Earl R. Southee was born in Binghamtom, NY in 1892. As a curious young man about this new field of aviation, he was employed at the Curtiss Flying School at Newport News in or around 1917 as a young mechanic. Curtiss had won a contract from a group in Princeton, NJ, to start a flying school for young men in college, but they were short an instructor. Capt. Thomas Baldwin, at Newport News, called a meeting with the pilots/instructors, and asked them for suggestions on getting another instructor for Princeton. One of them mentioned that Earl Southee went up with them after he worked on their planes, had taken the controls and fared well. The manager said to give him some lessons and see how he does. Earl did fine. After he soloed, they sent him to Princeton as chief mechanic and #4 instructor.
One of the students he taught there was Elliot White Springs, who became a World War I fighter Ace in France. They kept in touch for decades.
Southee went to Dayton after the Princeton Flying School folded in 1917. Later, he was at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas, as an instructor, where he became a 2nd Lieutenant. He survived a terrible crash there in which the student he was instructing, froze on the stick in a nose dive, and was killed. Mr. Southee survived, but sustained serious facial scars the rest of his life, as surgeons substituted a perpetual mustache for his left eyebrow.
Southee attended the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1920s. To put himself through school, he barnstormed and ferried aircraft. After college he became an airport and flying-school manager for Curtiss. His love for aviation turned to motorless flight in the early 1930s—gliding and soaring. He was a founder of the Soaring Society of America (1931) and managed 'Glider Meets' (National Gliding and Soaring Championships), at Elmira, New York, during the mid to late 1930s.
In 1940 Southee became an inspector for what was then called the CAA (Civilian Aeronautical Authority), the predecessor of the FAA. During World War II he was one of the leaders of the highly successful CPT (Civilian Pilot Training) program.
Earl Southee died in 1967, in Athens, Pennsylvania.