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company 25 years.

Meanwhile he was pleased to learn that his airplane of 1911 had been preserved and was suspended in a hangar at the Oakland airport. He enjoyed visiting it. In 1949 it was lowered and taken out on the tarmac as a display in contrast with a modern airliner that was about to inaugurate a service. Following the ceremonies the airliner warmed up its engines and taxied out for take-off but as its prop wash blasted the Wiseman airplane, that relic suffered the worst headwind of its career. There was even the question whether the remains were worth preserving.

This concerned the daughter of "Mother Tusch." That venerable lady was a friend of all fliers and a lover of all airplanes. Mother and daughter decided that the airplane should not be scrapped and they decided to inform the curator of the National Air Museum in Washington, D.C. He hurried to Oakland, spoke to the airport authorities and to Fred Wiseman, secured the airplane for the national collections, and obtained the voluntary cooperation of the Dade Company, a local shipping firm, to help pack and send the airplane to the Museum for repair, preservation, and eventual exhibition.

Having been in the U.S. Postal Aviation Service in 1918-1919, the Curator was especially interested in Wiseman's flight with mail in 1911. When Fred dated that occasion as February 17th, he was told that it was one day before the British inaugurated air mail service at Allahabad, India, the first governmental airplane mail operation. It was in use about a week during an exposition. Wiseman was pleased to know of the significance of his flight and assumed that he was the first airplane mail pilot, but the curator explained that Wiseman's place in air mail history was to have flown the first airplane to be handled by a local post office and thereby have some official status.

Prior to Wiseman's flight there had been occasions when a letter had been carried by a pilot; example: a letter from the Mayor of Albany to the Mayor of New York City carried by Glenn Curtiss when he flew above the Hudson River, May 29, 1910, and delivered the letter by hand. Wiseman was further pleased when the Curator told him of the organization of the Early Birds, pioneer pilots, and invited him to become a fellow-member.

Fred Wiseman passed away on October 4, 1961 at the Veterans' Administration Hospital