The Short Life of Women Airforce Service Pilots -WASP- Mary Hartson

WASP Mary Hartson 43-W-5

 (11 January 1917- 14 August 1944)

The first Oregon WASP to lose her life while flying on duty was 27-year-old Mary Hartson.

WASP Pilot Mary Hartson

Mary was a Portland native who graduated from Washington High. Soon after graduation she began working in Washington, D.C. as a clerk in the Federal Security Agency’s General Consul Office. The agency was in charge of food and drug safety as well as the Social Security program.

While in Washington, Mary received a scholarship for the Civilian Pilot Training Program that taught her to fly and earned her a pilot license. Within a year she began her six months of training with the WASP.

Women Airforce Service Pilot Mary Haertson

Although her first assignment was the Air Transport Command at New Castle Air Base, in Delaware, within a few weeks orders quickly began sending her from one Army airfield to another.

On August 14, 1944, 18 months after her WASP graduation, the sky was clear, winds from the south were light, and temperatures were simmering toward 103 degrees. Mary took off in a BT-13 from the Perrin Army Airfield in Texas with Staff Sergeant Orville Eitzen in the rear seat.

This was a basic test flight just to check out the plane’s recently repaired radio. About 15 miles north of the runway, the aircraft suddenly stalled and spun into the ground. There were no witnesses and the cause of the crash was never determined.

When found, both had their harnesses unfastened as if preparing to jump, but for some reason, they never got the chance.

Mary Hartson came home to Portland for a funeral service and the placing of her ashes in Wilhelm’s Portland Memorial Mausoleum.

Orville Eitzen, also 27, had married just two years earlier. He returned to his wife’s hometown of Shenandoah, Iowa for burial.

RIP

 

The Fog of History

The fog of history

by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, August 12th 2019

For many of us, history floats somewhere in an impenetrable fog; a world of mystery, confusion and danger.

When we study history, misunderstandings abound. We make mistakes, and what we think we know often turns out to be absolutely wrong.

I once worked with a history buff who loved to write about all sorts of things, even if he didn’t know

Landing at the Medford Airport Is Often Hampered by Fog

what really happened, or his lazy research never revealed the truth.

He filled any “historic holes” with creative facts that seemed to fit what he believed made sense, whether it was right or wrong.

Defending himself, he would say, “Nobody ever looks at this anyway, so nobody is going to question me or ever know the difference.”

No one could ever convince him that truth will usually win out.

Take the local example of cloud seeding to disperse thick fog at the Medford Airport. The purpose of seeding is to create a visual clearance through the fog so that aircraft on their final approach can land safely.

Although fog seeding ended in late 2009, when a new technique replaced it, the original seeding idea was pioneered in Southern Oregon in the 1950s. That technique is often credited to George Milligan,

Dissipating Fog With a Balloon  at Medford Airport

founder of Mercy Flights, however, that isn’t true. Milligan didn’t make his first attempt until December 1959, years after the two men who actually created and patented the idea had left town.

Two ex-WWII Navy pilots, Harvey Brandau and Eugene Kooser, flew into Medford in May 1949. Hired by a local association dedicated to supporting fruit shippers and growers, the fliers would conduct aerial experiments to see if destructive hail storms could be reduced or eliminated by seeding clouds from an airplane.

 

The previous year, 1948, hail had cost the valley fruit industry over a half million dollars.

“The boys were ready to do battle,” said Mail Tribune City Editor Eric Allen, “flying over-age warplanes into the middle of thunderstorms.

”

After two years of experiments, because no significant hail storms occurred, results were inconclusive and controversial, leaving the men, Allen said, “both cussed and discussed.”

Farmers accused the aviator’s experiments of creating two years of summer droughts, and cursed every airplane they saw overhead.

Hoping to calm the anger and perhaps provide more water in the spring and summer, Harvey and Eugene decided to try to seed clouds and achieve a deeper snow pack in the mountains. Snow-depth readings were also inconclusive.

The men turned their attention to fog dispersal at the Medford airport. After weeks of waiting to test their new chemical mixture they named “Goop,” (later revealed to be common table salt and silver iodine), opportunity arrived.

On Nov. 18, 1950, fog was so thick United Airlines flight 159 was holding over the airport and about to divert to Eugene, where passengers would have to ride a bus back to Medford.

Eugene took off from Ashland and soon began treating the Medford fog with a mixture of Goop and dry ice. A hole opened up and low-level fog dispersed. Just a half-hour behind schedule, the DC-3 was able to land.

United Airlines was impressed enough to offer the aviators a contract to continue fog experiments to see whether their method “had a practical application to scheduled airline operations.” After 42 tests, the airline declined to renew the contract, saying results were “uncertain; although, there have been significant results.”

Harvey and Eugene had already filed and would receive a patent on their invention; however, with no financial backing, their experiments ended and both aviators left town. Eugene took his family to Houston, Texas, in 1955 and continued efforts to manipulate weather for decades. Harvey bought a tire sales business that he took to Washington in 1957.

Like a Medford runway on a January morning, history often wraps itself in a thick, impenetrable fog; its importance hidden just inches away.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com or WilliamMMiller.com.

History Snoopin': Steamships, a Sandbar, and One Fire Engine

The 4th Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) Kathryn Barbara Lawrence

Kathryn “Kay” Barbara Lawrence Class 43-W-8

The fourth WASP pilot to die while flying on duty

 (3 December 1920 – 4 August 1943)

WASP Pilot
Kathryn “Kay” Barbara Lawrence Class 43-W-8

 

(Excerpt from To Live and Die a WASP)

     Energetic Kathryn was Kay to her friends and family. Born in December 1920 to Frank and Chrissie Lawrence, Kay grew up in Grand Forks, North Dakota, not far from the Great Northern Railroad Depot. Her father was an engineer on the railroad and shortly after Kay’s older brother, Frank Jr. was born in 1917, the family had moved to North Dakota from Washington state. After graduating from high school, Kay began working toward her Bachelor Degree in education at the University of North Dakota. At 5 feet 4 inches tall, 125 pound Kay didn’t stand out in a crowd, but she still made the most of her college years, especially in athletics. She was a champion swimmer, and as an ice skater for the university, won the trophy for best woman speed skater on campus. As a cheerleader with the all-girl, Nodak Pep Squad, she was at every football and basketball game, making sure there was plenty of noise from the cheering fans.

     As a sophomore, in 1939, she signed up for the Civilian Pilot Training program, the only girl who wanted to fly out of the 100 collegians who had applied at five North Dakota Colleges. It brought her news coverage and her photograph in newspapers. “Cranking an airplane propeller is a woman’s job for Kay Lawrence,” said one headline. …

 

WASP Pilot
Kathryn “Kay” Barbara Lawrence Class 43-W-8

     --- It was just before 5:00 in the evening on August 4, 1943, when Kay’s PT-19 trainer lifted off from the runway at Avenger Field. Hers was the eighth flight made that day in the very same airplane. In the month since she arrived, she had flown nearly 20 hours in this type of plane, but now she was soloing. Fifteen miles and a few minutes northwest of Avenger, something happened, and no one knows exactly what. Whether pilot error or mechanical failure, the plane spun out and crashed into the ground. Kay managed to jump, but her parachute never opened. Investigators believed that she had been too close to the ground when she jumped and didn’t have time to pull her ripcord. The next day, a memorial service held at Sweetwater’s Methodist Church, brought over 100 of her fellow trainees to remember her. She returned to Grand Forks for burial; her grave marked simply as “Kay.”

 RIP 

 

Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) Whoe died on duty in August

On Duty WASP Who Died in August

It's good to have a tailholt

It's good to have a tailholt

by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, July 29th 2019

Time again to tell the story of the little town of Tailholt, still hiding at the same location, right on the banks of the Rogue River.

Long before ferries and bridges kept traveling boots dry, crossing a fast-moving river meant grabbing on and holding tight. When a pioneer or prospector didn’t have a wagon to cling to, the next best thing was a horse; not all of the horse, of course — just the horse’s tail.

The technique apparently was so popular that our beloved ancestors, with typical Yankee ingenuity, created a word for it — tailholt.

To the settlers who had struggled in the 1800s to build a sod home on the great American prairies, tailholt also became a metaphor for life.

It might be unsafe to cling to something too tightly, a pioneer would say, but it’s a thousand times more unsafe to just let go.

That tough attitude probably influenced the name given to Tailholt, Oklahoma, the only town in the country that still exists with that name.

Prospectors always seemed to like the name best. There were Tailholt mines throughout the West and even Tailholt mining camps in California.

But the biggest influence had to come from poet James Whitcomb Riley. He built a poem around an imaginary Indiana town, “The Little Town O’ Tailholt.”

“You kin boast about yer cities, and their stiddy growth and size,

And brag about yer County-seats, and business enterprise,

And railroads, and factories, and all sich foolery,

But the little Town o’ Tailholt is big enough fer me!”

Southern Oregon legend says that an early miner nearly drowned crossing the turbulent Rogue River about a quarter of a mile upriver from today’s town of Rogue River. Apparently he avoided catastrophe by grabbing hold of — you guessed it — his horse’s tail.

 

Rogue River Rapids

Tailholt, as Rogue River was called in those mining years of the 1850s and ‘60s, wasn’t really much of a town, but because of the nearby river crossing, the name just seemed to fit.

As the population grew and a post office was established in 1876, the town took on its first legal name, Woodville, honoring a popular local resident and the town’s new postmaster, John Wood.

In 1912, not long after Jackson County spent $15,000 to build a bridge across the river, residents decided it would be better to advertise the town under a new name, and the city of Rogue River was born.

When a new bridge replaced the old in October 1950, a Mail Tribune editorial agreed with local residents who wanted to name the bridge Tailholt. “The name will certainly bring the bridge color and pique the interest of tourists.”

It didn’t happen.

In 1961, when the state was building a new park in the area, the Mail Tribune suggested it be named Tailholt. “It has color, an element of humor, a fine flavor, and it’s a name that can be remembered. Tailholt State Park. What a wonderful name!”

Not so wonderful for state officials. Tailholt was out and Valley of the Rogue State Park was in.

Ah, well. As we search for humor in these sometimes troubled days, maybe all we really need is a tailholt attitude. As the old pioneers preached: “A tailholt is better than a no holt at all.”

Rogue River, Oregon Public Library

This coming Saturday, at noon, I’ll be talking Modoc War at the Rogue River library. If nothing’s holding you up, we’d like to see ya there. Bring your tailholt attitude

.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com or WilliamMMiller.com.