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LESTER E. HOLT 
Pioneer Exhibition Pilot - Instructor 

Lester E. Holt was born at Nashville, Illinois, August 26, 1889. Information concerning his early life and education are lacking, but he was living in the Los Angeles, California, area during the 1910-1911 era where he became interested in aviation and determined to learn to fly. 

During the summer of 1911 he secured Charles Walsh's early Curtiss-type pusher biplane powered by a 4-cylinder Hall-Scott engine. With this plane he taught himself to fly at Dominguez Flying Field and on August 22nd he surprised everyone by making a fine cross-country flight from Dominguez to Long Beach, six miles away, circling over the beach and returning to his starting point. On the return flight he raced an electric interurban car and won the contest. He was a mere novice pilot at that time and this was his major flight. Following this he flew his license test and obatined F.A.I. Certificate No. 63 on August 31st at Dominguez, flying the same airplane. 

Holt continued his practice there and was a contestant at the Los Angeles Dominguez flying meet January 20 to 28, 1912. That season he moved his operations to the Midwest and during the fall of 1912 was based at Cicero Flying Field, Chicago. He flew his last exhibition of the 1912 season at Kankakee, Illinois, on November 7th, then moved to Los Angeles for the winter. 

During the early spring of 1913 Holt returned to Illinois and was employed by William E. Sommerville of the Illinois Aero Construction Company at Coal City, Illinois. Another West Coast pilot, Earl Daugherty, was flying there that season and Holt flew a number of early Midest exhibitions and helped to rebuild the wrecked Morane-Borel monoplane Sommerville had purchased from George Mestach following his air collision and crash at Cicero when Howard Gill was killed. In August Holt flew for the Silver Lake Aviation Company at Akron, Ohio, as a resort attraction for a short time them went to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he finished the season flying a Kirkham-powered Curtiss-type biplane. In December he was back in Los Angeles, California, for the winter of 1913-1914.