Steve Wittman’s 1928 pilot’s license, signed by Orville Wright
Sylvester “Steve” Wittman did a lot of airplane stuff. A quick check of Wikipedia (the Internet’s crowd-sourced arbiter of who’s who and what’s what) yields not only an entry for him (and not just a stub, mind you), but also a half dozen separate entry pages devoted to the airplanes he built. He began flying in 1924 at a time when pilot’s licenses were hand-signed by Orville Wright. He was arguably the most successful airplane racer in history. He invented the spring-steel landing gear design that is still used in most single-engine planes. At a time when air races were an opportunity for big airplane manufacturers to show off their engineering prowess, he was winning races with planes that he designed and built himself. He even has an airport named after him.
Steve and Dorothy Wittman with Big Bonzo
Though he might have been “Air Racing’s Greatest Legend” to the rest of the world, he was “Uncle Witt” to me and my family. He was the cool uncle who flew airplanes and lived next to an airport. One of his planes is in the Smithsonian, greeting visitors as they enter the “Golden Age of Flight” exhibition hall in the National Air and Space Museum. When you think about cool uncles, it’s hard to come up with something to top that.
Me, looking up at Buster in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
This weekend, Uncle Witt is being enshrined into the National Aviation Hall of Fame during “America’s Oscar Night of Aviation.” Uncle Witt passed away some years back, so I’ve been put forward to accept the honor on his behalf. The responsibilities of this role include the daunting prospect of sharing a stage alongside the first female commercial airline pilot and an Apollo astronaut, the acquisition of a tuxedo, and the delivery of an acceptance speech.
Steve Wittman’s Buttercup
For the speech, I’ve been encouraged to include anecdotes about Uncle Witt. He was born six decades before me, and we lived in different parts of the country, so my personal memories of him are limited. But I do remember my first airplane ride with him in his home-built plane “Buttercup.” Though the prospect of flying in an airplane is exciting for any youngster, my initial enthusiasm was somewhat dampened on noting that all separated me from the great out-of-doors were a piece of fabric and a flimsy latch. At that young age, it seemed to me that his flying contraptions were rickety assemblages of wires and leftover scraps from around the hangar. And to make things worse, my rudimentary reading skills were able to sound out a word neatly stenciled on the dashboard: “Ex…per…i…men…tal.” But whatever doubts I might have had about the air-worthiness of the plane were quickly dispelled during the actual flight. (Remember: he was the cool uncle for a reason.) And after the flight, I got to have a ride in Aunt Dorothy’s sporty Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. (She was the cool aunt for a reason.)
[Thanks to Dad for sharing stories.]