T HE F RIEN DLY SK I E S TH E L AKE S A R E A HAS A RIC H AVIAT IO N H I STORY
offering brief flights from farmers’ fields to the delight of crowds of spectators and passengers.
Writer / Jeff Kenney Photography Provided
World War I brought aviation into the forefront as a combat option, and when Culver Military Academy (CMA) superintendent, Colonel Leigh Gignilliat, returned from service in that war in 1919, he was contemplating tales of thrilling air battles and daring pilots. One of these pilots, in fact, was a 1913 graduate who had participated in the renowned rescue efforts of some 1,500 victims of the great flood of that year in nearby Logansport. Elliot White Springs would go on to found the famous Springmaid mattress and sheet company, but earned commendations as a fighter pilot in World War I. His recollections of air battles became a best-selling book, “War
Lakes-area communities nowadays can each boast a small airport of their own, but it wasn’t always so, and one particular community has a unique and remarkable aviation legacy interwoven with its history. While the Wright brothers’ storied first airplane flight took place in 1903, it took some years before aviation became a more commonplace endeavor. During some of those early years, communities around Marshall, Fulton, Starke and Pulaski counties thrilled to sporadic visits from single-engine planes to their areas,
AVIATI ON PI ONEERS
THE LAKES MAGAZINE / APRIL 2021 / thelakesmagazine.com
Birds: Diary of an Unknown Aviator.” In the meantime, 1906 Culver graduate Reuben Fleet had flown the first airmail flight in the world in 1918. Five years later, Fleet (whose name adorns the school’s gymnasium today) would launch Consolidated Aircraft, from which he designed and produced two of America’s best-known aircraft, the B-24 bomber and the PBY Catalina flying boat. Another area connection relating to war was that of the Marmon family, still persisting in the same Lake Maxinkuckee cottage since the 1890s. Best known for building high-speed cars, including the Marmon Wasp, which won the first Indianapolis 500 race in 1911, the Marmon company also manufactured airplanes used during World War I. In fact, Ray Harroun, driver
