Sandt – Erie Flight

Brookville’s Lewis Earle Sandt was the first person to fly from the US to another country when he flew from Erie to Canada in 1911. (JCHS Collection)

BROOKVILLE’S BIRD MAN

Several months after learning to fly, Lewis Earle Sandt gathered Erie newsmen together and told them he intended to be a greater pilot than Lincoln Beachey, then Curtiss’ leading aviator. During the next eighteen months he was well on his way. He was the first to fly from Erie to Canada, completing the round trip with a crash near North East. He wasn’t hurt, but the plane was lost. During 1912 he flew exhibitions. He flew over Pittsburgh, taking off from Schenley Park, and took off from Walnut Street in Brookville on a flight to Punxsutawney. He flew the first airmail for the state of Ohio. In June of 1913 he flew an exhibition in Grove City, crashed, and then developed lockjaw as the result of a broken leg. Serum arrived too late and Lewis Earle Sandt died at 25.

Just as Sandt had tested the capabilities of the automobiles he drove, he tested the capabilities of the planes he flew. He flew them higher. He flew them farther. He flew them in difficult weather. He manipulated them in new ways. Aviation historian David H. Onkst wrote “Although early exhibition aviators entertained millions and helped spur popular interest in flight, some scholars estimate that the fatality rate among them was as high as 90 percent. For those early aviators who never became rich, famous, or even well known, that was an expensive price to pay.”

So was this Brookville man a barnstormer, an exhibition flyer, or as Mary Geist Dick referred to him—“a nutty one”—an exhibitionist? The date of his death rules out “barnstormer,” a term that describes a pilot who would land in a farmer’s field, gather a crowd, and do stunts, and a term that didn’t originate until after Sandt died.

Local folks might have described him as an exhibitionist, a person who wants to attract attention to him or herself, but the newspapers and magazines of his time didn’t. The Pittsburgh Post said, “Risking his life to the treachery of a gale and battling the elements, Earle Sandt thrilled the city by his spectacular flight,” and the Scientific American said, “That he escaped with his life after his perilous trip is well nigh miraculous.” Yet he bragged to reporters that he would be a greater pilot than Beachey.

Exhibition flyers, on the other hand, were interested in demonstrating to others the capabilities of this new invention. Today, flight historians like Onkst describe these exhibition flyers as “courageous individuals who experimented with the limits of aeroplane design at a time when many designers were still struggling to solve some of the most fundamental aeronautical engineering problems.”

We conclude that Brookville-born Lewis Earle Sandt was one of these “courageous individuals,” with just a tad of exhibitionism thrown into the mix!

Copyright@Jefferson County Historical Society, Inc.