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America's Foremost Aviatrix Both Interesting and Charming

Miss Ruth Law Retains Best of Femininity While Passessing All a Man's Daring

By Edith Wilds

While there was a touch of mannishness in the navy blue aviator's uniform, with riding breeches concealed by a scant skirt, its only flash of color the four medals decorating the left side; while there was little of frailty in the tan leather knee high boots, still there was a very definite suggestion of femininity about Miss Ruth Law as she sat opposite a representative of The Advertiser Friday afternoon and talked a little of herself. 
Miss Law's personality is an interesting one. There is the air of assurance we have always associated with the masculine sex–a confidence bred of her experience, in many of which her very life depended on poise and self command–but there is also that baffling something called womanliness. Perhaps it rests in the fair hair curling around the delicately chiseled face, in the well-modulated voice, which, though decisive in speech, has a sweetness of tone decidedly pleasing. 
Her brows are delicate lines; her complexion the kind that goes well with light hair with a touch of natural gold in it, her eyes are blue and frank, her nose hints at retrousse, her mouth is mobile and well shaped. She is slight of build and perhaps a shade above medium height. 
The reporter hardly expected to be able to fit the word "charming" to a woman who had become the foremost aviatrix of America, who had flown across the continent, breaking all recods. Interesting of course. But the reporter found that she was forced to add "charming" to "interesting." 

Why Choice of Flying
"What impelled me to take up flying?" replied Miss Law, sitting across the corner of her chair in an attitude of graceful boyishness, "Well ever since I was a little kid, I liked out-of-door sports. I was brought up with a brother only a year and a half older than I–we were almost like twins–and most of my games were played with him. I guess it made a tomboy out of me. And so when flying first became popular, I was very anxious to take it up, but had no opportunity. 
"Then in 1912, it happened that I was spending the summer at Marblehead, near Boston, when the first Government aviation school was opened. I watched the aviators and got the flying fever. I think that everyone who is around aviator gets the fever sooner or later. 
"I had great difficulty in persuading the aviators to give me a flight. Finally I prevailed upon one of the boys to take me up in his machine. 
"From that moment I intended to enter the school. But I did have a time, I can tell you. I met refusal after refusal–simply on the ground that I was a woman, and I intended to enter the school. Orville Wright refused absolutely to teach me, he would not be responsible, he said. 
"However, at last tired out with my insistence, Mr. Burgess who was also an instructor, consented to teach me. In a month I had sufficient instruction to make a flight without an instructor–or so I thought. My first flight alone was made on August 1st, 1912, without permission of my instructor. I had become tired of waiting, and perhaps I have always been a little headstrong. 

Easiest Thing Is Starting
"It is quite east to get off the ground, but it is quite another matter to stay right side up after you get off. I realized this when I had risen about 500 feet, and didn't know how to get down. I wabbled around in the air. Then gradually it came over me that I simply had to get my nerve–that until I had confidence I could not make a landing. So I flew around about fifteen minutes, and my friends were waiting anxiously on the ground, for they well knew that I had no business to be up there by myself. After a while I managed to calm my nerves and more by good luck than ability made a very fair landing. After I landed, I thought I was quite some aviator. 
"I took up aviation first as a sport and did not consider it as a profession, but there seemed to be such a demand for exhibition flights, that I decided to take it up seriously." 
Miss Law has flown in practically every city in the United States. She is the first woman to loop the loop and [[article cut off]]
-erning association for aviators in the United States, for the long distance record. 

When Death Came Close 
There have been many narrow escapes for Miss Law, in one of which she acknowledges she looked Death face to face. 
It was in one of her night flights, which, by the way, she has given up, as unnecessarily courting death. During these flights it is customary to attach fireworks at the back of the aeroplane which, when touched off by by electricity, give the appearance of the aeroplane being on fire. 
"The night was a black one and after I had made a few loops I had no idea where I was going," said Miss Law. "It happened that there were some very high blast furnace chimneys which were throwing up heat columns to a great height. There is no resistance for an aeroplane in heated air, so when I got into one of these columns, I began to fall, and fall, and fall. I was having all the sensations of a full crash, when my good luck stepped it as usual, and just before I hit the ground I stopped dropping and could land without injury. But it was a narrow escape. 
"The one real accident I had happened about three months after my first flight. There was a crowd of 50,000 people waiting to see the flight in the fair grounds near Providence. It was a miserable day, and in 1912 aeroplanes were not very efficient. If I had had more experience I should not have taken the chance, but in my ignorance I consented to go up. About 200 feet in the air a gust of air pitched my machine around like a feather. I began to turn upside down. Of course many times since I have deliberately turned upside down but at this time it was an unexpected stunt and I was not even strapped in. I was dropping to the ground very fast with the wind careening my plane around. Well, I hit an auto which had taken refuge under a shed, my machine sliced off the top of that automobile as though it had been paper, and one of my wings was smashed. There were seven people in the automobile, including five children, and not one of them was hurt. Then the wind swung me around and the shed clipped off my other wing. That was really the worst accident I ever had." 
Miss Law believes that women will become as good fliers as men. 
"The majority of women seem to be particularly fitted for flying. I find that they are not the least bit afraid and seem to sustain no bad effects from flying. I expect, when I return to America, to open a school of aviation for women. It is not that women cannot learn to become good aviators, but there is no one now who will take the trouble to teach them. Since I have been in Japan I have had a great many letters from Japanese women who want to learn to fly."