User:Ac11av8rhx/sandbox

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While attending Joplin High School, Cummings learned to fly. His first solo flight was on March 3, 1927. Some reports of his learning to fly refer to Orville Wright, the aviation pioneer, as being his god-father and his flight instructor. These reports appear to be based upon either media interviews of Cummings or uncited references. There is no historical record of Orville Wright having traveled to Joplin, Missouri, either around the time of the gestation or the birth of Robert Cummings, or during 1927 – the year Cummings learned to fly. Cummings, born in 1910, would have only been 8 years old when Orville Wright had essentially stopped flying as a result of injuries he sustained from an accident at Fort Myer, Virginia, in September 1908. That Orville Wright taught Cummings to fly is also contradicted by Cummings’ interview reported in the March 1960 Flying magazine. There, Cummings described that he learned to fly “by trial and error, mostly error” during 3 hours of instruction from a Joplin, Missouri plumber named Cooper before he soloed on March 3, 1927.

Cummings gave Joplin residents rides in his aircraft for $5 per person. f/n 5.

f/n x1. “Cummings Joins Lucy Show” Ithaca Journal, September 8, 1972 (god-father).

f/n x2. “Charles Clarence Robert Orville Cummings” Des Moines Register, June 8, 1980 (god-father).

f/n x3. The Robert Briem Show, KABC-AM Radio (May 22, 1982 12:07 a.m. to 1:56 a.m.), referenced at www.classicmoviehum.com/blog/classic-movie-trivia-robert-cummings-and-orville-wright/. Retrieved 2018-09-26.

f/n x4. Stars in Khaki, James W. Wise, Jr., and Paul W. Wilderson, III (U.S. Naval Institute 2000) p. 188 (god-father).

f/n 5. Christensen, Lawrence O., ed. Dictionary of Missouri Biography. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1999).   ISBN 978-0-82621-222-1.

f/n 6. Greenwood, James R. “Meet Bob Cummings … Pilot, Actor, Businessman.”  Flying, 66:3, March 1960, pp. 44-46, 54, 56.

f/n x5. Wilbur and Orville Wright A Chronology Commemorating the Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Orville Wright August 19, 1871, Renstrom, Arthur G. (Library of Congress 1975) p. 208 (Orville Wright - last flight as a pilot on May 13, 1918, in his Wright 1911 biplane).

f/n x6. Orville’s Aviators, Edwards, John Carver (McFarland & Co. 2009), p. 158 (last official flight was at South Field on May 13, 1918).

f/n x7. Wilbur and Orville Wright A Chronology, supra. pp 43-54, 83-84 (August 1909 through December 1910, and 1927, respectively).

f/n x8. The Wright Brothers, McCullough, David (Simon & Schuster 2015).

f/n x9. Correspondence of Stephen Wright of The Wright Brothers Family Foundation dated January 31, 2019(“The Wrights’ lives during this time period [1909 – 1910] were busy and well documented. Most of their time was spent in travel throughout Europe and the East Coast and consisted of meetings, flying demonstrations, ceremonial appearances and the work of building airplanes. The story of Robert Cummings father having met Orville, or both brothers in one account, make it seem likely to have been impossible. … With regard to Orville having personally trained Robert Cummings to fly [in 1927]: I can tell you with reasonable certainty that Orville’s last logged flight as Pilot in Command, as documented in Arthur George Renstrom’s Chronology, was made in 1918”).