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season he was made manager of all flying activities at the Exposition, during which time he was a member of the special board that investigated Lincoln Beachey's fatal accident. During July he gave up his passenger-carrying concession at the Exposition and left San Francisco to join the staff of the Curtiss Company in Buffalo, New York. In October he was at Manhasset, Long Island, New York, instructing the wealthy New York sportsman Harry Payne Whitney on a new Burgess-Dunne hydro. There Fowler obtained Hydro Pilot License No. 36, dating October 27, 1915, flying the Whitney plane at Port Washington, Long Island. 

Reportedly, Fowler spent the winter of 1915-1916 at Miami, Florida, with a group of wealthy New York sportsmen who had an aviation colony there for the season with their hydros and flying boats. In March, 1916, he, pioneer aviator Charles Willard, and Edmond Lowe, Jr. of New York formed the L.W.F. Company at Long Island City, New York, to build airplanes. In May their first airplane was brought out, a land tractor biplane with 135 h.p. Thomas engine. It had what was probably the first molded wood, monocoque fuselage, and was an innovation for its day. The plane turned out well and the company became a factor in the defense effort during World War I. Fowler kept a plane for his personal use at the Garden City flying field that summer and did considerable flying there for sport and social use. Late in July, 1961, he and Willard resigned from the L.W.F. enterprise, but he remained in and around Long Island and New York for the remainder of the season. 

In the early spring of 1917 he was back on the West Coast where he formed the Fowler Airplane Corporation, with offices and factory on 12th Street in San Francisco. There, Fowler worked on Government contracts during World War I and reportedly built 275 training planes for the Signal Corps. On May 21, 1918, the company suffered a serious fire which destroyed 15 planes in various stages of construction, and a considerable quantity of lumber and linen used for wing covering. 

After World War I Fowler conducted a passenger carrying and charter service for a time in the San Francisco area. In the spring of 1920 the Fowler Airplane Company became sole western distributor for the British-built Avro planes, and  

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