# Olean Times Herald/1928/Viola Gentry Stays Up For New Record

Viola Estelle Gentry (1889-1988) in Olean Times Herald on December 24, 1928.
Viola Gentry Stays Up For New Record. By James L. Kilgallen. International News Service Staff Correspondent (Copyright, 1928 by International News Service.) Roosevelt Field, New York, December 24, 1928. Miss Viola Gentry, attractive twenty-eight year old aviatrix who has suddenly achieved fame by establishing a worlds endurance flight record for women by staying aloft over this field 8 hours, 6 minutes and 37 seconds, today revealed in an exclusive interview that she pawned her jewels to become a flyer and now that she attained a modicum of success, she is "planning bigger things." She has "on her mind" three things which she hopes to accomplish in the order named: 1. Another duration flight, which she will attempt next Monday, in an effort to smash the record she set last Thursday. 2. A non-stop flight from New York to Los Angeles. 3. A trans-Atlantic hop. New York to Ostend, Belgium. "I'm not the least bit afraid of trying a long, dangerous flight." Miss Gentry said. "I'm a fatalist. I believe you die when your time comes, and not before." A trim figure in black leather flying coat and black leather helmet, she stood beside her borrowed Siemans Halskie powered Travelair in the hangar here and talked in lively fashion of her career as a flyer. She was born in Gentry, Virginia, educated in the Bronson Private School for Girls, Providence, Rhode Island and learned to fly in San Francisco where she spent most of her girlhood. She is of medium height, blue-eyed, brown-haired and exudes personality by "a smile that won't come off." Miss Gentry dislikes being termed the "flying cashier" because she worked as a cashier in several New York restaurants to earn expenses incurred while flying. She also was employed by the Roosevelt Field Flying Service. "I was aviation crazy - and still am." she said. "I've lived it for years. I got a job out here and was so intensely interested I became: known as 'the pest.' I was always around the flying machines and the aviators. They couldn't get rid of me. Finally, it got so when I didn't show up at the hangar or at the restaurant the good plots would ask: Where's the pest. I was missed. They all like me now." "Here they have some of the best pilots in the world. I've been taught many things, such as how to come out of spins and loops. If I hadn't I'd have been killed last Thursday when I spiraled down out of a sky thick with low-hanging clouds and fog from an altitude of 5,000 feet. Low temperature caused moisture to freeze on the wings of the plane." She laughingly told how, earlier in her career, she went "broke" keeping up with aviation so she pawned all of her personal belongings. She even sold her liberty bonds which had been stowed away "for a rainy day." "I got $125 for my string of pearls, $250 for a ring, $175 for another ring and less than $100 on other jewelry," she recounted. "But, it was worth it." She praised a friend, Miss Grace Lyon, New York Society woman and president of Lyon Airways, whose protégé she has become and who loaned her the Travelair plane to make the endurance flight. Everything was loaned her by friends at the field, the coat she flew in, the special motor and even the gloves, she wore. She lauded her instructors, Bob Fowler and William Ullrich her mechanic Carl Schneider, the official timer, Harry Booth and the commander of the field, Lieut. H. B. Clarke "who worried so when I was up." "I don't know what I'd do without my friends," she exclaimed. Miss Gentry does not drink or smoke, although she asserts she has no quarrel with girls who do. She is so interested in aviation she neglects everything else. She doesn't even go to the movies, she declared. Romance? The girl flyer laughed. "Too busy for that," she smiled. Will she go into the movies? Positively not. "I am principally interested in the promotion of aviation," she said. "I think I inspired the confidence of women in aviation by taking off, Thursday with a heavy load, 670 pounds, staying up eight hours, and coming down without cracking up. "Women are going into sports more than ever before but I do not expect a great many women to take up aviation. Of course a few stragglers will try this game." Ruth Law is her idea of a great woman flyer. She said Ruth flew "when airships were baskets.' She thinks Bert Acosta is a great pilot, having flown with him. Miss Gentry is proud of her American ancestry. She terms herself "an eleventh generation American." her family, her grand- father was a wealthy landowner but her folks are now "as poor as church mice." After her mother died, and her sister moved from Martinsville, Virginia, to San Francisco where they lived with their aunt, Mrs. E. F. Sears, Miss Gentry did much flying at Long Beach and Los Angeles, and then came cast to Roosevelt Field.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
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