Dade County FlArchives History - Books .....First Flight Over Miami, Chapter 5 1965
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 April 1, 2009, 10:04 pm

Book Title: Memories Of Old Miami

CHAPTER FIVE
First Flight Over Miami

    HOW could any kid forget the first airplane flight he ever saw? I was only
nine. It was July 28, 1911, Miami's 15th birthday. I remember hearing that there
were about 15,000 people living in Dade County then; and I'm sure that most of
them were on hand to see the first plane flight in South Florida.

    E. G. Sewell, head of the Miami Chamber of Commerce, and later Mayor of
Miami, wanted to do something big to celebrate the city's birthday. He asked the
Wright brothers to bring a plane here and fly it. They said they would send a
plane and a pilot for $7,500.

    So Mr. Sewell got out with his hat and collected the money and the plane was
sent down on the train and hauled out to the old Miami Country Club golf course,
where the county and state office buildings are now located.

    Mr. Sewell was an impressive person, especially to a boy. I remember him in
those days as being much the same as he was in his later years - always wearing
a white linen suit. He wore a broad brimmed Panama hat; and he let his hair grow
long behind his ears and down his neck to hide a knot on his head; probably a
wen. I never saw him without a cane.

    He would have been a curious looking man, even if he had not worn long hair;
but he carried himself with an air of great dignity. He always looked like an
important person; and he was.

    Mr. Sewell wanted a big crowd and he got it. People came in buggies and in
wagons; and a lot of people rode bicycles. Some came in cars.

    The crowd was tense as it waited for the pilot, Howard Gill, to warm up the
plane's engine and get started. But I wasn't aware of very much of anything
except the plane and the big noise that its engine and propeller made.

    I can't remember how the pilot looked or if he wore a uniform. All I can
remember is seeing him sitting there in the forward part of the plane's open
frame work, with his hands on the "stick" as the plane sped down the green
fairway. The propeller, mounted on the engine behind the two cloth-covered
wings, pushed the plane along.

    The plane picked up speed as it rolled down the fairway on its
tricycle-sized wheels. It went up the side of a sand-trap bunker and took off,
flying over a green and gaining altitude as it continued down another fairway.

    A big cheer came from the crowd. I found myself cheering too. You can't
imagine what a thrill it was to a boy to see a plane in the air, with a man up
there guiding it with a stick. I had heard of planes - everybody was talking
about them - but I didn't know that I would ever get to see one, especially to
see one fly.

    The plane rose over the pines and circled over farms and pastures beyond.
Then it crossed Miami River, at that time lined by live oaks, cabbage palms and
strangler-fig trees, and it came back over the crowd - thousands of people, it
seemed, all with, their heads tilted back as they followed the plane.

    Looking back, maybe it was an awkward looking machine compared with the
sleek 600-mile-an-hour jets of today; but I'll bet that there wasn't a person in
that crowd who had any thought about whether it was1 awkward looking. The plane
was beautiful, spectacular, and thrilling beyond belief.

    Everybody was electrified, and so was the livestock. When the plane passed
over the farms near the golf course the horses and mules whinnied and some broke
down their lot fences to get away. Cows ran through pasture fences, and the
chickens flew away into the pine and palmetto woods.

    Most of the people who had come to see the plane hitched their animals to
pine trees as far away as Seventh Avenue. Animals may be blase today about
planes and cars, but not in those days. A car would cause a horse to run away.
You can imagine the animals' distress when that plane passed over them.

    I can still hear Mr. Britt, a farmer, telling Dad how the airplane scared
his livestock.

    "Cap'n Frazure," Mr. Britt said, "I had a heck of a time getting my horses
and mules and chickens back after that infernal flying machine came over the
farm. Even the darned cat ran away."

    Mr. Sewell, who was always trying to do something for Miami, asked the
Wright Brothers to establish a flying school here. He got the city to offer a
$1,000 bonus. But the Wright Brothers turned him down. Glenn Curtiss didn't though.

    Mr. Curtiss was already well known as an automobile racing driver; and he
had broken a world speed record at Ormond Beach. It meant a lot to this area to
have him establish an aviation school here.

    William L. Gilmore, who represented Mr. Curtiss, came down to set up the
school; and Dad's contracting outfit was hired to build the runway.

    Dad, of course, had never seen an airplane runway, for this was to be one of
the first in the United States. The site was in an old field between Braddock's
Corner (NW 17th Avenue and 20th Street) and the golf course. Potatoes had been
planted in the field the year before; and I remember Dad saying that the first
thing he had to do was to plow up the marl soil before it could be leveled.

    "A potato field's no place to try landing a plane," he said.

    (That airstrip, built by Capt. C. M. Frazure, is believed to be the third
such airstrip built in the United States.)

    We were living, in Allapattah at the time the school opened, and I used to
spend a lot of time at the airstrip, watching the students take off, circle
around and land. There were always eight or 10 students. Classes were held in a
tent.

    The sporting ladies from Hardieville used to come out in hacks, with Negro
drivers, and wave at the students. Hardieville was located at NW 11th Street,
somewhat west of Miami Avenue. Sheriff Dan Hardie had run the girls out of the
downtown area and they moved into houses just outside of the city limits.

    They were dressed quite fancy and wore their hair long and sort of trailing
behind them. I remember how excited the students became when the girls came by
and waved at them. Naturally the students waved back.

    I often helped to turn the airplanes around. It was an easy job for a boy.
You just caught hold of one end of the wing and swung it. The pilot sitting in
the cockpit in front of the wings helped to balance the plane and it was almost
as easy to turn as a top.

    A Puerto Rican student named Marti let me ride, sitting on the bottom wing
and holding onto the struts, while he taxied down the field; and one time,
heading into the wind, he took off and got about 25 feet into the air.

    It was my first flight. I remember it so well; my legs dangling and the wind
carrying them back under the wing as the plane lifted off the ground. We must
have been going 35 or 40 miles an hour.

    When we got to the end of the runway, I jumped off and turned the plane
around so that Marti could taxi back to the other end. He couldn't take off
going back because he had the wind on his back.

    It's hard to believe the changes that have taken place in aviation since
those days, when a boy could fly sitting on the wing of a plane.

    Sometime after that, as I remember, the Cuban pilot, Augustin Parla, made
the first mail flight from Key West to Havana. Or, he was supposed to fly to
Havana. Instead, he got off course and landed at the very tip of the eastern end
of the island.

    I can't imagine a modern pilot almost missing the isalnd of Cuba, even if he
made the flight blindfolded.

    The Glenn Curtiss aviation school had far-reaching effects on Miami. It
resulted in this area becoming one of the first important aviation centers in
the country. When I look back and think of how much Mr. Sewell did for Miami I
realize that the area has never done enough to honor his memory.

    Mr. Curtiss made big money in the manufacture of airplanes and airplane
engines, and he invested a lot of his money in this area. With James Bright he
developed Hialeah, Miami Springs and Opa-locka.

    Some said that he did more for aviation than he did for architecture; for he
built those Arabian Nights structures in Opa-locka during the Boom days and
people laughed and said that Mr. Curtiss had set architecture back a century.

    But that was several years later. Dad moved to downtown Miami in 1913,
selling his 22-acre farm to James Donn, founder of Exotic Gardens.

    Throughout my teens I lived downtown. Every sidewalk and street felt the
impact of my bare feet. I witnessed Miami develop from a small town into one of
the great cities of the world.

    When I look back it's been a dramatic thing; and it's been such a short time
that everything seems unreal.


Additional Comments:

Extracted from:

"Memories of Old Miami"
by Hoyt Frazure as told to Nixon Smiley
Reprinted from a series of articles first appearing in Sunday Magazine of The
Miami Herald

Undated, but circa 1965

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