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

After about five years in the Canal Zone Mills became interested in aviation and wanted to learn to fly. He had also conceived the idea of establishing an air line from coast to coast at the Canal Zone for fast transportation of mail, merchandise and passengers, but this idea was abandoned later and never carried out.

As a result Mills left his job at Panama in the fall of 1914 and went to New York where he enrolled for a flying course at the Curtiss Company's New York office. Since the Hammondsport school had closed for the season he was sent to the winter school at North Island, San Diego, California. There, during December, 1914, he started his flying lessons from company instructor Raymund V. Morris, and made his first solo flight on January 23, 1915 in a Curtiss Flying Boat. Bert Acosta, later to become an internationally famous pilot, was mechanic on the school boat for Mills at that time. Mills continued his practice there and on May 28th received a letter from Glenn Curtiss offering him a job at Buffalo which he accepted at once. At the Buffalo Curtiss factory he was engaged in both flying and mechanical work. 

Later that year Mills joined a flying class mate, Beryl H. Kendrick, of Atlantic City, New Jersey, who owned a Curtiss Flying Boat and was operating a passenger carrying business there. Kendrick had entered the Curtiss Marine Trophy Race that year, an event carrying an award to the person who flew a water flying craft the greatest distance between daylight and dark on any one day. Mills assisted in the preparations for this even and acted as co-pilot and mechanic on the attempted flights.

Their first trial was on October 11, 1915, when Kendrick and Mills started to fly for the trophy over a course from Atlantic City to Bay Head, New Jersey, a distance of 52 miles. After completing two round trips, and starting their third, they were forced to land on the water with engine trouble which prevented further flying that day. After covering about 300 

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