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February 2019. Lillian (Tiller) Lattimer, Parish, New York, has died at 100.
Lillian contributed details and photographs to my book, Association Island, and I featured her in the movie, Association Island, with an interview describing her time spent on the island. She worked as a waitress at the island dining hall in 1937 and was, perhaps, the longest living person with detailed memories of the GE executives at Association Island prior to World War II. Lillian kept a scrapbook of photographs from the island and shared them with me. I include a few in the book. She had a wonderful memory, even for the music they used to play on the island boats when ferrying GE employees to and from the island and Henderson Harbor. Lillian was born and raised on a farm along Tiller Road in the Town of Ellisburg, NY (near Belleville) and it's her family for whom the road is named. Her parents' farmhouse burned in the mid-1930's, forcing her and other family members to seek employment off the farm. She chose Association Island. At right is Lillian standing at Association Island and, many years later, during her interview for the movie. Also, Lillian's 1937 photographs showing the original Administration Building at Association Island (it burned in 1946), and the Gill House of Henderson Harbor. Lattimer Photos. See her obituary here. |
I remember this small barn from when I was a kid. It's always been locked and unused. The owner has not done anything with it in years.
Despite the quality metal roofing, this barn is in danger of collapsing because it needs shoring up on the foundation. I've offered to buy it from the owner but no response. Notice the details in the trim. It's a small barn, about 15 feet x 20 feet, and I would love to be able to move it to a stable foundation and restore it to a rustic but usable condition. What do you think? |
December 21 is the anniversary of the crash landing of a Robin Airlines C-46 into a farmer's field in Ontario, Canada. It happened in 1951, just four days after the Miami Airlines fatal crash in Elizabeth, New Jersey and just eight days before the Continental Charters fatal crash in Napoli, New York.
It was a disaster where everyone survived without a scratch and it was such an unusual and unbelievable event that it was comical. However, it was a perfect example of how the nonscheduled airlines, the first budget airlines of North America, scared the daylights out of early travelers. Many of them were your parents or grandparents. The photographs here are from the Toronto Star. The full story and more original photographs are in the book, Hang on and Fly. The two photographs on the right portray a passenger, carrying the suitcase and seated in the front of the bus with a big grin, who was interviewed extensively for the book. Can you imagine a rent-a-pilot taking over your flight at mid-continent, getting lost in a snowstorm, and then running out of gas while thinking Lake Ontario was the Atlantic Ocean? It happened in 1951. Read about it in Hang on and Fly. |
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On Thursday, December 3, 2015 I was invited to Pat Schnure's vintage 1800's farmhouse home in Chester County, Pennsylvania for a discussion about Hang on and Fly among the members of a small book club.
They like both historical fiction and nonfiction and they seemed intrigued about the human drama in Hang on and Fly and the early aviation elements. Some of them talked about flight plans in the near future. I explained that they are safest today traveling on an airplane because of the events from 1951 that are profiled in Hang on and Fly. They also seemed intrigued to read about the heroics of stewardess Pearl Moon, and the heartbreaking story of Ruby and her misdiagnosed medical condition. They each got a copy of the book and they agreed, in return, to convince their husbands that it's a great story worth reading. Want a visit to your book club? Send me an email here. |
George Albert is the main character-hero of Hang on and Fly. He was born in 1921 in the United States to Syrian immigrants who came to America during a wave of Ottoman Turk migration between 1905 and 1907. His parents fled the Syrian Arab Republic much the same as Syrians were fleeing their war-torn country in 2015.
By all accounts, the Albert's were hard-working dry-goods store merchants in Western Pennsylvania. Although the marriage of George's parents didn't last, the Syrian-American Albert family grew and spread through Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Florida by 1951. In Hang on and Fly, I describe how George Albert became an American hero and a celebrity after the plane crash of December 29, 1951. "If not for George Albert, I don't know how I would have survived...," said one crash survivor. Today, the debate continues about allowing Syrians, who are fleeing the bloody civil war in their country, into America. The Albert's emigrated to the United States and, as a result, they produced an American hero. Read about him in Hang on and Fly. Chapter 4 is titled George Albert. |
On Saturday, November 14, I was invited to WJTN radio in Jamestown, New York for an hour-long discussion about the story in Hang on and Fly.
Many thanks to the show's host, Jim Roselle, and Russ Diethrick for their interesting questions and conversation about the crash story in Cattaraugus County. Thanks also to Dennis Webster and Dan Warren from www.radiojamestown.com. I've already had alot of feedback from listeners. Thank-you for your support. Update: Sad to hear that Jim Roselle died in March, 2016. Jim was a true broadcasting professional and is remembered fondly by all of us who follow in his footsteps at the broadcasting microphone. |
The Beginning of Hang on and Fly |
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During a genealogy trip to Cattaraugus County, New York in 2008, I was standing atop Hoxie Hill in the Town of Napoli with my uncle, Randall G. Shenefiel, when he mentioned that I should "look into the plane crash that happened over on that hill." He was pointing to Parker Hill, site of a cell phone communications tower and where he had gone deer hunting as a teenager in the early 1960's.
"Your grandfather was called to go over there with the town's road equipment and help dig a path up the hill to get the plane crash survivors," my uncle said as he continued with this astounding story. "I think it was a big plane with about 40 people on board. Most of them were dead," he recalled. And then he delivered the most incredible part of the story. "They were stuck up there for days and nobody could find them." Nobody around here knew the plane had gone down on the mountain." Together we gazed across a wide valley at the forested land atop what appeared to be a long, flat mountain in the distance. In all the years visiting on my grandparents' farm and riding around New York State with my grandfather, David G. Shenefiel, he had never mentioned this incredible story of a plane crash and survivors trapped high on the mountain above his home. My uncle was very young in 1951 and remembered little of the crash events. As I looked at the mountaintop in the distance of only a mile or two, I could also see the valley lands of my great-grandparents' farm, their woodlot on the mountain, and the farm of another aunt and uncle in the valley. To my right, just down the hill on which I was standing, was the farm of my other great-grandparents. My family had settled here in 1839. My family farmlands surrounded the crash site in 1951 but no one in the family saw it or heard the plane, despite the fact that they had a bird's eye view of the mountain from their front porches. I was determined to find out more. |
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There are several pages in Hang on and Fly that tell the incredible forgotten story about B-17's that helped form the first Israeli Air Force.
One of the pilots profiled in Hang on and Fly had a unique connection to Florida men who provided and illegally flew the B-17's to Europe where they were refitted as bombers and used in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The pilot, CJ Webber, pictured in one of the B-17's on the left, was very likely aware of and somewhat involved in the caper, but he was kept out of it when FBI investigators came snooping around because he had something of great value at home. In the narrative, a pilot who actually flew one of the B-17's to Europe that were used by the new nation of Israel for bombing raids on Arab targets, tells his story publicly for the first time. The planes' owner went to prison, but this pilot has laid low for all these years. In Hang on and Fly, he comes forward and reveals the identities of the two other pilots who flew with him. It's just one of the many fascinating parts of the story. On October 7, 2015, I was able to get some up close and detailed photographs of a B-17-G within minutes of its landing at the Chester County Airport near Coatesville, Pennsylvania. Scroll down to see it on the left. |
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What's beneath the cover?
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I've been asked to help a friend sell her vintage 60's Mercedes-Benz Sedan. I thought you might like to see the photographs of this fine classic automobile, manufactured at the Mercedes-Benz factory in Sindelfingen, Germany (near Stuttgart). The Binghamton, New York family that owned the car wrote in a diary of a trip to Germany in 1964 to pick up their vehicle and take it on a tour of Europe. They sat with the daughter of the ousted Chancellor of Austria on the plane trip to Europe and then traveled to the Mercedes plant to buy the car and tour the factory. This was when Mercedes-Benz was still recovering (financially) from near total destruction during World War II. The family drove through West Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Holland before shipping the car back home. It was used strictly for pleasure and has less than 100,000 miles on it. It has remained in the family ever since. Now, it's time to go to a great owner for (hopefully) a complete restoration. The car will be listed on eBay for 10 days on November 22. Jump in and take the car for a ride. She purrs! Update: The car sold for $9,100 to an Austrian man who has an antique car collection in Hungary. He got into a bit of a bidding competition with a man from the United Arab Emirates. The buyer had the car trucked to Linden, New Jersey and prepped for shipping to Hungary in a container from the New York Container Terminal across the Arthur Kill from Linden. |