Historically Inclined: Digital_Humanities: Albuquerque Airport Resources and Research

When I interned at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, I completed projects that involved going through oral histories and videos and seeing how they could be used for museum exhibits. I don't know how much of this will be useful to the DH project and course, but I felt it would be best to share what I know for now and see if it can be valuable to anyone else in the class.

Oral Histories

Below are some Oral Histories I looked through with information on what they discussed. These were recorded on cassette tapes, however, which could make it difficult to transfer it online. The heading before each in bold is information about where this was collected. I truncated the text below it to only refer to what would be applicable to the airport. The time period that each one of these oral histories talk about is pretty uncertain, but it seems to be around 1950 - 1970, depending on the person and what they are talking about.

Albuquerque Museum, South Valley Oral History Project, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Item Number: SVP-TP-F28July97. Document: Tape Log. Team: “Valle Grande.” Fieldworker: Tomas Pena. Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico. Informant: Florencio Baca, SVOH. Florencio Baca, South Valley Oral History Project. 28 July 1997. Inter: T. Pena. Miscellaneous Files and South Valley Oral History Project (Indexes of SVOHP). Actual Tape: 2002.025.001, Oral History “General Tapes, Alpha A-L, Box 1 of 2

Tape 1, Side 1

Sandia Base

5:10 Sandia was a fair employer, they never deviated from equal opportunities. When that act came through, we had not problem transitioning because they were already doing that. I worked there for 31.5 years. I started in April 1952

Tape 2, Side 1

197

197 Tower Road was named for the towers used in the 1930s to navigate planes

316

316 Aircraft school. At the old airport, near the Atomic Museum in ABQ, NM

Tape 2, Side 2

517

517 Flew planes as a test mechanic. Flew various planes.

Albuquerque Museum South Valley Oral History Project, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Item Number: SVP-TP-19July97.2. Document: Tape log. Team: “Valle Grande.” Fieldworker: Tomas Pena. Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico. Informant: Vincente Apodaca, South Valle Oral History. 1 Nov. 1996. (Tape originally in Spanish)

Tape 1

292

292 Worked on airport in Albuquerque, for about 3 years

KRQE Channel 13 Collections

These are basically B Roll film of what Channel 13 would show on the news. These were all on VHS, though some have been digitized since then. In general, a lot of the videos lack real content, and are mostly goods as supplements to other information. Most of these took place in the 1970s, I believe. The numbers refer to the minute location in the tape.

Tape 4

Random Informational video about airplanes 39-40

Contains info and footage of the 1^st commercial flight

Not really New Mexican (?)

However, Amela Earhart was on this flight, and she did visit NM

TWA—celebrating old era of transportation

Talks about Amelia Earhart

NM National Guard Claiming Discrimination 124-126

The National Guard in NM has been plagued with other suits and accusations concerning discrimination

Today, an affidavit was filed against Col. Sands for being involved in a cheating scandal

Filed w/ department of airforce

On-going investigation of international guard

Sign reads “Enchilada air force, home of the ‘tacos’”

Tape 5

775 days in prison, man returns home 35-36

See the man getting off the airplane, meeting family

Dedicates his time in prison to NM

Tuesday, July 27, 1971

Reies Tijerina, activist for Hispanic rights and land rights; worked to restore land grant rights to Hispanic and Mexican owners and was part of the chicano movement

Tape 8

Spirit of St. Louis 100-101

Shots of the small aircraft and pilot, John Linberg

Speeches about him

Shots of him doing a photo shoot

Tape 9

Energy Crisis w/ airplanes 28-30

Possibly owner of Sunport talking about how to reduce energy usage @ the airport

i.e. use less aircrafts, have less take off times, use bigger aircrafts with more seats

It shows the Albuquerque Sunport; it is definitely not as developed as it is now, and generally deserted of people and planes

ABQ Women Project

This was a project I did myself where I basically looked up numerous women who were influential for Albuquerque and listed biographical information about them. I generally include information on the sources that I draw from and also list and images from the Albuquerque Museum Photoarchives that have these women in them. These women range across time period and general connection to Albuquerque.

Aviation

Mary Carroll

First Woman Pilot of Albuquerque

Time Period: 1930s

First woman pilot in Albuquerque. She claimed that her first solo flight was “the most thrilling event of her life.”

ABQ Affiliation: ABQ pilot.

Sources:

Balloons to Bombers, Don E. Alberts

Jerrie Cobb

Pilot and Potential Astronaut

Time Period: 1960s

Jerrie Cobb has been flying since she was 12. When she turned 18, she received her Commercial Pilot’s license and went on to earn her Multi-Engine, Instrument, Flight Instructor and Ground Instructor ratings as well as her Airline Transport license. By 19, she was teaching men to fly, and by 21, she was delivering sleek military fighters and four-engine bombers to foreign Air Forces around the world. She went on to set new World Aviation records for speed, distance, and absolute altitude. She became the first woman to fly in the world’s largest air exposition, the Salon Aeronautique Internacional in Paris, her fellow airmen named her Pilot of the Year and awarded her the Amelia Earhart Gold Medal of Achievement. Life Magazine named her one of the nine women of the “100 most important young people in the United States.” She was picked by the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque in 1959 to be the first woman to undergo the same physical and psychological fitness testing regimen as the Mercury Astronaut Selection Tests for America’s first space mission. She passed all three phases with flying colors. Due to her high performance, she was asked to recruit 25 other qualified women pilots. Twelve passed the first series of tests, but the American space program did not open the ranks of its astronaut corps to women until 1978 and the project was shut down. Secretly, however, the women were known as the Mercury 13. Jerrie was later appointed by the Administrator of NASA as consultant to the nation’s space program in 1961, but NASA’s requirement that astronauts have military jet test pilot experience eliminated all women since women were not allowed to fly in the military. After this loss, she decided to serve primitive people in the Amazon. For 35 years, she worked doing this, and has been honored by governments of France, Brazil, Peru, Columbia, and Ecuador. President Nixon awarded her the Harmon Trophy as the top woman pilot in the world. For her humanitarian work in the Amazon, she has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

ABQ Affiliation: Trained at Lovelace

Sources:

Quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/frontiers/cobb.html

www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mercury/missions/astronaut.html

http://userpages.aug.com/captbarb/astronauts.html

Mrs. D. E. Dalbey

Wife of General Manager of the First Company that Owned the ABQ Airport

Time Period: 1930s

Wife of general manager first company that owned ABQ Airport. She supported People’s Ticket against mayor Clyde Tingley. IN addressing a women’s political meeting in Albuquerque, she reported that Tingley was furious and had threatened to fight the airport and TAT unless she got out of the election campaign. He asked her if she knew that he had done a great deal for the airport and incidentally her husband and TAT and she told him that she had nothing to do with her husband’s business and that TAT only leased a section of the airport’s land for a field. Finally, she related to the audience, after the czar of the city had threatened, cajoled, and attempted to intimidate her in every way possible, he pleaded: “But Mrs. Dalbey, you’re going to vote for me, aren’t you?” The laughter of the women present at the meeting drowned out the speaker’s answer.

ABQ Affiliation: Husband general manager of first company that owned ABQ

Airport.

Sources:

Balloons to Bombers, Don. E. Alberts

Amelia Earhart

Pilot

Time Period: 1920s-1940s

Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas on July 24, 1897. She spent her childhood in various towns, including Atchison and Kansas City, Kansas and Des Moines, Iowa. At 19, she attended Ogontz School near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Two years later, she left school and took a course in Red Cross First Aid. She enlisted as a nurse’s aid at Spadina Military Hospital in Toronto, Canada and tended to wounded soldiers during WWI. The next year, she enrolled as a premedical student at Columbia University in New York. She later moved to California where she learned to fly. In 1922, she purchased her first airplane, a Kinner Airster with the help of her mother and sister. After her parent’s divorce, she moved back east where she was employed as a social worker in Denison House in Boston, Massachusetts. She was selected to be the first female passenger on a transatlantic flight in 1928 by her future husband, the publisher, George Palmer Putnam. With pilot Wilmer Stultz and mechanic Lou Gordon, Earhart flew from Newfoundland to Wales aboard the trimotor plane Friendship. Upon the completion of the flight, Earhart wrote the book 20 Hours – 40 minutes. In 1931, she married George, but continued her aviation career under her maiden name. George organized her flights and public appearances, and arranged for her to endorse a line of flight luggage and sports clothes. He also published two of her books, The Fun of It, and Last Flight. After a series of record-making flights, she became the first woman to make a solo transatlantic flight in 1932. That same year, she developed flying clothes for the Ninety-Nines. Then, she began designing her own line of clothes “for the woman who lives actively.” In 1935, Earhart became the first person to fly from Hawaii to the American mainland. By doing so, she became not only the first person to solo anywhere in the Pacific, but also the first person to solo both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Also in 1935, she joined the faculty of Purdue University as a female career consultant. It was the purchase of a Lockheed Electro, through Purdue University, that enabled Earhart to fulfill her dream of circumnavigating the world. In June 1937, Earhart embarked upon the first around-the-world flight at the equator. On July 2^nd, after completing nearly two-thirds of her flight—over 22,000 miles—Earhart vanished along with her navigator Frederick Noonan. They took off from Lae, New Guinea, bound for tiny Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean. The distance from Lae to Howland was about the equal to a transcontinental flight across the US. A great naval, air, and land search failed to locate Earhart, Noonan, or the aircraft, and it was assumed they were lost at sea. To this day, their fate is the subject of unending speculation. In 1939, George authored Earhart’s biography, entitled Soaring Wings, as a tribute to his wife. As a whole, Earhart also tried to combat stereotypes by stressing variety of women involved in aviation. Throughout her life, Earhart believed women needed to step forward together and open doors for one another. She spent much of her career speaking and writing to promote women’s opportunities in aviation and other fields. Other records that Earhart holds are as follows: 1922, Set women’s altitude record of 14,000 feet; 1928, became first woman to fly across the Atlantic as a passenger; 1928, was the first woman to make a solo round-trip flight across the US; 1929, took third place in the first Women’s Air Derby in her Lockheed Vega; 1930, set women’s speed record of 181 miles per hour; 1931, set autogiro altitude record of 18, 451 feet; 1932, became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic; 1932, received the National Geographic Society’s Special Gold Medal; 1932, Set women’s transcontinental speed record for Los Angeles, California to Newark, New Jersey; 1933, broke her previous women’s transcontinental speed record from Los Angeles to Newark; 1935, became the first person to fly solo from Los Angeles to Mexico City; 1935, became the first person to fly solo from Mexico City to Newark; 1937, broke her previous women’s transcontinental speed record from Oakland, CA to Honolulu, HI.

ABQ Affiliation: Visited ABQ @ certain points. Stopped here at times.

List of Images:

1. PA1968.001.043

T.A.T. Ford Trimotor inaugural flight ceremony

20th Century, 1929
Print, B/W
4.75" x 7"
Locale: Albuquerque Airport

Gift of Clark Speakman

T.A.T. Ford Tri-motor, NC 9646, refueling. T.A.T. terminal building in background, inaugural flight ceremonies at airport, July 1929. Catherine Stinson (Mrs. Mike Otero) made speech. W.A. Keleher was master of ceremonies. Amelia Earhart on this plane.

2. PA1978.141.268

T.A.T., Tri-motor, Clyde Tingley, Amelia Earhart
Hanna

20th century; Depression, 07/14/1929

Clyde Tingley, Amelia Earhart and others IN FRONT OF T.A.T. AIRLINES TRI-MOTOR, INCLUDING MAYOR CLYDE TINGLEY & AMELIA EARHART PUTNAM. The University of New Mexico Centennial Project.

3. PC2012.15.1

Proclamations (2-sided)
Amelia Earhart proclamation signed by Mayor Harry Kinney and Governor Bruce King,

American, 20th century, 1982
paper, ink, silk ribbon

Gift of Ed Dibello

Two documents dry-mounted to cardboard into 1 sheet. One side is an Amelia Earhart Day proclamation by Mayor Harry Kinney, January 28, 1982, and the other is a state proclamation signed by Gov. Bruce King for the week of January 24-30, 1982. Paper, ink, embossed foil, satin ribbon.

This city/state document complements a photograph of Earhart taken in Albuquerque in 1929. There are ongoing efforts to locate her aircraft which could be resolved soon.

4. RS1989.5.1

Painting, Amelia Earhart
Amelia Earhart
Hella Broeske Shattuck, 1906

20th century; 1970s, 1971
Oil paint
Overall: 24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.8 cm)

In Memory of Beryldine Shollenbarger

Oil on canvas painting of Amelia Earhart by Hella Broeske Shattuck, b. 1906, painted 1971. DS 10/09.

Sources:

Ameliaearhartmuseum.org

Laura Ingalls, Jacqueline Cochran, Ruth Nichols

Women Pilots

Time Period: 1930s/1940s

Well-known women pilots in Albuquerque. Ingalls established the women’s east-west transcontinental speed record during the 1930s, landing at the airport after dark en route to LA. She also made a big hit at Oxnard Field in 1941. During a nationwide anti-war publicity flight, she stalled her Locheed Vega aircraft just before touching down on the field’s east-west runway. The resulting crash looked bad, but she was fine. Parts of the plane hung for many years in the shop area of ABQ high. Jackie Cochran set a new world speed record in 1940 at 249 MPH

ABQ Affiliation: ABQ pilots

List of Images:

1. PA1993.001.003

John Fertig