By Eugenia M. Kenyon
When we were married but a year, a trip to the New York World's Fair was a real delight. We landed at the old Flushing Airport, took in all the sights, and I remember especially Billy Rose's Aquacade.
The day we were to take off on our return home, an experience occurred which was related by Lowell Thomas in his newscast that night. Shortly after our arrival at the field, a sudden, severe squall blew in off the coast. Tied-down planes were ripped loose and tossed around like paper boxes. I remember particularly a Beechcraft near the building we were in that was turned up on its tail and came to rest again rightside up. A flyer who had just landed a Monocoupe was struck by lightning as he walked across the field. He died in spite of help from New York City firemen with pulmotors.
Being eyewitnesses to the death and all the havoc was such a shattering experience that we postponed departure until the following day.
Notes by Ronald W. Kenyon
This anecdote was recounted by my late mother, Eugenia M. Kenyon, in a letter dated February 9, 1962, addressed to Tom Hamer, Aviation Editor of the Huntington, WV Herald Dispatch.
The 1939-1940 New York World's Fair was the first international exposition to be based on the future, with an opening slogan of "Dawn of a New Day." It allowed visitors to take a look at "the world of tomorrow," according to the official pamphlet. The theme center consisted of two all-white landmark monumental buildings named the Trylon [over 700 feet tall] and the Perisphere. Visitors entered the pavilions on a moving stairway and exited through a wide, curved walkway named the Helicline. Inside the Perisphere was a model city of tomorrow that visitors viewed from a moving walkway. The fair officially closed on October 27, 1940. Barely a year later, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States had declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy.
Billy Rose's Aquacade, a music, dance and swimming show, was the most popular and successful attraction at the World's Fair. It was produced in an Art Deco stadium seating 11,000.
Billy Rose (1899-1966) was an impresario, theatrical showman and lyricist. He divorced his first wife, comedienne Fanny Brice, to marry Eleanor Holm, one of the swimmers in the Aquacade.
Lowell Thomas (1892-1981) was a writer, broadcaster and world traveler, best known as the man who made Lawrence of Arabia famous. He broadcast a nightly news and commentary program and hosted the first regularly scheduled television news program starting in 1940, but he soon returned to radio, where he continued to present and comment on the news until his retirement in 1976. He had the longest radio career of anyone in his day.
The Monocoupe was a two-seat, side-by-side monoplane designed and built by Donald A. Luscombe. It was powered by a 90-hp Lambert radial engine.
The pulmotor was an apparatus for pumping oxygen into the lungs during artificial respiration.
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