Before Amelia (43 page)

In 1911, Alys was teaching home economics in California, a science she had learned at boarding school, and she was among the cheering crowds at Pasadena when Calbraith Rodgers landed at the end of his cross–country flight on November 5. The following year an advertisement in a newspaper for a woman pupil to learn flying caught her eye. The ad was placed by Fred Bennett, who managed the Bryant Brothers Aerial Show. The brothers—John, Henry, and Frank—made their home at Palm Springs, with a flying field in the side yard. Alys applied and was chosen because she had driven a motorcycle, a feat that impressed Bennett. Before instruction could begin, however, the Bryants' aeroplane had to be repaired following a bad crash. Alys pitched in and proved very handy with bamboo, steel tacks, piano wire, and the muslin used to cover the top surface of the wings.

By fall, the machine was ready, and Alys practiced in the single–seater, following instructions from Johnny Bryant on the ground. The machine was a Curtiss–type pusher with an old sixty–horsepower motor, the type Curtiss used in his 1909 flight down the Hudson. Alys once said the motor had been used by every flier in southern California; the aeroplane was definitely a home–built model. By December, Alys had soloed without benefit of an Aero Club observer—there was only one on the entire Pacific Coast at that time. Alys never had the opportunity to be observed, according to her Early Bird application, but she had plenty of witnesses to her flying ability.

In 1913, Bennett booked the Bryant show for appearances in the United States and Canada. With a number of exhibitions scheduled in the Northwest, the Bryants moved operations to Seattle, on the filled ground at Harbor Island. There, by April, Johnny and Alys were readying their machine for appearances and making flights to demonstrate their ability to the sponsors of the upcoming Potlatch celebration. Johnny's night flight with flares lighting the sky proved a sensation. Unsuspecting viewers thought it was a comet of “most extraordinary behavior.”

A happy Alys McKey Bryant at the end of a successful flight in Vancouver, July 1913. She taught home economics in California before deciding to learn to fly.
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM, INC.

In May, Alys flew her first exhibition flight for money at the Blossom Festival in North Yakima, Washington, followed by the Rose Carnival in Portland, Oregon, in June and the annual Seattle Potlatch in July, to celebrate the arrival of the first shipment of gold out of Alaska. Then it was on to Canada. At the end of July she flew for Edward, Prince of Wales, and his brother, George, at Vancouver, before moving to Victoria, British Columbia, where she chalked up two honors: first woman to fly in the Pacific Northwest and first woman to fly in Canada. (Eileen Vollick was the first Canadian woman to win a pilot's license, No. 77, in 1928.)

The constant proximity of the Bryant fliers had a romantic result: Alys and Johnny became husband and wife on May, 29, 1913, in Boise; the summer would be a long celebration of flying. Alys became something of a celebrity and was interviewed by the newspapers where she appeared.

At her first public exhibition, the
Yakima Daily Republic
described her as “athletic, loves outdoor sports, bikes, motorcycles” and she had “learned everything” about the mechanical parts of an aeroplane. Determined to be her own mechanic, she “trusts nothing to so–called experts,” believing that many fatalities are due to pilot's “lack of knowledge of airships and their parts.” Not too surprising, she was certain that women had a role to play in aviation as well as men.

By the first days of August, the Bryants were in Victoria in readiness for the exhibition on the 5th. Alys was the first to go up at Victoria, discovering immediately that a hard wind from the Pacific was buffeting the machine like a feather. After sixteen minutes in the air, she gave up her plan to circle the Parliament buildings and came down, telling reporters afterward, “I don't want a ride like that again. It was the roughest, toughest and most fearsome flight I have so far experienced.”

The next day Johnny flew over the center of Victoria at about eight hundred feet in the teeth of another strong westerly wind. As he dropped downward to about four hundred feet for a landing in the harbor, the machine suddenly went into a dive. Bryant was seen struggling with the steering controls; the machine bucked up for an instant, a wing crumpled, then the aeroplane drifted and fell heavily on the roof of the Lee Dye Building in the Chinese block, some five hundred feet from the water. Apparently Bennett had advised Bryant not to fly with the added weight of the pontoon for a water landing, but the thousand–dollar fee was forfeited if he didn't fly. Alys, watching the disaster from the Marine Building, ran toward the spot where the machine went down. When told by the police chief that Johnny was dead, she collapsed.

Newspapers the next day featured a story by Bennett, stating that the crash was due to Bryant's good nature. In Vancouver a heavy woman had insisted on having her picture taken seated in the aeroplane. Climbing into the machine, she lost her balance and threw her full weight against the steering column, causing a curve–shaped bend in the column. The column was straightened, but in the rush of shipping the aeroplane and adjusting a new motor in Victoria, Johnny had neglected to reinforce the tube with more metal.

According to Bennett, as Johnny came down from eight hundred feet, the pressure of the wind pushing against the wings caused the steering column to go. His attempt to level the aeroplane from its downward plunge by seizing the control for the elevating plane and pulling up had been too vigorous. The machine came up into the wind “with a fearful leap”; probably a strut snapped off, the supporting wires gave way, causing a wing to collapse, and the machine fell downward heavily. Bryant was dead at the scene.

The following day, his body was shipped to Seattle, then on to Los Angeles, accompanied by Alys and Bennett. The thousand–dollar fee owed to Bryant shrank: Four hundred dollars was forfeited for flights not made, and a sum was deleted to repair the damage to the house where the accident occurred. The balance paid to Alys was about three hundred dollars, according to newspaper accounts.

Bryant's manager was shaken by the pilot's death and the loss of the aeroplane. When Alys indicated she would continue to fly, Bennett said for publication: “Alys McKey Bryant is the best woman flier in the world today, but she will never lose her life flying for me. Now that Johnny is dead, I fear she will become reckless and she has been too game and too brave for me to permit her to fly any more.” He didn't know Alys very well.

The months and years after Johnny's death were difficult for Alys. There is a question about how much flying she did, but apparently she did take to the air again. In October, a
Seattle Daily Times
article revealed she planned a flight around the Smith Building in Seattle, to be filmed by a movie crew showing the movements of the controls as the machine circled the building. If she flew, it was at Harbor Island; there is no record of a flight around the Smith Building. Alys had told the
Times
reporter the lure of the air was too strong; like Beachey, she couldn't give it up.

In November, before Alys left the Seattle area, the
Seattle Sunday Times
carried an article on her “sensational stunt under water.” Dressed in full diving gear, she went down in the West Waterway to attach a heavy chain cable to a huge pipe the Finch Deep Sea Divers were removing to make way for new supply pipes. She was down for twelve minutes, performing operations as directed by Captain Finch, with a diver's head telephone. The Finch operation was close to the hangar on Harbor Island; Alys had made friends with the divers and was interested in learning a new skill, one that she could perform when needed.

The following July, the Potlatch Girl was back again for the 1914 festival. According to a Seattle newspaper article, friends were urging her to quit. “It's my profession—my work,” was her answer. She would try for an altitude mark with the men; the current record of more than sixteen thousand feet was held by Silas Christofferson. Her machine was described in full— a headless biplane, a Christofferson–Curtiss model built for climbing, powered by an eighty–horsepower Hall–Scott engine with a special carburetor that adjusted to atmospheric changes.

The Seattle press was full of hype. Alys, sounding uncharacteristically morbid, was quoted as wanting to go like Johnny. It was better than being injured and living a half–life for years. Like most fliers, she didn't think of danger when in the air. She was tense beforehand, but once in the machine and in the air “I am perfectly calm.” Asked about a role for women in aviation, she was not optimistic. “Most women fear high altitudes and space. That is fatal to successful flying.” True or not, Alys was not like most women—neither were her sisters who took to the air. Despite the press play, there is no record of Alys's flying at Seattle. She was scheduled to fly at Wallace, Washington, on the Fourth of July, but poor weather and an anxious manager scratched that appearance. It seemed to be a pattern.

The following year Alys worked at the Benoist Aircraft Company at St. Louis, then at Sandusky, Ohio, where she served as an instructor and did some flying. In 1916 she worked briefly as an instructor at the Scientific Aeroplane Company flying school at Stratford, Connecticut, then next appeared visiting her brother, in Virginia. Alys offered her services as an air scout to the District of Columbia National Guard. According to the
Washington Post,
she refused to believe she would be discriminated against because of her sex: “Her record surpasses that of many masculine aviators.” All true, but the National Guard replied there was little chance of service for a woman except possibly in case of war. (The military action on the Mexican border was not considered a war.)

Alys worked briefly at an aviation plant in New Jersey, where, for seventeen and a half cents an hour, she supervised fourteen hundred women covering wing frames with fabric. She left in disgust and went to Ohio, where she worked again with Tom Benoist building aeroplanes— she may have tested new models—before joining Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company during World War I.

The
Akron Sunday Times
featured her on June 30, 1918. Describing her various energetic pursuits (including boxing), the article revealed that Alys once said she could eat eight meals a day—“She looked it,” commented the reporter—but was now surviving on three to help the war effort. Her attempts to serve in the war—she applied six times to different branches of the government—were unsuccessful. The government's policy of “men only” in the military was especially annoying to Alys because she knew women were perfectly capable of replacing men to fly the new aerial mail routes. Dressed in a jumper and overalls, Alys provoked quite a bit of comment in the Goodyear lunchroom. (Despite the obvious practicality of pants, the appearance of a woman in a divided skirt was enough to rate a headline in many newspapers. Pants were still shocking.)

With the war's end, Alys had big plans. The
Sandusky Register
reported that she hoped to put the city on the aviation map by taking over the plant of Tom Benoist, who had died in a streetcar accident, and build aeroplanes. Alys anticipated an aviation boom; when that happened, she hoped to be ready. In the meantime, she was working on motors and parts, as she had done for Benoist.

The East End Bay, off Sandusky, was ideal for airboats. She had Benoist's big boat and hoped to have it flying by June 1, along with another. She had a contract to carry passengers from Cedar Point to different locations, which could be a successful operation, but her first interest was making Sandusky an aviation center. In August, the
Cleveland News
reported that a taxi service between Cedar Point and Cleveland, a sixty–mile distance, would be run by a woman. Alys had received permission from the Sandusky city commissioners for the proposal, with stations at Bayview Park, Cedar Point, and Put–In–Bay. If needed, a station at Cleveland would be built, with expansion to Toledo and Detroit in time. Alys could carry as many as twelve passengers in an airboat, and she hoped to have three machines ready shortly.

Unfortunately, she was ahead of her time. Lacking a pilot's license and financial backing, and with aeroplanes to be had everywhere after the war, her plans failed to jell. When next we hear of her, Alys was constructing Washington, D.C.'s first airport to open an aviation service, near the site of the old Hoover Field, in 1921. She cleared trees and brush and leveled the ground with a tractor; it was hard physical work. This aviation venture was short–lived, however. Her pilot and partner killed their first passenger in a crack–up.

In the early 1930s, Alys was photographed working at the Aerological Division of the U.S. Weather Bureau. This should have been a permanent job, but, during much of the 1930s, she earned a living making jewelry and cosmetic products, which she sold to local department stores and throughout the South.