. He was a former balloonist and had built a plane or two at Tacoma, taught himself to fly and wanted to build a new plane to prepare for the Los Angeles Meet in January, 1912. Denehie became associated with Crawford and had his first experience in aviation when he assisted in building a new single-surfaced pusher biplane in a hangar at Dominguez Field. It had a tricycle landing gear and was powered by a 6-cylinder, 100 h.p Emerson two-cycle engine. When it was completed, Denehie learned to fly the plane and Crawford entered and flew the machine in the Los Angeles Meet held January 20-218, 1912. 

After the event they continued their operations at Dominguez ^Field until Crawford had a forced landing in February and smashed the plane, then Denehie left to build a plane for himself in a barn near Inglewood, California. It was similar to the Crawford plane he had helped build except that it was double-surfaced and powered by a used Roberts engine. Denehie made many flights with this plane but was plagued with engine trouble and forced landings. He finally [[?]] had a bad smash-up when the engine quit shortly after takeoff, but was not injured.