Faces at Mineola

There are a few names and faces in the scrapbook who turned out to be fairly famous at some point in aviation history. Some were famous already: Glen Curtis, Capt. Thomas Baldwin, Victor Carlstrom. Ivan was now a flight instructor and friends with many of aviation's earliest pioneers. He collected photos from other sources, as I've mentioned before, and in this scrapbook he has pasted far too many to reproduce here.  As usual, I'm just posting the ones which I find interesting or photographically appealing.

First up is Ralph Taylor.  Capt. Taylor shows up a lot in the scrapbooks as you've noticed if you've been reading along.  Taylor Field near Montgomery, Alabama was named in his honor.  If you're new, the star associated with his name means he passed away during Ivan's lifetime.  In Capt Taylor's case, Ivan was very likely at the accident scene.  Here, he poses for the camera perhaps weeks before his death.

Notice that some of the photos are inscribed with fountain pens and some with ball point pens in blue. Ivan maintained these scrapbooks nearly up to his death.

Joseph Carberry, a West Point graduate, would rise to the rank of Major, and lived into the early 1960s.

I'm posting these three airmen because I found their flight jackets interesting.  Unfortunately, Ivan did not include their names. (I'm not cetain this was taken at Mineola, either)

Next post, I'm going to be sharing more crash photos.
kpw

Ivan P Wheaton at the Curtiss School

There aren't a ton of photos of Ivan at the Curtiss School, but here are a couple of the better ones. Once again, I'm afraid there isn't much to add to these photos, textually. You may (if I did this correctly) see a difference in the display mode for photos.  It should take you to the Smugmug gallery, where you'll be able to view the photos in a full screen slideshow.

And finally, here is a scan of the logbook entry for the first portion of Ivan's instruction at the Curtiss School.  He transcribed this from his original books toward the end of his flying career.  Unfortunately the original is lost.

Next up will be some photos of the Curtiss Twin JN.  

-kpw

Eden School of Aviation

I made a little find, this afternoon.  While looking ahead a bit, I found the brochure which my grandfather must have ordered from Eden to get this whole aviation ball rolling.  There are some cool little factoids in these pages, especially if you're searching for information about the Curtiss (and I really need to get this correct) Model F flying boat, or Hydro Aeroplane.  There's not much to tell here, except that the cost of the program agrees with the newspaper clippings that Ivan shelled out his $400 as per the brochure.  It's interesting reading, so I'll leave you to it.  Enjoy!

-kpw