You know you're an aviation pioneer when your registered U.S. pilot's license is No. 2. For 17 years, Fly Creek was home to this pioneer, A. Leo Stevens.
What Stevens piloted weren't airplanes, as he got his start in tethered balloon ascensions at age 12, in the 1880s. Young Leo's first flight was a memorable one and that was the start of a storied career in not only flying, but also several notable inventions.
A. Leo Stevens was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1877. His father, Frank, was part owner of Forest City Park, an amusement center near the city. A tethered balloon ascension was featured at the park one day. About 10,000 gathered to see the balloon rise to the sky, yet remain held to earth by a rope.
Accounts of what happened next vary, but one account in the Jan. 26, 1939, edition of The Oneonta Herald said, "Young Stevens rushed to his father's shop for a knife. Returning, he edged his way through the crowd and conferred at length with a companion who'd accompanied him to the park. Persons in the crowd were too occupied with watching the swagger of the debonair owner of the balloon to notice a small boy slip over the side of its wicker basket. They paid more attention a moment later when his companion sawed through the rope and the balloon soared to a height of 3,000 feet."
"The flight ended several miles from Cleveland," and some have said it was in Canton, "when young Leo remembered a sad story he had read of two boys who sailed away in a balloon, never to return, and pulled on the valve string of the balloon. It descended suddenly and deposited the boy aeronaut in a shallow and exceedingly muddy canal. So great was the fame resulting from his deed that a few months later he left home to join a traveling show which billed him as Prince Leo "" the death-defying boy aeronaut.'"
Whatever happened to Leo's companion that day in 1889 is uncertain, but it was clear Leo enjoyed the attention he received. By 1900 he had made more than 1,000 ascensions that ended in parachute jumps to provide the extra thrill for spectators.
There were a few times when Leo's stunts went terribly wrong. In Montreal in 1895, one jump ended with Stevens hanging from the slender spire of Notre Dame Cathedral. Another time, Stevens' balloon exploded 1,000 feet above Niagara Falls and he narrowly missed going over the gorge.
Stevens was a daredevil and a showman, but he was also quite the inventor. He was always experimenting and making improvements on aircraft and parachutes, patenting many of his works. Stevens constructed the first motor-powered airship in the U.S., and developed the ripcord, which opens a parachute after the jumper has cleared the plane.
During World War I, Stevens was an instructor at the U.S. Army Balloon School in Nebraska. For World War II, Leo helped develop a revolutionary type of parachute for the war effort.
In July 1925, Stevens married Laura Carter of Akron, Ohio, and first lived in New York City, and then moved to Fly Creek in 1927.
Stevens was on hand in June 1939 in Cooperstown, as a pioneer aviator and inventor, to participate in the centennial celebration of another pioneer inventor, Abner Doubleday, who some say was the inventor of the game of baseball.
While some may have had their eyes on Hall of Fame players, baseball memorabilia in a brand new museum or a game at Doubleday Field, others had their eyes skyward, watching A. Leo Stevens re-enact his balloon ascensions of the 1880s and '90s.
Stevens passed away May 7, 1944. He is buried at the Fly Creek Valley Cemetery, and fittingly his gravestone has an image of a parachute etched into it.
On Monday: Life in Oneonta ground to halt one June day in 1954.
City Historian Mark Simonson's column appears twice weekly. On Saturdays, his column focuses on the area during the Depression and before. His Monday columns address local history after the Depression. If you have feedback or ideas about the column, write to him at The Daily Star, or e-mail him at simmark@stny.rr.com. His website is www.oneontahistorian.com.
