Amazing Grace Techno – Computer Controlled Christmas Lights from Richard Holdman on Vimeo.

Dreams take off with restored biplane

Boeing 40C crashed in Oregon in 1928

Addison Pemberton flies a restored Boeing 40C over the Spokane Valley in February during its first test flight after a nine-year restoration project. Courtesy of Addison Pemberton (Courtesy of Addison Pemberton) Event today See the plane The public debut of the restored Boeing 40C takes place at 2 p.m. today at Felts Field, with a flight to follow. Video: Boeing 40C flies again

Jim Camden
Staff writer
March 15, 2008

When the big Boeing biplane lifts off from Felts Field this afternoon, its open cockpit and wood-paneled passenger cabin will carry the history of American aviation back into the skies.

It will fly again after nearly 70 years on a mountainside, a few years in a horse trailer, and nine years in a hangar at Felts, where some 61 volunteers spent about 18,000 hours meticulously restoring it to life.

“It’s damn near a miracle,” said Mike Lavelle, an employee of the Boeing Museum of Flight, who has researched this type of plane, the 40C, and its key role in American aviation and the Northwest company.

The miracle of Pacific Air Transport 23, as the plane was designated after it rolled off the Boeing assembly line in Seattle in 1928, had a short and inauspicious beginning. Its first life spanned only about six months from first flight until it crashed in the fog on the daily mail and passenger run from Medford to Portland. Its rebirth is the testament to the dream of Addison Pemberton, a Spokane-area aviation executive, pilot and antique airplane aficionado, who was captivated by the story of the Boeing 40 in general and one such plane in particular.

Pemberton can recall his father telling stories of Boeing 40s flying overhead every night when he was a boy growing up on an Iowa farm. The farm was on the transcontinental mail route of the 1920s and 1930s, and the planes were so reliable you could set your watch by them, his father used to say.

It became Pemberton’s dream to find and fly one.

Pemberton owns an aviation business, Scanivalve, has flown since he was a teenager and restored planes for decades. When he went looking for a Boeing 40 to restore more than a quarter-century ago, a friend in England who does aviation research said there weren’t any left. A total of 82 were made – a huge production run for the 1920s – but most had been scrapped, 30 had crashed, and eight had been flown off to uncertain fates in Honduras and New Zealand when they were no longer wanted in the United States.

Pacific 23 went down in southern Oregon. The fiery crash, the pilot who walked off the mountainside and the passenger who died were all part of the lore of that region.

And, of course, there were the diamonds.

Crash in the fog

Grant Donaldson climbed into the open cockpit of Pacific 23 for the run from Medford to Portland the morning of Oct. 2, 1928, with one passenger and 5 pounds of mail in the enclosed cabin. It was overcast, with fog ahead in some areas, but that wasn’t unusual for the route through southern Oregon that time of the year. Donaldson and his passenger, D.P Donovan, a diamond broker headed for Seattle, lifted off at 9:10 a.m.

Donaldson had been trained as a pilot for World War I, but fighting ended before he flew in combat. With the skills he learned in the Army, he became a barnstormer, or stunt pilot, before landing a job flying the mail and passenger routes for Pacific Air Transport, a joint venture that included the Boeing Co.

Boeing was one of the nation’s many fledgling aviation companies when it landed two key government contracts, the mail routes from Seattle to San Diego and from San Francisco to Chicago. The postal service was looking for planes to fly the routes, and the Model 40A could carry 1,200 pounds of mail and two passengers in the cabin between the engine and the open cockpit for the pilot. The Model 40C was redesigned to carry 500 pounds of mail and four passengers.

Tickets were expensive – $200 for the flight from San Francisco to Chicago, which would be about $2,000 in 2008 dollars – but the combination of mail and passengers made the Model 40 the company’s first commercial airliner.

Like other planes of the day, it had no radar or other instruments that could help a pilot navigate through bad weather. They followed roads during the day and light beacons at night. When Donaldson hit fog, as he did south of Canyonville, he did what all pilots of his era would do: He dropped close to the ground, looking over the sides of the cockpit to pick his way through the soup.

He dropped too low. A lower wing hit one tree, then another and another until the plane plowed into the side of Canyon Mountain. Donaldson crawled out of the cockpit and tried unsuccessfully to pull the lifeless Donovan out of the wreckage. Seriously burned, Donaldson stumbled down the mountain to the road below, where a car driven by a Lutheran minister from nearby Albany picked him up and took him to a doctor in Canyonville.

By then, Donaldson was incoherent. Canyonville authorities contacted Pacific Air Transport, who asked about the passenger. That was the first local residents had heard about a passenger. A search party eventually found Donovan – burned beyond recognition – and some of the diamonds he’d been carrying in a satchel.

Donaldson was flown to Portland, and later to Seattle, for medical treatment. He married his longtime sweetheart, who waited by his bedside for nearly a year while his burns healed. He never flew again, but he worked for Pacific Air Transport and its successors, which eventually became United Airlines, until he retired in the 1960s.

For years after the crash, people would hike to the site for souvenirs and sift through the dirt for diamonds. A few lucky ones found them. Pieces of the wreckage found their way into town, too. The tail cone was placed on a vacant lot and for years served as a “jungle gym” for the town’s children.

The crash site was more than nine miles from the town, and over time it became more of a legend told around campfires than a destination for an adventure. The forest grew back up around it, and the location faded from memory.

Cornerstone of Boeing

Despite the crash of Pacific 23, the Boeing 40 was considered a safe plane. The overall design wasn’t much evolved from open-cockpit military planes of World War I, but the engine, the Pratt & Whitney Wasp, was new, and powerful. Boeing made some version of the Model 40 until 1935. That production allowed Boeing to weather the stock market crash of 1929 and the early Depression years when some other companies folded.

The plane also led to a joint venture between Boeing and Pratt & Whitney; Boeing Air Transport took over Pacific Air Transport to fly the coast route and the San Francisco-Chicago route. In 1934, that merged into United Aircraft and Transport Corp., the predecessor of United Airlines.

When aviation made a leap forward in design, with metal bodies and more aerodynamic shapes in the 1930s, Boeing was strong enough to get a piece of the new industry that soon would include military planes and later commercial jets.

“It was Boeing’s first commercial aircraft,” said the Museum of Flight’s Lavelle, who researched the plane for a presentation to the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Everything that Boeing became was made possible by its first big success, the Model 40.

By 1980, only two Model 40s were known to survive in museums and neither could fly.

“This is indeed the granddaddy of them all,” Lavelle said. It is, as far as anyone can tell, the oldest Boeing plane that can fly.

Rebuilding a dream

Addison Pemberton heard the story of Pacific 23 – in southern Oregon the legend had attained the status of the Flying Dutchman – and spent years looking for the wreckage. He could never find it and by the end of the 1980s, he gave up.

Ron Bartley, a member of the Oregon Aviation Historical Society, didn’t. Bartley, a geologist with a knack for finding crash sites and the author of a book on Pacific Air Transport operations, had been to the wreck as a boy. He found it one foggy day in 1993 on federal forest land high above Interstate 5. After getting federal permission to salvage the plane, Bartley and other members of the historical society hauled more than 200 “pieces and parts” off the site.

Tim Talen, who was part of the salvage crew, said the original plan was for the historical society to display the wreckage as part of an exhibit on Pacific Air Transport. Some may have had secret hopes of restoring it, Talen said, but that wasn’t within the society’s capability. Storing the parts was a problem, though, and the wreckage was kept in members’ barns, sheds and, in one case, a horse trailer.

Society members knew of Pemberton’s reputation for restorations, and when he approached them with the idea to restore it, they sold it to him.

That began a nine-year effort at Felts, with a crew of about 61 volunteers working to rebuild a plane by remaking thousands of parts to the 1928 specifications. Some changes were made: The original plane’s skin was Irish linen; the restored model has a composite fabric that’s lighter and won’t need replacement as frequently. Fortunately for the project, Pemberton’s wife, Wendy, is an accomplished plane fabric seamstress as well as a pilot.

Pemberton estimates 61 volunteers spent more than 18,000 hours on the project, with about 21 involved to a moderate degree and nine to what he calls “a diseased degree.” It’s a family disease, with his wife and sons Ryan and Jay, also pilots, sharing the bug.

One day, while Pemberton was working on the plane, a woman from Salem showed up at the Felts Field hangar. Rita Brown said she read about the restoration project in a Smithsonian magazine and had to see it for herself. She showed Pemberton a diamond ring on her finger.

The diamond was found at the crash site by her father, she said, and made into a ring for her mother when they got engaged.

Retracing the routes

Test flights of the Boeing 40 have convinced Pemberton that those early Boeing engineers really knew their craft. The plane is smooth and stable in the air, a dream to fly, he said. Still, he marvels at the skills of pilots who flew cross-country at night, with dead-reckoning and no more instruments than a watch and a compass.

After its public debut today, Pemberton and his family have a busy schedule for 5339, as the plane has been reregistered. It includes an appearance at the Oregon Aviation Historical Society’s meeting in April and a visit to the Museum of Flight and Boeing Co. offices in Seattle in June. It will make the rounds to the big antique aircraft shows this summer, and Pemberton plans to fly the original transcontinental airmail route – 14 stops from New York to San Francisco. On the New York leg, he hopes to circle the Statue of Liberty in the plane.

He has another antique plane to start work on, and next year, he hopes to fly 5339 on the Pacific Coast mail run, from Seattle to San Diego, with all the stops in between.

Beyond that, he has no firm plans, but he’s sure plenty of things will materialize involving the plane.

“Dreams are never finished,” he said.

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There’s a lot of talk today in our America about this word, “hope”. Some believe that our hope is in one political party or in one person. But where should our hope be? Consider these words of Abraham Lincoln. He has been named the most successful president in our U.S. history.

It was over 150 years ago when our nation divided and our Civil War took so many brave American lives. During that terrible time, President Lincoln had one hope, one desire – to save America. But his hope was not based on shallow dreams or wishful thinking. His hope was based on concepts and ideals and principles and a faith in Someone he knew to be bigger than him; principles and ideals which would, with God’s help, save our America.

But what are the principles and ideals Mr. Lincoln would direct us to now during our own terrible times?

He would say, first of all, it is up to each of us to do the work. Sadly, here in America today we have become a nation of mostly followers. Sadly, so many of our citizens have given in, we’ve determined that our answer, our solution, is in someone else’s hand. Once, Mr. Lincoln was asked about his grandfather and just what kind of man he was. Lincoln’s reply:

“Sir, I do not know so much about what my grandfather was; what I’m more concerned with is what his grandson will be.”

If Mr. Lincoln was here in America today he would say, don’t look to your left or your right, the answer is not there – the answer is in you. It is up to you to stand up for what is good and right and lasting. It is up to you to carry the torch, to show the way. If America is going to get back home, it’s up to you.

“But,” you say, “I’m only 1 person in one small town, what can I do?” It was patriot Thomas Paine who said:

“The biggest mistake you can make is to think that because you can only do a little, you do nothing.”

This is our first step to saving our America.

Next, Mr. Lincoln would talk to us about about the road we are on. Which road is the right road? The easiest? The hardest? And what difference does it make which road we take to get there?

In my office when things get hard and aren’t working right, when discouragement begins to come upon us, my response is, “If it was easy, everybody would do it.” In other words, don’t imagine that special things worth having are easily obtained, because they are not. The things that are truly worth having require sacrifice and hard work.

Once, after hearing a sermon, Abraham Lincoln was asked to comment on the sermon’s content. He remarked that the pastor’s delivery was good, the content was well-researched, but that the sermon lacked one very important part – it didn’t call the people to do something great. And today, the road we are being asked to go down is not one of greatness, it is one of mediocrity, we’re not being asked to be set apart, to be better. But the truth is this – we are to set a mark, a line, far above what we could even imagine, and to strive and fight and scrape, and pray that with God’s help we can rise to a higher level.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be France or England, or Japan, or Canada, I want to be America – the single greatest nation in the world. And the road to the top is hard. It will always be hard.

And, by the way, we are Americans, not American’s. I’m so tired of people telling me, telling us, we can’t do something. Don’t tell me that. Tell me that with God’s Help and Strength, and for the greater good, that nothing is impossible.

If Abraham Lincoln were here in America today, he would tell us, thirdly, that there is a rule of law in this nation and that this rule of law and respect for the law must be upheld. In 1838, as a young man of only 29, in one speech he gave, Abraham Lincoln said this:

“Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular the laws of this country, and never to tolerate their violation by others. Let every person remember that to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own.”

And that’s exactly what is happening today in America. Some are being allowed to break the law and nothing happens. But the truth is this – the leaders of our nation are not privileged characters, somehow above the law because of their power or position. If they dodge their taxes, or abscond with funds, or lie under oath, they should receive the same justice as us all. That’s why Lady Justice is blindfolded and cannot see who stands before her. Justice is to be no respecter of persons. But, not today. Today the blindfold is off and so many, because of their position, get a free pass, and it’s tearing our nation apart.

Next Mr. Lincoln would tell us “Stop looking for the bad in people”. It was Abraham Lincoln who said: “If you look for the bad in people, you will surely find it.”

Why should we stop looking for only the bad? Do this, give me one famous critic in history. You can’t. Why? Because critics get us nowhere. So many Americans today have all the talking points, all the ways to tear the other side down. They all sound good and cool and piercing, but before you tear something down, before you clean it out, you’d better know what’s going to be in its place; and to tear someone down is non-productive. Abe Lincoln would say quit wasting your time ripping into people. Instead, think of solutions, and resolutions, work and strive to be a redeemer, not a destroyer. Lift people up, don’t tear them down.

Now does that mean we stick our heads in the sand, or become doormats, or just give up? Of course not, but a crushed spirit is perhaps the least productive, the least creative spirit there is. Don’t crush people, be a positive thinker, look for solutions, lift people up – and you know what? When you do, they will listen.

Finally, if Abraham Lincoln was here today he would tell us that we need to turn back to God. How do I know? Because he said it on March 30, 1863 when he called for a National Day of Fasting in America. On that day he said:

“We have been the recipient of the choicest bounty of Heaven, we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But, we have forgotten God, and we have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtues of our own. We have become too self-sufficient to feel His necessity, too proud to pray to the very God who made us.”

It was Ronald Reagan who said:
“If America ever becomes anything other than one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”

When the Civil War started, one reporter asked President Lincoln, “Mister Lincoln, is God on your side in the war?” President Lincoln replied,

“Sir, it is not important that God be on my side, what I must do, what we must do, is to find where God is standing and be on His side.”

What must we do to save our America? Mr. Lincoln laid it out quite clearly. The question before you now is, “What will you do about it?”

One last thought – Abraham Lincoln believed so much in America that he was willing to give his life for it – how much do you believe in America?

See you next week!

Jerry Stewart

P.S. email me with your own thoughts and ideas regarding our America at admin@onemomentinamerica.com

JS

“The Hope of America”
By Jerry Stewart

There’s a lot of talk today in our America about this word, “hope”. Some believe that our hope is in one political party or in one person. But where should our hope be? Consider these words of Abraham Lincoln. He has been named the most successful president in our U.S. history.

It was over 150 years ago when our nation divided and our Civil War took so many brave American lives. During that terrible time, President Lincoln had one hope, one desire – to save America. But his hope was not based on shallow dreams or wishful thinking. His hope was based on concepts and ideals and principles and a faith in Someone he knew to be bigger than him; principles and ideals which would, with God’s help, save our America.

But what are the principles and ideals Mr. Lincoln would direct us to now during our own terrible times?

He would say, first of all, it is up to each of us to do the work. Sadly, here in America today we have become a nation of mostly followers. Sadly, so many of our citizens have given in, we’ve determined that our answer, our solution, is in someone else’s hand. Once, Mr. Lincoln was asked about his grandfather and just what kind of man he was. Lincoln’s reply:

“Sir, I do not know so much about what my grandfather was; what I’m more concerned with is what his grandson will be.”

If Mr. Lincoln was here in America today he would say, don’t look to your left or your right, the answer is not there – the answer is in you. It is up to you to stand up for what is good and right and lasting. It is up to you to carry the torch, to show the way. If America is going to get back home, it’s up to you.

“But,” you say, “I’m only 1 person in one small town, what can I do?” It was patriot Thomas Paine who said:

“The biggest mistake you can make is to think that because you can only do a little, you do nothing.”

This is our first step to saving our America.

Next, Mr. Lincoln would talk to us about about the road we are on. Which road is the right road? The easiest? The hardest? And what difference does it make which road we take to get there?

In my office when things get hard and aren’t working right, when discouragement begins to come upon us, my response is, “If it was easy, everybody would do it.” In other words, don’t imagine that special things worth having are easily obtained, because they are not. The things that are truly worth having require sacrifice and hard work.

Once, after hearing a sermon, Abraham Lincoln was asked to comment on the sermon’s content. He remarked that the pastor’s delivery was good, the content was well-researched, but that the sermon lacked one very important part – it didn’t call the people to do something great. And today, the road we are being asked to go down is not one of greatness, it is one of mediocrity, we’re not being asked to be set apart, to be better. But the truth is this – we are to set a mark, a line, far above what we could even imagine, and to strive and fight and scrape, and pray that with God’s help we can rise to a higher level.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be France or England, or Japan, or Canada, I want to be America – the single greatest nation in the world. And the road to the top is hard. It will always be hard.

And, by the way, we are Americans, not American’s. I’m so tired of people telling me, telling us, we can’t do something. Don’t tell me that. Tell me that with God’s Help and Strength, and for the greater good, that nothing is impossible.

If Abraham Lincoln were here in America today, he would tell us, thirdly, that there is a rule of law in this nation and that this rule of law and respect for the law must be upheld. In 1838, as a young man of only 29, in one speech he gave, Abraham Lincoln said this:

“Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular the laws of this country, and never to tolerate their violation by others. Let every person remember that to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own.”

And that’s exactly what is happening today in America. Some are being allowed to break the law and nothing happens. But the truth is this – the leaders of our nation are not privileged characters, somehow above the law because of their power or position. If they dodge their taxes, or abscond with funds, or lie under oath, they should receive the same justice as us all. That’s why Lady Justice is blindfolded and cannot see who stands before her. Justice is to be no respecter of persons. But, not today. Today the blindfold is off and so many, because of their position, get a free pass, and it’s tearing our nation apart.

Next Mr. Lincoln would tell us “Stop looking for the bad in people”. It was Abraham Lincoln who said: “If you look for the bad in people, you will surely find it.”

Why should we stop looking for only the bad? Do this, give me one famous critic in history. You can’t. Why? Because critics get us nowhere. So many Americans today have all the talking points, all the ways to tear the other side down. They all sound good and cool and piercing, but before you tear something down, before you clean it out, you’d better know what’s going to be in its place; and to tear someone down is non-productive. Abe Lincoln would say quit wasting your time ripping into people. Instead, think of solutions, and resolutions, work and strive to be a redeemer, not a destroyer. Lift people up, don’t tear them down.

Now does that mean we stick our heads in the sand, or become doormats, or just give up? Of course not, but a crushed spirit is perhaps the least productive, the least creative spirit there is. Don’t crush people, be a positive thinker, look for solutions, lift people up – and you know what? When you do, they will listen.

Finally, if Abraham Lincoln was here today he would tell us that we need to turn back to God. How do I know? Because he said it on March 30, 1863 when he called for a National Day of Fasting in America. On that day he said:

“We have been the recipient of the choicest bounty of Heaven, we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But, we have forgotten God, and we have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtues of our own. We have become too self-sufficient to feel His necessity, too proud to pray to the very God who made us.”

It was Ronald Reagan who said:
“If America ever becomes anything other than one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”

When the Civil War started, one reporter asked President Lincoln, “Mister Lincoln, is God on your side in the war?” President Lincoln replied,

“Sir, it is not important that God be on my side, what I must do, what we must do, is to find where God is standing and be on His side.”

What must we do to save our America? Mr. Lincoln laid it out quite clearly. The question before you now is, “What will you do about it?”

One last thought – Abraham Lincoln believed so much in America that he was willing to give his life for it – how much do you believe in America?

See you next week!

Jerry Stewart

P.S. email me with your own thoughts and ideas regarding our America at admin@onemomentinamerica.com

JS

If you would like more information, please go to Jerry Stewart’s Web Site: Click on the link below.

One Moment In America

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Wanted you all to see this if you are working on something soon.
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Bill Me Later, along with PayPal, is an eBay company and one of the most convenient and secure ways to pay online without using a credit card. At checkout, customers need only provide their date of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security number, accept the terms of agreement and the purchase is complete. Short, simple and easy.
No coupon codes required to activate this offer and is valid from November 1 until December 15, 2009.
Good news for Bill Me Later customers as Auto Parts Warehouse is offering an automatic $10 OFF plus FREE SHIPPING on purchases worth $50 or more! This is valid for all customers who pay via Bill Me Later on Auto Parts Warehouse items worth at least $50.
Bill Me Later, along with PayPal, is an eBay company and one of the most convenient and secure ways to pay online without using a credit card. At checkout, customers need only provide their date of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security number, accept the terms of agreement and the purchase is complete. Short, simple and easy.
No coupon codes required to activate this offer and is valid from November 1 until December 15, 2009.