Lunken Airfield flew headlong into the golden age of aviation in the 1920s. World War I veterans became gutsy barnstormers who had only roads and railroad tracks as navigational landmarks. They gave way to courageous pilots who flew airmail, as well as record makers who flew for the joie de vivre and fame under conditions fraught with danger. These flyers gave way to aircraft engineers and designers who would craft the next generation of planes. Pilots were seduced by the allure of international recognition and wealth, as well as the feeling of freedom experienced in the air. Along the way, they assumed the status of movie stars. On any given day, anyone from a spectator to a mechanic might hobnob with Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Roscoe Turner, or Jimmy Doolittle, who routinely flew in and out of Lunken. Over the decades, Lunken has undergone many changes, but today, as it approaches its centennial, planes still take off and land daily, and crowds still flock to special events.
Stephan Johnson and Cheryl Bauer sifted through archival materials from historical societies and personal collections to discover many of the exciting, never-before-published images and people, old planes, and events at Lunken.
This blog will celebrate old Lunken with stories that do not appear in the book. The first one is about husband-and-wife flyers Martha and Okey Bevins.
Enjoy your journey to old Lunken Airfield!
The Martha and Okey Bevins
Story
In the 1920s and 1930s,
men flying in often treacherous aircraft stirred the public’s curiosity and
admiration.
Women flyers absolutely blew their minds. A handful of ladies, many of whom had
international reputations, were delving into a new science in an unprecedented
manner. Rather than demurring to men to first explore and refine aeronautics,
these women were jumping into cockpits, and record books. Flying was an
unfettered adrenaline rush, and the women wanted to share it.
Some women, like Blanche
Noyes, the former Miss Cleveland who became Ohio’s first licensed woman pilot,
followed their husbands into flying.
For others, like Northern Kentucky’s Martha
Croninger, the flying led to the man. With deep dimples and boyishly cropped
dark, wavy hair, Martha had the look of a woman who would laugh if told she
couldn’t do something that men were doing. She became one of the first woman
students at the Embry-Riddle School of Aviation, located at Lunken.
Started in 1925, the
flight school had 80 graduates in 1927. That same year, Susan Embry,
vice-president of the Embry-Riddle Company, wrote a serial play for radio about
young aviators. Martha was the heroine of the story.
Martha became friends with her flying
instructor, an experienced pilot named Okey Bevins. As a former airmail pilot,
he most likely would have been an excellent teacher. Flying in all kinds of
rough weather and before the advent of navigational equipment, the first
airmail pilots were referred to as the Suicide Club. Those who survived
probably did so through a combination of skill and luck.
Martha and Bevins
married in 1929, after she had earned her pilot’s certificate. For a honeymoon,
they flew around the Midwest in a Lockheed Vega. They presented advertising for
True Story Magazine along the way to finance the trip.
After the honeymoon, the
couple returned to Lunken. Okey eventually left the flight school to work for
Aeronautical Corporation of America, which started at Lunken to build the new
Aeronca light aircraft. Little is known about Martha’s flying during this time.
Unlike the women who participated in the first Women’s Air Derby in 1929,
Martha was not seeking investors to finance record-setting flights or
participating in air races. Photographs of her taken after her marriage show
her with Okey and various friends at Lunken, where most of her flights probably
began.
Okey and Martha Bevins, to left.
Courtesy Okey Bevins Collection, Cincinnati Aviation
Heritage Society
It’s reasonable to
assume, however, that Martha would have been at the airfield to meet the Derby
racers as they completed the Terre Haute (Indiana) to Cincinnati leg of the
competition in August 1929, Newspaper reporters flocked to Lunken to interview
Amelia Earhart and Ruth Elder, an actress-pilot who was, at the time, as
well-known at the Kansas aviatrix.
The papers also reported
on the landing of Thea Rasche, an internationally known German pilot who was
flying in the Derby. And someone at Lunken snapped a candid shot of Louise
Thaden, exiting her plane. Thaden would go on to win that first Derby, and set
many more records.
With so many exciting
pilots at Lunken, Martha must have been there. Every major pilot and plane that
made headlines—and there were lots of them—during the 1920s and 1930s seemed to
stop at Lunken for a special appearance or air show.
Okey attempted a
grueling flight himself soon after the marriage. His goal was to make a solo
non-stop transcontinental flight. He began in Los Angeles, but only made it as
far as Willard, New Mexico, before his plane was forced down.
After that flying was a
practical matter, as well as recreation when the couple could afford it. By
1935, they were living in Wilson, North Carolina, where he was once again
employed as a flight instructor.
Okey returned to Greater
Cincinnati in the autumn of 1935. He was delivering a plane to an owner in
Detroit, and decided to stop at the home of Martha’s brother, Richard
Croninger, in Ft. Thomas, Kentucky. On the morning of October 17, Richard drove
his brother-in-law to Lunken. Okey was planning to stay with Richard again two
days later on his way back home to Martha.
But something happened
that October morning. After all the hours of flight time as an airmail pilot,
instructor (also a dangerous occupation), and private pilot, Okey’s luck ran
out above a foggy field in Mason, Ohio, about 30 miles north of Lunken. At
about 10:30 a.m., his right wing hit guy wires supporting the 831-foot antenna
tower of WLW radio, the “nation’s station.” The Cincinnati Times-Star
reported that the plane “dove nose fore-most into the ground, landing upon a
straw stack of an adjacent farm.” Bevins was killed instantly.
Farmer Ivar Gerard and
his wife saw the crash and ran to the downed plane. They knew immediately that
Okey was dead. “We tried to pull him out, but we couldn’t,” Mrs. Gerard told
the Cincinnati Post. “He was all doubled up in the cockpit—the poor man,
and his face was terribly cut and his body so mangled.”
The spectacular tragedy
was front-page news across the region. “Husband of Ft. Thomas Flier Killed at
Mason, O.” was the story’s subtitle in one Cincinnati paper. The reference to
Martha shows that her status as a pilot was still rare enough to be newsworthy.
Bevin’s fate was one
that many other pilots—men and women—had met. A fatal accident—“spinning
in”—was one of the risks that flyers accepted. They sometimes minimized the
narrow escapes they had, and other times exaggerated situations they had
escaped. But very few stopped flying because of a close call, or because of a
friend’s death.
Martha was no different.
Despite the horror of her husband’s death and the widespread coverage of it,
Martha did not denounce flying. She continued to fly, using all the skills and
tricks her husband had taught her during their courtship. It was perhaps, her
way of honoring him. Or it may just have been her nature and her love of the
skies.
During World War II,
when Jacqueline Cochran began recruiting for the Women’s Flying Training
Detachment (WFTD), Martha applied to enter the program. At the time she
applied, WFTD was training its fourth class of women pilots. Applicants had to
have a minimum of 35 solo flying hours, pass the written cadet exam, and pass
the standard Army physical exam. Martha was accepted, and took her training at
Midland, Texas. She took 770 combined hours of ground school and flight school,
and flew 2,000 training miles. Courses included aerodynamics, electronics,
math, Morse code, navigation, meteorology, and aircraft engine construction and
maintenance.
Martha roomed with six
other women, and shared a bathroom with 11. The women wore male pilots’ castoff
overalls. They paid for their clothing and room and board out of a $150 monthly
stipend. (After graduation, they received $250 a month.)
In the meantime, the
WFTD and the Womens Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron merged to become the Women
Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). As a
WASP, Martha flew aircraft out of Romulus Air Force Base in Michigan. Her work,
and that of the other WASP, freed male pilots to perform crucial work for
during the war. Despite their military training and work, the women were
considered civilians.
It is doubtful if Martha cared much about her
status at the time. She was doing the thing she loved best and she was helping
to win a horrific war. After the war, Martha remarried and moved to Erlanger,
Kentucky. We hope that she continued to fly.
Sources:
Craft, Stephen G. "Embry-Riddle and American
Aviation." Courtesy of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona
Beach, FL.
Johnson, Stephan and Cheryl Bauer, Lunken
Airfield (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing), 2012.
“Pilot Killed as Plane Hits Tower,” Cincinnati
Times-Star, October 18, 1935, p. 1.
“Plane Hits WLW
Tower, Ft. Thomas Flier Killed,” Cincinnati Post, October 18, 1935, p. 1.
Turner, Betty Stagg, Out of the Blue and Into
History (Arlington Heights, IL.: Aviation Publishing) 2001.
“’Whoopee!’ is Greeting of Ruth
Elder as She Lands Plane in Cincinnati; Miss Earhart is Serious on Aviation,” Cincinnati
Enquirer, August 26, 1929, p. 1.
