Frances Wilson Grayson
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Frances Wilson Grayson (c.1890 – December 25, 1927) was an American aviatrix who died flying to Newfoundland just prior to her trip to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
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[edit] Birth and education
She was born as Frances Wilson in Cherokee City, Arkansas to A.J. Wilson. Her family moved from Arkansas to Indiana and she graduated from Muncie High School in Indiana. She next attended the Chicago Musical College. Her plan was to accompany her brother, who planned to be a professional singer. When her brother died she stopped studying music. She then attended Swarthmore College studying recitation and dramatic arts.
[edit] Marriage
At Swarthmore College, she met John Brady Grayson and they married on September 15, 1914. John Grayson was the postmaster of Warrenton, Virginia and was twenty years older than Frances. They had no children and after nine years of marriage is fun
[edit] New York
Frances then moved to New York City where she was a writer for a newspaper. She then became a real estate agent and then became interested in aviation. She was inspired by the Charles Lindbergh flight to Paris in May of 1927 and she decided to attempt to be the first woman to cross the Atlantic by plane.
[edit] Aviation career
She placed a deposit on the construction of a new Sikorsky amphibian plane and received financing from Mrs. Aage Ancker, a daughter of the Pittsburgh steel manufacturer Charles H. Sang. On the night of December 23, 1927 she left from Curtis Field in New York for Harbor Grace, Newfoundland. From there she was planning to make her historic transatlantic flight to London, possibly on Christmas day. The plane, known as the Dawn was to be flown by Lieutenant Oskar Omdal of the Norwegian Navy, though Frances may have planned to perform some of the flying herself. The crew included a navigator: Brice Goldsborough; and a radio engineer: Frank Koehler. They never reached Newfoundland and their remains were never found. Frances was the fifth woman to fail to achieve the transatlantic flight, which was accomplished by Amelia Earhart in 1928 as a passenger.
Time magazine wrote:
"All my life Christmas has been the same. The same friends, the same gifts that didn't mean anything. Telling people things you didn't mean. "But this will be different." Thus spoke Mrs. Frances Wilson Grayson, as she shut up her Long Island real estate office and climbed into the Dawn to fly for Newfoundland and thence across the sea. Of her "different" Christmas the world gleaned only one descriptive detail: Her Christmas message to the world was a faint whisper out of the air, caught by the ear of the radio station at Sable Island, off Nova Scotia: "Something gone wrong." Authorities knew that the message came from a tiny emergency radio set aboard the Dawn. So many hours had she been missing that they knew she was down at sea. Rising, falling somewhere on the winter waves were Mrs. Grayson, Norwegian Pilot Oskar Omdal, Navigator Brice Goldsborough, Fred Keohler, Wright engine expert. Only the briefest reports from Massachusetts’s lookouts had told of the plane's earliest progress. The Dawn's regular radio set had evidently expired shortly after starting. The landing field at Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, lay white with Christmas snow uncut by the Dawn's landing wheels. Mrs. Grayson existed in all comfort contributed by her real estate activities. She sold a million dollars' worth of property a year. Her bid to bridge the seas was not for contracts in movie houses. Last fall she twice tried the trip, and failed. Said she: "There is nothing behind the project but my ambition to be the first woman to fly over the ocean. "Am I a little nobody, or am I a great dynamic force? "Can it be that I am wrong? Wrong after all these months of hard preparations, or listening to the still, small voice? "I will win. "I must not quit too soon."
[edit] Epilogue
She gave a personal statement to a reporter in October of 1927 that was only to be printed in the event she was lost in her transatlantic attempt. In it she wrote: "Who am I? Sometimes I wonder. Am I a little nobody? Or am I a great dynamic force-powerful- in that I have a god-given birthright and have all the power there is if only I will understand and use it?" In another statement she reportedly said: "I am going to be the first woman across the Atlantic, and mine the only ship since Lindbergh’s to reach its destination. I will prove that woman can compete with man in his own undertakings."
[edit] References in periodicals
- New York Times, December 26, 1927, page 1; "Grayson Plane Radioed 'Something Wrong' Friday Night; Then the Signaling Ceased, Silent for 54 Hours Since; Probably Lost Off The Nova Scotia Coast in a Storm."
- Frederick Post; Frederick, Maryland; December 28, 1927; Hope Dwindiling in Plane Search
[edit] External links
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