Wednesday, September 6, 2017

September 6, 1918 -- First Air Mail from New York to Chicago



September 6, 1918 – The first mail between New York and Chicago to be delivered by airplane arrives in Grant Park at 7:04 p.m. as Max Miller of the United States aerial mail service lands his plane at the end of a trip that took 23 hours and 55 minutes.  Thousands of people are in Grant Park attending the “France and Allies Day,” at a war exposition commemorating the anniversary of the first battle of the Marne.  Pilot Miller hands over the mail sacks to Captain B. B. Lipsner, the superintendent of the United States aerial mail service, and less than 90 minutes after the plane lands, the editor of the Chicago Daily Tribune receives a letter from Henry Woodhouse, a member of the board of governors of the Aero Club of America. It reads, “This epoch making first trip of the New York-Cleveland-Chicago aerial mail line affords us a splendid opportunity to express our hearty appreciation of the energetic and patriotic efforts that you and THE TRIBUNE have been making on behalf of national preparedness and to develop the aerial service.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 7, 1918] Pilot Miller has never landed in the city before but makes a “perfect descent” and is “cheered by the crowds lining the field and by the people who packed the Monroe street viaduct.”  Regular air mail service between New York and Chicago will begin in October with letters mailed in New York scheduled to reach Chicago ten hours later with relays of flyers stationed 150 miles apart ferrying the mail between the two cities.  In the above photo Superintendent of the Air Mail Service Benjamin Lipsner, with American flag in hand, passes it to airmail pilot Max Miller prior to an airmail flight in November 1918.


September 6, 1939 – The fiftieth anniversary of Jane Addams’ founding of Hull House is celebrated as several thousand of the men and women who came to the settlement house as children fill Grant Park for a two-hour tribute to Addams who died four years before.  The principal speaker is Judge Florence E. Allen of the United States Court of Appeals who says, “And this should be her memorial, not that we repeat her name, but that we write upon our hearts her principles, that we carry them into concrete action.  For this woman opened to American new paths of spiritual life.  She lived her faith that all blessings must be made universal if they are to be made permanent.”

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