Acclaimed author/illustrator Cheryl Harness is known for her engaging way of bringing the past to life, but never has she written about a real-life character as glamorous and intriguing as HARRIET QUIMBY.
She began her life as a Michigan farm girl. It wasn't long after her family moved to California, before clever, beautiful "Hattie" Quimby was working as an artists' model and sometime-actress in San Francisco. There, in the great city's rambunctious, golden years before the 1906 earthquake, Harriet transformed herself into a photographer and writer. Soon, in 1903, she was on her way to New York City, where she became a popular drama critic, world-traveling photojournalist, and automobile-driving Girl About Town. In her spare time, she wrote half a dozen screenplays for silent film pioneer, D. W. Griffith. And then Harriet learned to FLY.
In August 1911, 36-year-old Harriet Quimby became the FIRST American woman to earn a pilot's license. Soon she was amazing spectators at sensational air shows. The first woman to fly at night? Harriet Quimby. The first professional "aviatrix," earning big bucks with her exhibition flying? Harriet Quimby. What would be next?
On April 16, 1912, in a tiny dragonfly of an aircraft, Harriet flew the 22+ miles across the stormy English Channel, something no female pilot had ever done before. And with nothing but a compass in her lap to help her navigate through the cold clouds. Years later, in 1928, Amelia Earhart would write of her courageous role model:
“Without any of the modern instruments, in a plane which was hardly more than a winged skeleton with a motor, and one, furthermore, with which she was totally unfamiliar, to cross the Channel in 1912 required more bravery and skill than to cross the Atlantic today."
Unfortunately for Harriet, her truly heroic feat was overshadowed in the worldwide shock of news from the "unsinkable" Titanic, lost at sea on her maiden voyage.
Less than three months later, on July 1, 1912, at a Boston air show, a crowd of 5,000 watched Harriet Quimby, in her trademark purple satin flight suit, fall to her death.
Hers is an amazing story, completely true, and truly unforgettable.
