Sky Girls by Gene Nora Jessen

Author:Gene Nora Jessen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2018-11-05T16:00:00+00:00

FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 1929

Race Day 6

FORTH WORTH TO TULSA TO WICHITA

253 MILES, 130 MILES

Claremore, Oklahoma [Will’s hometown], has grabbed off another distinction it being the only town between Santa Monica, California, and Cleveland, Ohio, that those Cleveland race officials haven’t made those poor girl aviators stop at.

Yours, Will Rogers

Syndicated newspaper column

The exhausted racers’ arrival in Fort Worth had been engulfed by some twenty thousand spectators. The pilots did their duty mingling with their kind hosts despite the challenges of the previous days. The women enjoyed each other’s company and that of each local aviation community, but the aviators almost lost their good manners and began to laugh when the evening’s lavish Texas spread turned out to feature, of all things, another chicken evening.

Their host, Amon G. Carter, was dressed like a dime-store cowboy in silver spurs, bandana, leather chaps, and a pair of pearl-handled pistols, all while sporting an enormous cowboy hat. But he wasn’t all show. A stroll through the ranch house revealed original Remington and Russell paintings hanging on the walls and other beautiful western art. How did Carter’s clownish getup jibe with his tasteful abode?

The group turned to Vera Dawn Walker who always had an opinion and was a Texan, to boot. “Who is Amon Carter?”

She explained that he was a newspaper publisher, but not just any publisher. He and his Star newspaper were Fort Worth’s biggest boosters. The slogan above the masthead bragged “Where the West Begins,” which his friend Will Rogers had helped to promote nationwide. Walker related the infamous “elevator incident.”

“Amon Carter was dressed in his cowboy getup while attending a gathering at a big hotel. While on an upper floor along with a crowd waiting for the elevator, it went on by without stopping. Carter whipped out one of his pearl pistols and fired through the door. Nobody was hurt, but it sure fed the Amon Carter lore,” Walker said.

In fact, Amon Carter was an extraordinary entrepreneur who started out peddling sandwiches to railroad passengers as a teenager, then he sold picture frames door to door. Upon moving to Fort Worth in 1905, Carter borrowed $250 and started a newspaper, later buying the Star. A lucky oil strike turned Amon Carter into not only a community booster but also a philanthropist, who, as time went along, became instrumental in bringing what was to become American Airlines and General Dynamics to Fort Worth, and he helped establish Texas Tech in Lubbock and Big Bend National Park.

In typical Amon Carter fashion, on the evening of the derby stop, he made a grand presentation of a colossal cowboy hat to the group’s representative, Amelia Earhart. It was large enough to take over the back seat of her Vega. His guests politely controlled their laughter at the rendition of a schmaltzy song titled, “Sweethearts of the Air.”

The next morning’s paper followed the lead of Will Rogers’s daily piece, needling their own renowned publisher who had hosted the festivities: “Those race officials have those girl aviators landing at every buffalo wallow that has a chamber of commerce and will put up a hot dog sandwich.

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