Chuck Sweeny: Baseball?s Aviators salute Rockford?s aviation pioneers

The renamed ?Rockford Aviators? of the Frontier League will take the field out on East Riverside when spring comes.

?Aviators? is a great name for the team because of our proud linkage with aviation?s past, present and future. Parts and systems made in Rockford and Loves Park are on nearly all planes flying. Chicago Rockford International Airport has limitless possibilities as Chicagoland?s third airport.

We also owe a lot to some aviation pioneers:

• Bert ?Fish? ?Hassell was a World War I flight instructor who became a barnstormer after the war. Challenged by Barney Thompson, editor of the Rockford Daily Gazette, to prove the superiority of the Great Circle (polar) route to Europe and make Rockford famous, Hassell and navigator Parker ?Shorty? Cramer took off in the ?Greater Rockford? biplane on Aug. 16. 1928, bound for Stockholm. They had to make an emergency landing in Greenland, but Hassell and Cramer did prove the polar route?s advantages. The ?Greater Rockford? was brought home in 1969; see it at Midway Village Museum.
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• Fred Machesney, another post-World War I barnstormer, made Hassell?s flight from Rockford possible. In 1927 Machesney bought 55 acres on North Second Street and established ?Rockford Airport.? Machesney and fellow pilots flew passengers, freight and mail to cities around the Midwest. The airport lasted into the 1970s before succumbing to Machesney Park Mall.
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• Bessica Faith Medlar Raiche was born in Wisconsin. Her family moved to Rockford, where she graduated from Rockford High School in 1893, according to reader Jo Marie Paul. Raiche was credited by the Aeronautical Society with the first solo flight by an American woman. That flight took place on Sept. 16, 1910, in a plane built by Raiche and her husband, Francois, in their New York State living room, then assembled outdoors, according to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Raiche was also a dentist, then one of America?s first obstetrician-gynecologists. The Smithsonian says, ?Besides being an accomplished musician, painter and linguist, she also participated in such typically masculine activities as swimming and shooting.
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• Janet Harmon Bragg was a nurse from Georgia who lived in Rockford for a time before going to work in a Chicago hospital. She learned to fly as the only woman among 24 men in an all black flying school. She helped the school buy its first airplane and helped build an airfield in Robbins, Ill. Bragg tried repeatedly to become a military pilot in World War II but was prevented because of her race and gender.

I?d like to see exhibits honoring Rockford?s aviation pioneers at the Aviators? ball park and at Chicago Rockford International Airport.

Chuck Sweeny: 815-987-1366; csweeny@rrstar.com; @chucksweeny

Source: http://www.rrstar.com/opinions/x711921687/Chuck-Sweeny-Baseball-s-Aviators-salute-Rockford-s-aviation-pioneers

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