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The "Bird Boy" — Fort Wayne's pioneer stunt flyer
On the record
Arthur Roy Smith was born in Fort Wayne in 1890, the son of a house painter; he worked as an apprentice in architect Charles Weatherhogg's office while dreaming of flight. His parents mortgaged their home so he could build an airplane, and from 1911 he was flying exhibitions, surviving the crashes that came with the trade — the published sources differ on the date of his first flight, and none is given here. He is credited as the originator of skywriting, and when exhibition star Lincoln Beachey was killed at San Francisco's Panama-Pacific Exposition in 1915, Smith replaced him and became a national celebrity, the "Bird Boy of Fort Wayne." Turned away from combat service in the First World War because of his height and old injuries, he instructed and tested aircraft as a civilian. In 1923 he joined the U.S. Air Mail Service and pioneered night flying on its routes. He died on February 12, 1926, when his mail plane crashed near Montpelier, Ohio. Fort Wayne remembers him twice over: Smith Field, the city's north-side airport, bears his name, and a monument stands to him in Memorial Park.
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- § 06 — people of the record · famous-people supplement
Sources: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (Wall of Honor profile); Fort Wayne News-Sentinel (history series); Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana.