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DARING AVIATRIX LIKES TO COOK
AND DARN HER HUSBAND’S SOCKS
By Cynthia Grey
 [image of Ruth Law]
I was rather startled to find Ruth Bancroft Law, the daring woman aviator, darning her husband’s socks under a tree at Coney Island.
  I expected to find her in flying costume, tinkering with the engine of her Wright biplane or trying difficult feats with a parachute.
    Miss Law is as adventuresome as her brother, Rodman Law, the dare-devil movie star.  She is one of two women in the United States who hold licenses from the Aero Club of America.
     She has established height records from flights by women, and to take a daily trip of 2500 feet in the air, disturbs her no more than to go window-shopping on Fourth-st.
     I found her dressed  in shirt waist and skirt engaged in the most humdrum of wifely pursuits.
     Likes to Cook and Sew
“I like to darn and cook and sew, and even sweep,” said this woman of the air.
    “When I travel about doing exhibition flying I take sewing, also an electric iron, so I can press my clothes.”
     Miss Law sews her aeroplane as well as her clothes.  She is covering the planes with new material, a waterproof linen.
     She can take the aeroplane engine to pieces and put it together again.
     “Two mechanics are with me, but I look after the engine myself, for I trust my life with it twice a day,” says Miss Law.
              Sees Women in War
     “I believe women are going to take to flying, and some day when the Government builds aeroplane “stations,” women will have fine jobs as guides to busy persons who want to get from city to city in half the time a train takes.
     “Women will be able to do great patriotic service to their countries in time of war because of the aeroplane.  The war of the future will be in the air.  Women in aeroplanes could do scout duty as well as men, and could even drop bombs.
     “The young man who drops 2000 feet from my aeroplane at Coney is trying an experiment the Government is interested in.
     “He drops with a parachute to a given point on the field.  In times of war he could place a bomb within the enemy’s fortifications.”
    Wants to “Loop the Loop”
     Miss Law is a slight little woman, with blond hair and large blue eyes.  I marveled that any one so slight could guide such a big machine.
     I was dumbfounded when she said she never ever strapped herself in.
     “You only have to be buckled in when you loop the loop.” She said.
     LIncoln Beachey LOST HIS LIFE “looping the loop” at San Francisco Bay last year.
     “I am going to learn to do that next,” she said.
      Helped Husband in Store
Miss Law became interested in flying because her brother was so successful in feats in the air.  She had been assisting her husband in his trading stamp store.  He did not want her to take up flying, but she overcame his objection and arranged to take her first flight on July 4, 1912, At the Boston aviation meet.
     Just as she was ready to go up with an instructor, Harriet Quincy, the noted aviatrix, was killed.  There was no more flying that day.
     The next day she made her first flight.
     “All you need to be an aviator is courage, will power, a certain amount of strength and quickness of mind,” said Miss Law.
     Women have these qualities more than men, I believe, especially courage.”