Sometimes
life throws you a pleasant surprise. In my
case, I recently learned that I was to be honored by the Michigan Aviation Hall
of Fame with a Harriet Quimby Award on May 11. Also receiving the award will be
Warren Benjamin Kidder. I’m deeply
honored by this award.
Harriet
Quimby was a Michigan-born journalist writing for magazines like Leslie’s
Illustrated Weekly. An adventurer at
heart, she became the first female to be given a aviator’s certificate and the
second female to be given a pilot’s license.
She was the first woman to fly across the English Channel in 1912 and
died later that year in an airplane accident.
The
Kalamazoo Air Zoo, where the Hall of Fame is located, is a great museum and
when my books on aviation come out, I always make a point to speak there. I will be there at 1:00pm on May 11
discussing my latest aviation history book, The Bad Boy.
When
you are a writer the honors and accolades are few and far between. I’m glad I’ve been able to draw attention to
aviators of the Great War in the books that I write, especially Lost Eagles
which is about a Galesburg Michigan airman of the Lafayette Flying Corps,
Frederick Zinn. Zinn went on to create
the system for tracking, locating, and identifying missing airmen.
If
you are in Kalamazoo on May 11, please feel free to stop by my presentation or
better yet, grab a ticket and show up for the dinner and awards ceremony. http://www.airzoo.org/news.php?menu_id=9&news_id=1&article_id=358
No comments:
Post a Comment