Oliver George Simmons
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Oliver George Simmons (July 14, 1878 – April 9, 1948) was a pioneering aviator with the Wright brothers.
He was born in Philadelphia in 1878 to Eller D. and George O. Simmons, and his sibling was Mary E. Simmons. He enlisted in the Signal Corps he served in the Philippines from 1899 to 1902. He married Dual Leaman of Rockville, Maryland, on July 12, 1904 and they had two daughters: Olive Simmons; and a second daughter who married Tom Lovell. He attended Catholic University, in Washington, DC and then returned to the Signal Corps to start his career in aeronautics. He reported to the Army Signal Corps on October 14, 1909, as a machinist and was the civilian member of the detachment which serviced the first Army Wright biplane at College Park, Maryland when Wilbur Wright trained Lieutenants Frank Purdy Lahm and Frederick Erastus Humphreys. He traveled with Army airplane No. 1 when it was shown at the Chicago Electrical Trades Exposition and from there to Fort Sam Houston where Lieutenant Benjamin Foulois piloted the plane. Over the spring months of 1910 he built a wheeled landing gear for the machine to replace the skid and rail system of the Wrights. In the spring of 1911 the Signal Corps accepted the loan of a new model Wright from Robert J. Collier, which Lieutenant Foulois used. On July 4, 1912, Simmons and acting Mayor Garretson of Perth Amboy, New Jersey flew a sack of mail from South Amboy, New Jersey to Perth Amboy, the first air mail in New Jersey State history. In 1935 a bronze tablet was placed at the South Amboy post office to commemorate the event. For ten years, 1926 through 1936, he was president and general manager of the National Tool Company of Cleveland. He died at Bethesda Naval Hospital and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery on April 13, 1948.
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- New York Times; October 17, 1912; Publisher and Oliver Simmons Drop Into a Cornfield at Lakewood. Lakewood, New Jersey, October 16, 1912; Robert J. Collier, the publisher, who has taken up aviation as a sport, went out for a spin this afternoon in his biplane. He was making a splendid flight when something went wrong with the machine, compelling him to make a hasty landing in James Henry Wagner's cornfield, about four miles from Lakewood.
