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were at Butte, Montana on July 4th, after which the plane was shipped back to Los Angeles. About August 1st Stites went to Chicago, Illinois to fly for Mills Aviators with Art Smith, Nels Nelson and Diddier Masson. When he arrived there was no plane for him so he wired Barnhart about the possibility of securing his plane for exhibition flying in the mid-west. As a result, Barnhart sold his plane to Mills and Stites used it for the remainder of the 1912 flying season.

He returned to Los Angeles in December for the winter and was a contestant in the Owensmouth aviation meet there January 22d and 23d, 1913. During the summer of 1913 Stites returned to the mid-west for an exhibition tour and flew at Grand Forks, North Dakota for one week in late July.

Stites again returned to Los Angeles for the winter of 1913-1914, and in the spring started flying a summer contract at Venice Beach as a resort attraction, using his Curtiss-type plane with Hall-Scott engine. There, in late March, Stites had a smashup when a dead engine forced him to crash land between two piers. In June a chutist, William Morton, joined Stites to make daily jumps from Stites' plane as an added attraction. On August 12th Stites flew from Venice to Long Beach where he gave exhibitions through the 15th. Later that day he flew 27 miles, from Long Beach to Ascot Park.

In 1915 Stites began flying for the movies, employed by the Universal Film Company at Universal City. There on March 16th he was killed while flying for a picture in which a mock air bombing was to take place. The picture was to show a spectacular war play, with a plane dropping a bomb and destroying a dummy plane on the ground. The timing of the sequence was faulty and a premature explosion occurred in the dummy plane just as Stites flew over it at a low altitude causing his plane to somersault, throwing him out at about 60 feet. He was rushed to a hospital but was dead on arrival, at age 33. He was survived by his wife and three children, and was buried in Inglewood Park Cemetery.

Flying Pioneer Frank M. Stites was indeed one of the true pioneers of aviation on the west coast. Actively engaged in aviation from mid-1909, he had a long, hard struggle learning how to build and fly an aeroplane, and by sheer determination and

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