Lela Forest Willingham

     Lela Forest Willingham, daughter of Donald Forest Willingham and Ruth Willett Lawhorn, was born 13 September 1912 at 1925 23rd St. in Everett, Snohomish County, Washington.¹ Lela Forest Willingham was the daughter of Donald Forest Willingham and Ruth Willett Lawhorn.      SEATTLE NEWSPAPER 27 MAY 1929
     THEY LEARN TO FLY YOUNG IN THE WEST
     High School Girl, Just 16, Is Taught to Pilot Ships and Overhaul Motors Like a Veteran
     by Ross Cunningham
     They learn to fly young, in Seattle. Miss Lela Newman, 16-year-old high school girl, is far advanced in her "air stuff." She's thought to be the west's youngest aviator.
     The daughter of William E. Newman, vice president and chief pilot for the Northwest Flying college, Lela has been studying aviation for the past six months.
     She started in the ground school course early last fall, donning greasy overalls and working with the young men over the OX-5 and radial motors until she had mastered the construction of them and learned the necessary repairs which sometimes have to be made on a strange landing field.
     After going to school all day at Franklin High, where she is a junior, Lela went to the ground school in the evening to learn rigging and the theory of navigation as it is taught in the class. Thru this and into aerology and the many subjects which are necessary to the making of a competent aviator, she studied.
     STUDIED FROM THE AIR
     Then she branched out into the actual flying course. Under the instruction of her father, who is known as one of the most competent fliers in the northwest, she studied the game from the air.
     Out over the Duwamish valley and Elliott bay the plane cruised, teaching her the handling of the controls. Then they changed the instructions and Lela learned how to land her plane on the field.
     After that came navigation. Finding your way around in the clouds where there are no instruction signs is a difficult job, but Lela mastered that part and now she is a competent flier, ready to fly alone without her father's guiding hand.
     Newman has been flying since 1916, when he was a member of the British Royal Flying corps, seeing service in France during the war²      The Franklin Tolo September 24, 1930 page 3
     Lela Newman Only Aviatrix In Franklin Hi
     The only girl in Franklin who can really fly. No more need be said. Lela Newman, whose picture has been in every Seattle paper the last few days along with a glowing account of her parachute leap, is a Franklin student.
     She is president of the Aviation and Tusitala clubs and is known to Mr. Upton' Creative Writing classes as the girl who writes the dramatic flying stories he often reads to them. Lela Newman in also known in art circles. Last June at the close of school Mr. Talaton, Tolo annual photographer took several pictures of her and two of these won blue ribbins (sic) in a photographer's convention.
     Last Sunday, taking part in the air circus at Boeing field, Lela made a 1500 ft. parachute Jump from her father's plane which easily might have resulted in her death had she not been quick witted enough to remember her father's training. The parachute caught in the high tension wires at the lower end of Boeing field and by kicking her feet, Lela diverted the route of her parachute and her body missed the wires by a few inches.
     In spite of her narrow escape Lela says "It's the most wonderful feeling in the world."
     "Just what does it feel like," reporters insisted.
     "I can't explain, Really I don't think anyone could. It's the most triumphant sensation one could have, I think."
     When asked if she intended to try more jumps, Lela said somewhat wistfully, "Gee I don't think so--at least not for awhile, Mother won't let me. If that jump had turned out successfully she might have been, but since it didn't--I don't know. She says I can be an exhibition jumper later. I'll have to anyway. Dads going to make a stunt flyer of me." Thus Lela Newman's exciting future is planned. Her father, with whom she had been flying for years, is Major Bill Newman, who conducts a flying school at Boeing field.²      SEATTLE NEWSPAPER, 25 DECEMBER 1930 page 3
     SEATTLE GIRL IS SOLO FLYER AT SEVENTEEN
     Lela Newman, Franklin High School Student, Achieves Perfect Takeoff And Landing
     With only eight hours of flying at an aviation school, divided into four hours a year ago and four hours this winter, Miss Lela Newman yesterday made a solo flight of half an hour, achieving the triple feat of making a perfect takeoff, landing and the record of the youngest flyers ever to solo in the Northwest. Miss Newman is only seventeen, and her father, Maj. Bill Newman, operator of the Newman Flying School, believes she is the youngest girl solo flyer in the country.
     CHRISTMAS PRESENT
     The training and the solo flight constituted Newman's Christmas present to his daughter, who is enthusiastic over aviation.
     She is a student at the Franklin High School and president of the Franklin High school Aviation Club, and member of the Women's National Aeronautical Association.
     She comes naturally by her bent for the air as her father has a background of fifteen years of flying. He was a member of the British air forces during the World War, with two years of service in France.
     Miss Newman figured in the news recently when she made her first parachute jump September 21 last, averting a serious accident by skillfully steering the "chute" away from high tension wires into which she was falling²
Lela Newman graduated from Franklin High School at 3013 S. Mount Baker Blvd. in Seattle, King County, Washington, in June 1931.² She married Benjamin G. Johnson, son of John S. Johnson and Helen (__?__) Johnson, on 3 June 1933 in Beverly Park, Snohomish County, Washington. John H. Wells, a Christian Church Minister, officiated. The ceremony was witnessed by Lewis Lafayette Willingham.^2,3 Lela Forest Johnson was a member of the Associated Women Pilots at Boeing Field in Seattle, King County, Washington, while she was married to Ben Johnson.² She and Benjamin G. Johnson were divorced about 1934.⁴ Lela apparently took back the surname of Willingham as shown in later events. Lela Forest Willingham married David William Wilcox, son of Rufus Wells Wilcox and Emma Philinda Metcalf, on 18 August 1935 in Highland Park, Wayne County, Michigan..⁵ Lela Forest Willingham name was listed as Lela Willingham on the marriage certificate, not Lela Newman or Lela Johnson. She was a farm wife in Ogemaw County, Michigan, from 1936 to 1940.² She was employed by Boeing Aircraft from 1941 to 1945 in Seattle, King County, Washington, as an aircraft assembler.²      Boeing NEWS - Vol. 3, No. 12 - March 22, 1944 - page 8
     WOMAN RUDDER RIGGER RECALLS RIGORS OF EARLY PILOT TRAINING
     Among the first women pilots to fly from Boeing Field, Lela Willingham Wilcox, shop 310, is rigging rudders on B-17s now--just across the field from her early pilot training school.
     "There were only two hangers on the field then, in the fall of 1928," she recalls. "One belonged to Elliott Merrill and the other to Boeing. We had to tie our planes down with ropes."
     As her stepfather, Bill Newman, owned one of the two early flying schools where, Lela had a real opportunity to get in on the ground floor of flying's first fling in the twenties. At seventeen, she was the youngest student pilot in Seattle.
     But there were handicaps to this arrangement, according to Lela. she didn't mind grabbing her flying time in between "paying" students, but the rules she had to follow as the "boss's daughter" were strict.
     In her words, "No sloppy landings. Dad made me put her down right on the airline pilots' line."
     Then there was the time she made a forced landing and didn't follow any rules--not even regular field rules--when she cut out another plane already coming in for a landing and headed for a hangar with her Arrowsport's engine knocking. The Arrowsport was the first plane around the field with balloon tires, she said, but it was an open cockpit plane and she had to wear a heavily-padded helmet for warmth.
     This afternoon she had left her office work and gone up to practice turns and banks. Before she realized the engine wasn't sounding right and lifted up one side of her helmet to hear better, a valve head had blown off and pounded a hole in the top of the piston, destroying the engine's compression. She tried to turn off the engine in preparation for making a forced landing but met with no success.
     Things were happening fast for the young student. Somehow she got down. Mechanics rushed out and grabbed the wings of her slowly-moving plane to stop it as she taxied by.
     "For just seventeen, it was something in the way of an experience," laughs Lela about it now. "At that time I knew much more about flying than I did about engines."
     A parachutist as well, she made her initial jump when an aerial circus came to Seattle.
     "I was out on the wing for five or six minutes before I jumped," she remembers. "It's a swell view up there, just sitting and watching everything below. But a wind was up and my 'chute almost drifted into a high tension wire."
     Flying runs in her family. Besides her pilot stepfather, there's her husband David, a former student of their school, who now works in the model shop at Plant 1, and her cousin "Willy" Willingham, Boeing production test pilot.
     Although grounded for the duration, this active mother of three anticipates post-war piloting--in a helicopter.
     Her reason, "You don't have to hunt up a field to get down and there's no parking problem"²
Lela Willingham Wilcox was a practical nurse at Tolfree Memorial Hospital in West Branch, Ogemaw County, Michigan, from 1945 to 1950.² Her Social Security Number was 539-14-0702 issued in Washington before 1951.⁶ She was a receptionist and bookkeeper at Willingham Electric in Everett, Snohomish County, Washington, from 1951 to 1956.² She was a receptionist and bookkeeper at Sager's Construction, Inc. in Everett, Snohomish County, Washington, from 16 April 1956 to 1982.² She and David William Wilcox were divorced on 30 November 1959 in Everett, Snohomish County, Washington.⁷ Lela Willingham Wilcox's ex-husband, David William Wilcox, died on 24 March 1969 in Everett, Snohomish County, Washington, of a heart attack and stroke.^6,8,9 David William Wilcox was buried on 28 March 1969 in the Cypress Lawn Cemetery, Everett, Snohomish County, Washington.^8,10 Lela Willingham Wilcox's ex-husband, Benjamin G. Johnson, died on 20 November 1991 in Auburn, King County, Washington.¹¹ Lela Willingham Wilcox died on 28 January 1995 at home in her own bed in Surprise, Maricopa County, Arizona, of heart failure. She had made cookies the night before in anticipation of a visit from her son, David.^6,2 She was cremated at a crematory in Maricopa County, Arizona.² She was buried in the Evergreen Cemetery, Everett, Snohomish County, Washington.^2,12