year of pre-med at Columbia University). “It worked out pretty well. She was heading for a speaking engagement in Portland, anyway. Actually`` she left us in Spokane and took the train.”

            Joe recalls the flight as if it were yesterday. “We left Bismark January 29 and arrived in Billings in time for a Chamber of Commerce luncheon. That night we were wined and dined in the governor’s mansion in Helena. It was a long day. Then came the dicey part of the flight.”

            “Up to now we had been blessed with beautiful sunny but cold weather. We encountered numerous snow squalls shortly after takeoff from Helena. Flying VFR we carefully made our way to Mullan Pass in Idaho, the lowest point across the Great Divide. It was impossible to proceed farther, the clouds obscured the mountains and we had no idea what was on the other side. But, to give up now would have doomed the venture.”

            “Hugh Rueschenberg was not one to give up. He made his way back to Missoula and climbed up and flew through a gap in the mountains north of town. In essence, without being aware of it, he had crossed the Great Divide. We found ourselves over the Clark Fork River that originates from Idaho’s Lake Pend Oreille. We followed the river, then turned southward and arrived in Spokane tired but happy.

            When they landed in Spokane there was no welcoming party.

            Joe recalls, “No one was expecting us. They didn’t know we were around. So I went down to the Davenport Hotel to see about some rooms. I told the clerk we had a special guest along and we wanted something extra nice for her. He said he had a suite available – two bedrooms, a living room, a dining room and a bath for $75. I took it. When Croil Hunter saw it he said something to the effect ‘hey, we’re going to have a party’. And we did. Just the six of us. Beverages and a big turkey dinner. I remember we started with Olympia oyster cocktails with hot sauce. I’d never seen an oyster before much less tasted one. It was quite an evening. We’d made it to Spokane. I took a picture of Amelia with my little Brownie camera, I still have it.”

            Sans Amelia, the Northern Transcontinental Survey Flight pioneers made it through the Cascade Mountains to Seattle on Ground Hog Day February 2. Mission accomplished.

            Joe recalls Northwest began flying Bismark-Seattle about four months later, June 1933. And it soon hired pilot Nick Mamer since Mamer at that time held Spokane-Seattle airmail rights. (Mamer was killed in a Northwest Lockheed 14-H accident near Bozeman, Montana in 1938. The crash occurred because of a structure problem in the plane’s tail).

            Interestingly. United Airlines was keeping a wary eye on Northwest’s activities on the ‘west end’. A memo written by W. A. Patterson, a long-time United Air Lines president (then a vice president) to F. G. Johnson, one of United’s chief executives, dated October 22, 1933, reads:

            “We occasionally receive a little gossip from the northwest concerning the northern airways situation. The latest is that Nick Mamer has been appointed superintendent of the Western Division of Northwest Airways. This action was possibly a move on the part of Northwest to gain the support formerly given Mamer. We also understand that Whittemore, their operations manager, has been doing considerable flying of the route between Billings and Seattle during the past few weeks.” (Billings was a crew change point.)

            (Patterson’s memo, and several more related ones, were donated to the NWA History Centre by retired NWA meteorologist Kenneth Bourke, Sebastpol, California. He ran across them while doing unrelated research at the Boeing Airplane Company’s archives in Seattle).