The Sky's No Limit for Him

Collection of George Haddad

Frank Harris in about 1928. He taught famous flyers such as Elinor Smith and Anne Morrow Lindbergh and as a barnstormer took Long Islanders aloft for rides.

Witnesses to History: Newsday presents Long Island's past as told through an oral history. Excerpts were edited by history writer George DeWan.

As a kid growing up in Jamaica, when flying was in its infancy, Frank Harris often hung out at the Queens Village airdrome. He was 12 years old when he first went up in an airplane, a Jenny, which took off from Hazelhurst Field in Mineola. Harris was hooked on aviation. Born in Jamaica in 1906, he later moved to Wading River, where he married, raised a family and pursued his dream. He died in 1975. Harris was interviewed in 1967 by Norval Dwyer for the oral history project of the Riverhead Free Library.

The first question was about that first flight.

"I was just bewildered. I was fascinated, and I made up my mind at the time that I was gonna fly."

Tell us about some of the members of the Early Fliers Club.

Well, I can start with my own mechanic and parachute jumper, Carl (Slim) Hennicke ... He would change from one wing of my plane to the wing of another plane in the air. Or he would do a parachute jump or a wing-walk or hang from the landing gear. We couldn't take pictures in those days, but if you could have seen a picture of it, it would really scare you.

After learning how to fly, Harris wanted to buy an airplane. He learned that the Curtiss Co. in Garden City was selling them at bargain prices. All he had to do was put it together.

This airplane was in a crate and all apart, but even though Slim and myself didn't know much about putting an airplane together, we tried to assemble it. Well, we got it assembled. Then I got Louis Meyer, who was very famous on Long Island as a "sky rider," to give me the remainder of my flying instructions. That consisted of 3 hours and 15 minutes, and that is all the instructions that I have had to this day.

In spite of that, you have taught many famous Americans to fly, haven't you?

Yes, I have taught quite a few. I gave Anne Morrow Lindbergh some flying instructions. I [helped to teach] Elinor Smith how to fly before that. She was quite an actress at the time and she became a very famous pilot, breaking many of the women's records.

What is "barnstorming"?

We would fly around until we found a lot big enough to fly out of. We would land there and start carrying passengers for $10. If we couldn't get $10, we would take $5. That is, if we were hungry enough. We would advertise a parachute jump and then pass around the hat. Well, I know a couple of times that we passed the hat around, we got only 35 cents in it ... We did it in Westhampton, East Moriches, East Hampton, Southampton and Montauk Point. Sometimes we would go to Patchogue and Islip. We went all over the Island.

You once flew an airplane for a newspaper?

It was the old original New York Evening World. One of my jobs with this paper was to fly reporters and cameramen all over. One of my main jobs with them was when Saratoga racetrack was open. I would have to pick up the edition with the last stock report and get it up to Saratoga before the last race broke. I got up there every day and never missed.

When Floyd Bennett Field at Jamaica Bay was opened in 1931 as New York's first municipal airport, Harris found a lot of work teaching flying, in addition to newspaper flying.

I stayed there at Floyd Bennett Field until about 1940, when things began to get hard around the country. I got a job with Pan American Air Ferries at that time ... I delivered two airplanes up into Siberia. And all by myself, too. They were B-25s. I had no co-pilot or navigator. I had to go into Novosibirsk and then fly from there to Omsk and northeast up into the icy part of Siberia to deliver these planes. When I landed there, they took the maps that I had with me to show me the way. They blindfolded me, took me out of the plane, led me over to a little shack, and that is where I lived for four days.

In what connection was it, in your South American experiences, did you have some narrow escapes?

Well, that was with the Reconstruction Finance Corp., United States government. I was loaned as a personal pilot to President Vargas of Brazil . . . One time I landed in one of the rivers and hit a crocodile, which came up through the bottom of the plane. I didn't want to swim out amongst those crocodiles, so I kept the airplane going and went up on the bank. My co-pilot and engineer were killed. I buried them in there. It took me 28 days to get out of there down the Rio Madeira River.

How did you survive?

Well, I ate bananas, oranges and grapefruit. They are very delicious when they are tree-ripened. Then I ate a few roots off the water trees. Also a few fish that I was able to catch in the shallow water with my hands. I lost an awful lot of weight. Before I left, I weighed 240 pounds and I weighed only 138 pounds when I returned.

Harris once made an unusual request of an Indian chief he had met on one of his trips into the Amazonian jungle.

I met an old friend of mine in Belém, Brazil. He heard that I was going back in the jungle quite a bit and asked me if I could get him a shrunken head. I said I would try.

So when I went back in there, I asked the chief if he had any shrunken heads. He didn't have any at the time, but he thought he knew where there were some in an outlying village. I could pick one up on my next trip in. About a month and a half later, on my next trip in, he had a head for me. In studying this head, I realized that it was one of the young fellows that was running around the village the first time I was there. So that was a head made to order. I never ordered another head after that.

After World War II ended, Harris returned to Long Island and for a year worked as a test pilot for Republic Aviation. Then he went to Grumman as an aircraft inspector.

I had been flying for well over 30 years and thought that this was long enough. I had better quit while the quitting was good.

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© 2009 The Long Island Early Fliers Club, P.O. Box 221, Bethpage, NY 11714-0221 • info@longislandearlyfliers.org