MANAGEMENT IN AVIATION HISTORY BENCH MARKS
Above: Mrs. Theodore (Edith) Roosevelt brought her children; Ethel, 18, Archibald, 5, and Quentin, 12, to the 1909 air meet at Reims. Quentin was thereaſt er “air-minded” and joined the U.S. Army Air Service. In 1917 he earned his wings at Hazelhurst Field, Mineola, LI, NY, and was further trained in France. On July 14, 1918, Quentin Roosevelt was killed flying a Nieuport 28, in an aerial dog fight near Chateau-Thierry, near Reims, France. Photo: Cradle of Aviation Museum, LI, NY.
Right: In 1909, the world’s first international air meet was advertised as the Grande Semaine d’Aviation at Reims, France. The U.S. was represented by Glenn Hammond Curtiss who flew his Reims Racer biplane to win the Gordon Bennett speed race. The Racer is shown here on the field in front the grandstands aſt er the race. It is my belief that Tod Shriver, Curtiss’s mechanic, is at the far right with his hand at the end of the Racer’s lower wing.
BY GIACINTA BRADLEY KOONTZ THE HEROES AND THE RED DEVIL
THE RUNAWAY The Steubenville (Ohio) Herald Star newspaper reported the following under the headline, “Missing Editor Heard From,” dated December 9, 1897:
“Editor Tod C. Shriver of the Times has at last been heard from. A former Manchester [Ohio] citizen writes from Brooklyn, NY that he talked with him there.” It appears that Shriver, then 24, left his editorial job and ran off to join the circus. Accounting for his whereabouts before he briefl y returned home to Ohio in 1901, Shriver later claimed to have worked for Barnum and Bailey’s Circus, traveling with them to foreign countries. True or not, by 1904, Shriver was associated with dirigible pioneer “Capt.” Thomas Baldwin, himself a former circus performer and the fi rst to parachute jump from a balloon. At the 1904
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St. Louis Fair in Missouri, Shriver was the mechanic for Baldwin’s giant dirigible, the California Arrow, powered by a 2-cylinder, 5-7hp Curtiss engine. By 1907, Glenn Hammond Curtis had hired Shriver as Chief Mechanic at his motorcycle factory in Hammondsport, NY. That year Curtiss was dubbed “the Fastest Man on Earth” after speeding his motorcycle one mile on a Florida track clocked at 136.3mph. Between 1907 and 1908 Curtiss
was a major contributor to the design of aircraft built by the Aerial Experiment Association (AEA) headed by Dr. Alexander Graham Bell. In 1908, fl ying the AEA’s latest biplane, the June Bug, Curtiss became famous as the fi rst person to make a public fl ight in an aeroplane offi cially recognized by the Aero Club of America. The following spring the New York Aero Club ordered a biplane directly from
Curtiss he named the Golden Flier. By this time Curtiss, with Shriver, had transformed from making motorcycles to aeroplanes. The details remain vague, but it was during this year that Shriver married, and moved to Rochester, NY. His job would soon take him far from home and he became known to his friends as “most at home when he was out.”
THE RACE In the spring of 1909, France announced that they would host the fi rst international air meet to be held on the fi elds of Betheny, three miles from Reims. Over thirty aviators entered the events to be held between August 22 and August 29. When the Wrights declined to enter, the Aero Club of America, headed by Cortlandt Field Bishop, chose Curtiss to represent the U.S. Bishop was confi dent that Curtiss could win the meet’s most important aeroplane
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