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182 

HORACE F. KEARNEY 
Pioneer Exhibition Aviator 

Horace F. Kearney was bon at Rolla, Missouri, August 14, 1885. During his youth the family moved to Kansas City where he graduated from Woodland School in 1903. He then entered Manuel High School, where he designed and made the parts for a motor cycle engine in the school shop. Also interested in telegraphy, he made a wireless apparatus. 

After two years in high school Kearney dropped out and enlisted in the United States Navy as an apprentice electrician. After his term of enlistment he became an electrician on the Morrow Castle of Ward lines, operating between New York and South America. 

The early reports of the flying episodes of the Wright Brothers and Glenn Curtiss directed Kearney's interest toward aviation. As a result he became associated with A. L. Pfitzner at Marblehead, Massachusetts during the early summer of 1910. Pfitzner was then engaged as an aviator for the Burgess compay and Curtis, and was also experimenting with an unusual monoplane of his own which he had built at Hammondsport in 1909 while employed by Glenn Curtiss. Kearner was employed by Pfitzner, then on July 12, 1910, Pfitzner committed suicide, leaving Kearney alone with the airplane. He evidently went on with the project through the late summer months, trying to fly the plane and develop its possibilities. 

Not knowing how to fly, Kearney entered this machine in the amateur events of the Harvard-Boston Aviation Meet held September 3-13, 1910. While practicing taxiing on September 4th, he ran into a fence and wrecked the font controls. Persistently trying to fly after repairing the damage, he succeeded in making a short straightaway flight on September 8th. He evidently continued his experiments with the Pfitzner machine the fall and made some additional short hops, then gave up and returned to the midwest for the winter.