A quick word about two I admire.
Doug Doughty, Roanoke Times sportswriter emeritus, kept detailed lists and oceans of statistics the old-fashioned way, on paper, long before such information became ubiquitous in digital form.
My late mother, proud of her Scots-Irish heritage, often cited that societyâs thrift as inspiration. âIâm too Scot to waste that,â she would say as the lesser cuts of beef went into the stewpot.
In honor of Doughtyâs respect for the statistical oddity and Motherâs waste-not-want-not counsel, todayâs dispatch is presented.
First, the stats. Just since the beginning of 2021, respondents to this column have emailed dispatches totaling 12,071 words. Accurate count of a separate category of words, those delivered verbally to voicemail over this same period, would require an actuary.
Stupid Pilot Tricks 2021 avweb.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from avweb.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
By Ray Cox
Special to The Roanoke Times
An airplane hangar would have been both appropriate and necessary to house the library of newspaper clippings Louise McPhelridge Thaden accumulated for her lifetime aloft.
A statue prominently displayed at an international airport would have worked nicely as well. A suitable model for the sculptor would have been the vintage photograph of Thaden posing with her left hand clutching a biplane wing strut, riding-booted right foot resting comfortably on the hub of the landing wheel assembly as she looked confidently toward the camera.
The press loved Thaden, she of the first generation of daring American women pilots. From east to west and north to south the headlines heralded her flying feats of speed, height, and endurance.
Ruth Nichols wasn’t afraid.
Not since her first ride in a biplane in 1919, when the pilot did loop-de-loops to terrify her. She conquered her fear and began a career as an aviatrix with the singular purpose of being the best.
In the years following Charles Lindbergh’s historic transatlantic flight in 1927, courageous female pilots were in a drive to out-fly one another in the race to be the first woman to repeat Lindbergh’s feat.
Aviation was still in its infancy. Pilots were daredevils, flying by the seat of their pants, to go faster, further, higher than ever before using shockingly unsophisticated machinery.
Mathews: Women aviators -- ignored by still important roanoke.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from roanoke.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.