More information about Edith Denny
Posted on 07/10/2004 6:23:15 PM PDT by Radix
Wallace Denny, 97, was one of the first men to fly blimps for Goodyear Co. He married the daughter of the president of Goodyear. (LISA BUL/The Patriot Ledger)
DUXBURY - Wallace Denny showed up at Plymouth Airport this week, looking for a ride in the Goodyear Blimp he'd seen flying overhead from his Duxbury Beach cottage.
The pilots were on a tight schedule and couldn't manage a ride for the 97-year-old man. But they were happy to give him a tour.
Folded inside Denny's wallet is something few pilots will ever see and none will ever have again: a flying license signed by the aviation pioneer Orville Wright.
Denny, it turns out, was one of the first men to fly blimps for the Goodyear Co. He married Edith Litchfield, the daughter of Goodyear president P.W. Litchfield, and joined the Goodyear-Zeppelin Co. in Akron, Ohio.
He worked on the construction of rigid airships and learned to fly them.
He obtained balloon and lighter-than-air licenses signed by Orville Wright of the Wright Brothers, who was head of the Civil Aeronautics Administration at the time.
Denny flew blimps in the 1930s and made his last trip in the 1960s. Of this week's inspection, he said, ‘‘It revived some memories. I guess I'm the last of a dying breed that used to fly blimps.'' Though the blimp looked much different from the models he used to pilot, flying it is the same, he said.
The airships Denny flew were designed to carry passengers. His daughter, Judy Sweeney, remembers riding in blimps as a child.
‘‘Goodyear would take the blimp over to Los Angeles and we would get to ride back in it,'' Sweeney said. ‘‘I loved it.''
When Sweeney saw the Goodyear Blimp in the sky over the holiday weekend, she just had to get her father over to see it.
‘‘You never know how many more chances you're going to get,'' she said.
Goodyear pilot Jim Maloney said the crew really wanted to give Denny a ride, but couldn't fit it into their schedule at the last minute.
Airport manager Thomas Maher missed Denny's visit, but heard all about it the next day.
He had seen one Orville Wright license before. The pilot, was the late Henry Roy Waite, a fixture at Norwood Airport.
Waite was on the front page of the Boston Herald in 1912 for ‘‘bombing'' the battleships New Jersey and Rhode Island in Boston Harbor with sacks of flour dropped from Harry Atwood's Burgess-Wright, one of the early Wright Brothers aircraft designs.
Denny lives in Litchfield, Ariz., and has summered in the family's cottage on Duxbury Beach for decades.
His wife was also an accomplished blimp pilot although she never obtained a formal lighter-than-air license. She later obtained an airplane pilot's license. The couple lived mostly in Canada, and flew all over the world in their Piper Aztec, which had the registration letters CF-SKY.
Edith Denny, who died in January 2001 at the age of 91, was a member of the Ninety-Nines, the organization of women pilots founded in 1929 by 99 women pilots including Amelia Earhart.
For many years, Edith held the record for the number of hours flown by a woman in blimps, according to a profile on the Ninety-Nines web site.
While working at the Goodyear-Zeppelin Co., Wallace Denny helped build two of the Navy's dirigibles, the Akron and the Macon, both of which were lost to accidents in bad weather in the 1920s.
The airship industry faded after the Hindenburg disaster in 1937. Denny went to work for Goodyear Tire and Rubber.
The German passenger airship Hindenburg, the largest aircraft ever to fly at 803 feet long and 135 feet wide, was destroyed in an explosion and fire on May 6, 1937, as it landed at Lakehurst N.J., killing 36 of its 97 passengers.
The tragedy was first attributed to the explosive hydrogen used to lift the giant ship, but 60 years later was blamed on the dirigible's highly flammable outer skin set on fire by an electrical charge.
Denny obtained an airplane pilot's license and continued to fly until the mid 1980s. Both he and his wife were members of the Flying Octogenarians, an exclusive organization for those who log a solo flight on or after their 80th birthday.
Ping.
Neat story. Thanks for posting it.
More information about Edith Denny
Besides, it's the right thing to do.
So9
When my second cousin was a kid, she saw the Hindenburg
go over her house in Jersey just before it crashed.
Just needed to be said again.
Their aircraft regustration is CF-SKY? Wow, this guy was a real original!! Cool.
What a cool story! Just in case, I checked, but my license was signed by J. Lynn Helms. Rats!!! But I did get to ride in the Goodyear Blimp as a kid, it was very exciting, though I was paranoid about birds with sharp beaks.
Al is also the guy who Commissioned our son in the Air Force last May (see picture below). Shaun is now two months from graduating from Air Force Pilot Training.
Al is a retired Army colonel. The patch you see on his shoulder is a mushroom...Al was a witness to the very first Atomic bomb in New Mexico back in the 40's.
Jag
I live very close to Lakehurst Naval Air Station. Every year on May 6th, they have a ceremony to observe the anniversary of the Hindenburg Disaster. On a couple of occasions, I've had the opportunity to talk with a gentleman who lives in the area, who was part of the ground crew the night of the crash. A very interesting and fascinating person to talk to.
Awesome!
God Bless the men that fly and fight.
/john
Another BTTT for the nice story of the week. Good post.
Very cool!
I got a 30 minute ride over L.A. in the Goodyear Blimp (the one that crashed in San Francisco during WW II) When I came home from Viet Nam in 1968.
I had one of those patches in my collection when I was a kid, and I never knew what it was.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
That happened about two minutes after he was sworn in last May. :)
I rode the GoodYear Blimp 3 weeks ago in Pampano Beach, FL. The pilot took us over Fort Laderdale beach and the trip lasted about an hour. He would turn a wheel on his right side of his chair and use pedals to fly. You can only ride it with permission from GoodYear or one of their vendors. The cabin only fits 5 of us with the pilot making six. I used to see the GoodYear Blimp fly over our house in OpaLocka over 20 years ago. It turned out that I was flying in the same blimp. The pilot and crews go to diffeent shows around the country and a truck follows them with all parts incase something breaks. What a job!
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