The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1920-09-30
ONE YEAR lOCKlEAR'S
LIMIT; Daredevil IS
KILLED IN STUNT
(Kansas City Starr

The life of the daredevil Is not IT.
the land. The type, Of course. is al
ways with us, but the individual thrills
a brief hour and then takes his way
to the undiscovered country.
The human fly crawls among us, out
eternity eventually rises up and swats
him: leapers from Brooklyn bridges
leap once too often; those that go
down to Niagara in barrels have
way of not returning: the stunning
aviator sooner or later is numbered
among those that no longer are with
US.
The most recent addition to our long
screed of misdirected bravery is that
OF Lieut.. Ormer Locklear, daredevil
extraordinary, who was killed when
his plane crashed at Los Angeles
few days ago from a height OF 1,OoO
feet. With him when he went down
to his death was his associate IN thrills
Lieut.. Milton Elliott. Both were dead
when attendants reached the wreck
age.
Killed Doing A Simple Trick.
Locklear, in the public eye. was like
the Mayfy, he danced brief hour and
was gone; one ephemeral year and his
career was closed. He first came 10
national notice last year at Atlantic
City, when he performed the unprece-
dented thrill of changing from one
plane to another in midair. NO one
had ever done it before, hence motor
iety, half sister to fame, claimed MIN
for her own. 1t was his peculiar trick.
his nv right of discovery and con-
quest: he did it with variations, nrst
leaping from the plane above to the
one below and later climbing TO tho
upper plane from the lower by means
of a swinging rope ladder.
From a thrill that 1t is only step
to the movies, that mecca OF wealth.
end publicity, and in Locklear's case
the termination of all things. For II
was in the performance Of a stunt for
the camera that he met his death.
The scenario called for nose dive
q simple flying trick-which was 10
appear to end in disaster. Locklear
and his companion bathed In the glare
of a battery Of searchlights on the
ground below for it was night time
went into a nose dive. firing off rock
etc as they went. Something went
wrong and the intended rake became
irretrievable disaster.
Beuan Career When Boy.
Ormer I,ocklear seems to have been
a daredevil by nature. He began it
when he was a mere boy in Fort
Worth, Tex, where he was porn ana
grew up At first with bicycle and
later with a motor cycle he did spec
tacular stunts for bets of prize money.
He made 62-foot leap from plat
form with a motor cycle; then he bet
he could drive his machine up the
side of a 4-story building. He was
ridicuIed, but he backed up his asser-
ton with real money and the crowd
assembled to see him do the i'm
possible.
Locklear fixed a pulley rope from
the cornice of the building, removed
the tires from his motor cycle and
arranged the rope SO that 1t circled
the rear wheel. Strapped into his
machine he made the ascent. A com
preston release allowed the machine
to descend.
The flying game attracted him In
1910 He built glider and had him
self hauled about the country by an
automobile He tried to construct
an airplane but failed After saving
: up his money, he tried again and sue
ceeded in building machine that
would fly, and without instruction, be-
came an expert flyer.
When the United States entered the
war. Locklear enlisted in the air serv-
ice and quickly passed through the
schools Of instruction in the Texas
aviation fields and was made an IN
structor in flying at Barron field,
where he remained throughout the
period of the war.
Soon tales began to leak out of
Locklear's stunts while he was teach
ing recruits to fly. They began as g
result of his discovery of the steadi
ness of an airplane in flight He