Viewing page 6 of 20

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

FRANK KASTORY
Early Exhibition Pilot - Instructor

[[stamp]]
FROM THE FLYING PIONEERS BIOGRAPHIES OF HAROLD E. MOREHOUSE
[[stamp]]

[[image]]

Frank Kastory was born in Hungary April 11, 1883. During his schooling he received training as a tool and die maker. In 1901 his parents came to America, where his father was employed with the Erie Railroad in Cleveland, Ohio. Being of military age, young Frank was denied a passport to accompany his parents to the United States at that time, but in due course he devised a way to join them in Cleveland, where he started to work at his trade as a toolmaker. In 1902 he left Cleveland and went to Chicago. There in 1908 he became an American citizen.
  In 1909 Kastory applied for a passport to make a trip back to Hungary. While in Budapest he answered an ad in the paper for a mechanic to travel with aviator Ladis Lewkowicz making exhibition flights with a Bleriot monoplane. Kastory got the job and this was the beginning of his aviation career. Together they filled some exhibition dates in Hungary and Austria in 1909, then went to Paris where they overhauled the plane and installed another make of engine.
  In the spring of 1910 Lewkowicz decided to come to America for exhibition flying and Kastory came with him. The Lewkowicz Bleriot was probably one of the first ever seen in the United States. After arriving in New York, Lewkowicz signed with the well-known American flying exhibition promoter Frank Berger, and their first engagement was at Valdosta, Georgia for two days. The field they

1