When Rodgers Ruled The Air: Part IV

The final post in a series sharing the story of how a scion of HdG’s storied Rodgers family became the first man to fly across America.

Epilog

Calbraith Perry Rodgers would make one more flight on his trip across the country.

He flew from Pasadena to Long Beach to make it official. Though the trip was just a 12-mile hop, the Vin Fiz crashed once again, and Cal Rogers broke an ankle and cracked several ribs. Rodgers spent nearly a month in the hospital, and when he climbed aboard the Vin Fiz for the final flight, his legs were encased in plaster casts. Still, on December 10, he managed to dip the landing skids of his diminutive, and much patched Wright Flyer in the Pacific. He had been met by mobs, crashed in lonely corn fields, and crossed deserts and prairies and skirted mountains along the way. Practically every part of his plane has been replaced, save for one strut and one of the rudders. J. Ogden Armour spent $180,000 on the plane, repairs, the special train and publicity. The Hearst Prize went unclaimed.  The famous publisher never even bothered to congratulate Rodgers on his epic achievement.

The bottle of Vin Fizz that had been strapped to one of the plane’s struts made the entire trip intact.

Fortune would not smile on Cal Rodgers much longer. Tragically, he was flying an exhibition over Long Beach in April 1912, when a flock of seagulls crashed into his plane, causing Rodgers to lose control and crash. Calbraith Perry Rogers died not far from where he had dipped his wings in the Pacific to mark the end of his transcontinental trip only a few months before.

Like Wilbur and Orville Wright, Barney Oldfield, Eddie Rickenbacker and Charles Lindberg, Calbraith Perry Rodger’s name belongs on the list of daredevils and pioneers, whose exploits pointed the way to the future and helped shaped the modern world.

What did this nearly forgotten and briefly celebrated adventure ultimately mean?

Once, when the Vin Fiz was laid up at a whistle stop town named Kyle, TX, Cal Rogers offered to take the locals up in his plane for five dollars.

There were no takers. Finally a small boy stepped forward and held out a quarter.

Rogers hoisted him up into the Vin Fiz and gave him his quarter back.

"This one is a gift," he told the boy. "A gift of flight—the sky and the wind. You will see your whole town, the fields around it. You will know a different world. Now that is a gift to remember."