Earlier Pilot Wins Praise

Re: “United Airlines’ 1st Pilot Takes Controls at 100” in the Times Valley Edition, April 19:

Congratulations to “Ham” Lee on his 100th birthday and his remarkable flying career. However, he was not “the first civilian pilot to fly the U.S. mail in 1918.” The inscription on a gravestone in Hazelwood Cemetery, Grinnell, Iowa, reads:

“This stone marks the resting place of William C. Robinson, pioneer non-stop flyer and second authorized carrier of air mail. He met death in his plane a few miles south of Grinnell when making an altitude flight March 11, 1916.”

Billy Robinson made his first flight in 1913, 10 years after the Wright brothers, and was, like them, a “bicycle tinkerer.” Robinson developed the first air-cooled radial engine, precursor of those used in many aircraft later. A duplicate of his engine, lost in the crash, has remained on display for many years in the science building at Grinnell College.

Besides his gravestone, his pioneering achievements are commemorated by a small Grinnell city park and the naming of the local airport “Billy Robinson Field.”

RUTH PRESCOTT, Glendale