Author: Julia Lauria-Blum

The day dawned at 6:33 that morning. Looking east across the Hudson River, the rising sun shone behind the North and South Towers, leaving two vertical silhouettes along the lower Manhattan skyline. As the auburn sky turned a sparkling blue, it revealed a ceiling that was cloudless and visibility unlimited. It was the second Tuesday of September, and it began as many a day before it had – until it was a day like no other. On September 11, 2001, as millions of Americans awoke and began their day; thousands made their way to work at the World Trade Center…

On December 29, 1940, in a radio broadcast delivered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the nation, the President promised to help the United Kingdom in the fight against Nazi Germany by producing and furnishing military supplies. During this period, the United States stayed out of the actual fighting. “We must be the great arsenal of democracy. For us, this is an emergency as serious as war itself. We must apply ourselves to our task with the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice as we would show were we at war.” –…

While Jeff Clyman was flying vintage World War II era aircraft in the 1970s at air shows, he wore his father’s U.S. Army Air Corps A-2 jacket. The A-2 was originally designed for and associated with the pilots, navigators, and bombardiers of WWII. When people began asking Jeff where they could purchase one of their own A-2s, he saw an opportunity to create a business out of his passion for aviation and his knowledge of genuine historic military fashion. As surplus pieces were difficult to find and the demand for them grew, Clyman founded the retail business, Cockpit USA, in…

Harriet Quimby was once described to me by her biographer and aviation historian, Giacinta Bradley Koontz, as “a woman moving forward with purpose.’’ In Koontz’ book, The Harriet Quimby Scrapbook, The Life of America’s First Birdwoman, 1875- 1912, Quimby’s life story is that of a modern woman living in a not-so- modern age “that touched the fringes of the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, the Ragtime Era, and the new Age of Aviation.” Harriet was born in 1875 on a family homestead in Michigan. In 1888 the Quimbys embarked on a gypsy-like journey west that ultimately landed them in the…

The sun rose on the morning of October 14, 1947 and U.S. Air Force test pilot, Captain Charles ‘Chuck’ Yeager walked toward a hangar at Muroc Army Air Base for a flight briefing. It was the day of Yeager’s ninth powered flight in a Bell X-1 experimental aircraft from the flat, dry lakebed in the southern California high desert where the first generation of American jets underwent years of rigorous testing. As he strode past the X-1, a flight team flocked over the neon orange aircraft. Designed with a nose shaped like a .50 caliber bullet and powered by a…

On June 14, 2016, two years after comparing LaGuardia Airport to a ‘Third World country”, Vice President Joe Biden stood at a podium beside New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to praise a $4 billion redevelopment project at the airport’s groundbreaking ceremony. The Vice-President was there to join Governor Cuomo in announcing the complete overhaul of the outdated, overcrowded & decaying ‘vintage’ airport that was originally dedicated in October 1939 as New York Municipal Airport, opening on December 9th of that same year. Shortly thereafter “LaGuardia Field” was tagged on to the name and within a year of its opening, NY…

On September 18, 1932 pilot, James Banning took off from Dycer Airport, Los Angeles in an orange and black Alexander Eaglerock biplane along with his mechanic Thomas C. Allen, to embark on a historic 3,000 mile journey across the U.S.A in a rickety airplane put together with surplus parts and a sputtering 14-year old Curtiss engine. Zigzagging across the country, through Arizona and Texas, then northeast through Oklahoma, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh, PA, they reached their final destination, touching down in Valley Stream, Long Island after a total of 41 hours and 27 minutes aloft, in a span of 21…

“I saw the alchemy of perspective reduce my world, and all my other life, to grains in a cup. I learned to watch, to put my trust in other hands than mine. And I learned to wander. I learned what every dreaming child needs to know – that no horizon is so far that you cannot get above it or beyond it.” – Beryl Markham – West With the Night One can imagine that from the first moment humankind gazed skyward, came the yearning to soar with the birds above. Mythic figures and legends were created by early civilizations around…

On June 12, 2001, a JetBlue airliner touched down at JFK International and taxied to its gate after a two-and-a-half-hour flight north from West Palm Beach. On the other end of the jetway, I stood awaiting a woman who I had only corresponded with on the telephone and through the U.S. Mail in the months prior to her arrival. After accepting my invitation to attend the dedication of a new exhibit honoring the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) of WWII that I had curated at the American Airpower Museum in Farmingdale, Long Island, my special guest was to be the…

“I discovered early that the hardest thing to overcome is not a physical disability, but the mental condition which it induces. The world, I found, has a way of taking a man pretty much at his own rating.” Alexander de Seversky When thinking of the names of pioneering innovators who made their mark on history through their intellect, vision, or a brilliant invention, the names Edison, Bell, and Curie may come to mind. Of lesser notoriety, but no less a visionary, was Russian emigre Alexander P. de Seversky, a man of steadfast determination and foresight who in his lifetime became a…