When we first moved to the house I grew up in, there was a lady that lived behind us for a while. It turns out that her husband used to be a pilot. For that matter, it turns out that he was one of the first pilots in Bay City (not the first though).
Henry Dora was born on October 30, 1892 in Hampton Township in Bay County. Henry started as a mechanic. He ended up trading his repairs for flying time. He made his first solo flight in August of 1912. It was from Curtiss Farm which is now known as James Clements airport.
During World War I, he served in the field artillery (which I think is where the aviation units were). After the war, he ended up buying a surplus Curtiss Jenny. Using that, he would do barnstorming and general promotion of aviation. He also operated a flying school and helped to build the James Clements airport. He would become the first manager for 15 years. Afterwards, he ran a machine shop. He holds one of the earlier pilots license and an even earlier mechanics license.
Anyway, it was pretty cool meeting his wife because she had all sorts of pictures from when he was a pilot. Sadly, she didn't live there long enough and I didn't get to know her as well as I would have liked.
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