Mom's Log
Day 7
Friday, June 3
Oklahoma
Kent Felkins flew Martha from Harvey Young Airport in Tulsa to Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
Martha was on the 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. news last night in Tulsa. A woman receptionist from the FBO was about to drive Martha to meet Kent at 9:30 a.m. Before they drove off from the parking lot of the airport where Martha phoned from and slept last night, approximately thirty men in a large meeting room on the second-story were waving at her from the windows and then began clapping as she was loading the truck with her luggage. She was taken aback and did not know how they recognized her in plain clothes. The woman told Martha to go upstairs and meet them, so she did. There were approximately a hundred people in the room who were attending a maintenance class for Boeing 767 mechanics in training. One of them explained that some of them had seen Martha on the news story the night before and had recognized her. They said they thought what she was doing was neat. She swore them in to the Air Adventurers Club as a group and passed out an inch stack of membership cards. This was one of the best thrills of her adventures so far.
Kent Felkins flew Martha in J-3 1940 Cub to Bartlesville. Charlie Harris, the chairman of Bartlesville Biplane Association Fly–In greeted them when they landed. Martha is staying the night in a hotel six miles away from the airport with Joy and Hal Owens from Yukon, Oklahoma. Joy is an artist and she drew a caricature of Martha at the fly-in. (see letter and photo and poem in the photo envelope).
At the Biplane Fly-In, Eric Freidebach 21 years old, dynamic person, who sells Stearman parts and has a business in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, took video of Martha and Lea Abbott, an 81 year-old pilot with the replica he built of a 1910 Curtiss Pusher from Texas. Martha and Mr. Abbott were dressed in the same era aviator clothing. Lea towed his flying machine from Texas behind his motor home and flew it at the fly-in. The pilot sits out in the breeze on this primitive airplane.
