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THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 1941
E MIAMI DAILY NEWS

Talk Of The Tower
BY MAYBELLE MANNING

INTERESTING PEOPLE IN MIAMI: Miss Lee Ya-Ching, restrained, placid and assured as a Chinese goddess posed on a lily pad--hands as sensitive and artful as a fan dancer's and a voice poignant with culture and the philosophy of the ages. Yet she is a modern and as American as the latest career deb--and quite as stylish. Lee Ching has modified and adapted the stilted straight lines of the high caste Chinese woman's dress into sleek modern lines and expresses her Oriental trends in exotic modern materials. That she has a natural flair for sculptured coiffure is a matter of second-nature art. She is a graduate of the Boeing School of Aviation. She has been for a number of years a pilot on the commercial air lines of China. She tells simply, in an almost unemotional manner, the reality of the plight of China. Her campaign in the United States is to raise funds for ambulance planes with which to fly medical aid, nurses and surgeons to the interior of China. Although there are plenty of medical supplies, there are no means of transportation into the interior. To date there are 60,000,000 refugees in China, the majority of farmers who have no other means of livelihood. One dollar takes care of one person for a month and $1 provides a home for an orphan for a year. The humanitarian society of the brave "99" is Relief Wings. Ruth Nichols fittingly calls it the "Red Cross of the air."

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DR. DAVID FAIRCHILD...about whom books have been written. A modern Luther Burbank, scientist, writer and lecturer. Dr. Fairchild has grown up with aviation and commends Miami for taking such a leadership in flying. Our flat country, for one thing, affords the right requisites for an aviation center. Dr. Fairchild remembers when airplanes looked like June bugs, with outsider contraptions of gas pipes and curious controls. He only wishes his beloved pioneer friends of early flying, Curtiss and the Wright brothers, could see their visioned world of silver bird today. Katherine (Mrs. Orville) Wright and Marion Fairchild were the first women ever to sit at the controls of an airplane. Napoleon's chief air pilot and spy was a woman balloonist. Katherine Hiller, now visiting in Miami, besides being an ace pilot of the "99," also owns and edits a newspaper, the Barrie Gazette.

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PAUL DRAPER: The Nijinski of tap dancers is at the palatial Royal Palm club. Why the suave and usually tail-coated Paul, son of the decorator and stylist, Ruth Draper, should think up his glorified gabardine overall number as a Florida ballroom costume is far fetched for one who has made tap dancing practically a ranking art. This "turkey in the straw" ensemble was definitely out of gear with his ballet leaps and sophisticated routine of dancing. Could it be possible that we are being played "down to"? That a "Cracker" costume might be Paul's scheme for luring us "bridle-wise" into the higher forms of the dance?

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MEETING THE DEADLINE: In the midst of riotous fun and the leisure of the evening, Sinclair Lewis is suddenly brought short by the stark realization of a promised article that had completely slipped his mind. He borrows a typewriter at 3 a.m. while eating a cheese sandwich from Reuben's restaurant and happily pecks away until 4 a.m. The trimmings, like cutlines and captions, he puts on over at Mother Kelly's at 7 a.m., and enjoys breakfast at the News restaurant, popularly called the Greek's, rendezvous for deadline writers.