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[[stamp]] From The Flying Pioneers Biographies of Harold E. Morehouse

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Walter E. Lees
Early Benoist - Curtiss Pilot - Instructor

Walter E. Lees was born July 16, 1887 at Janesville, Wisconsin and attended the University of Wisconsin. He was a natural mechanic in his youth and quite an expert with automobiles. He saw his first aeroplane when Curtiss pilot, Beckwith Havens, flew at the Ashland, Wisconsin Fair on September 13th and 14th, 1911. Lees was so thrilled with the idea of flying that he enrolled for instruction that fall with the Aero Exhibition Company of Chicago, who planned to operate a school in Florida during the winter.

The group left Chicago for St Augustine on December 9, 1911. This was reported to be a school where he could earn part of his tuition working as a mechanic, but it proved to be a hoax. Lees received no instruction, but did get one three-minute aeroplane ride with Otto Brodie, in a Gnome-motored Farman Biplane, after several weeks of hard work Disappointed, he had to work and earn some money before he could gt back north in the spring of 1912 to join the Benoist Company in St. Louis, Missouri as an aviation mechanic.

After working for the Benoist Company through the summer, he started going out on exhibition dates in the fall with Company aviators Tony Jannus, William Bleakley and Ray Benedict. Les was so eager to learn to fly that Jannus was giving him a little instruction when time allowed on these trips. He made his first solo flight "accidentally on purpose" on November 14, 1912

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[[image: Walter E. Lees]]