“Oct. 27 [1918]. George Ewing killed in a fall.
Machine burns up. This was the first fatal airplane accident
that I ever witnessed. It made me think a little toward the
future.” (Diary excerpt in Memoir, page 86)
Doyen
“Dink” Wardwell wasted little time in leaving
college in the spring of 1917 to enlist in the war effort
as a pilot. He persuaded his sweetheart, Dorothy, to marry
him that summer, before he shipped out to Europe, and wrote
her frequently. His letters to her, hers to him, and his tersely
composed diary were assembled by his daughter for a posthumous
memoir, On the Wings of Time: An Aviator’s Story.
After the war, the thrill of flying never left Wardwell. He
flew geological surveys in the West and helped to run Wyoming
Airways, a pioneer commercial airline. He was killed when
his plane burst into flames over Casper, Wyoming, in 1929;
he was 33 years old. |