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Centre Daily Times May 14 2005
Monument honors first airmail pilots
Dedication ceremony to take place Sunday at philatelic center
By Tom Lavis; The (Johnstown) Tribune-Democrat
"Paul Mulvehill is delighted that a granite monument he purchased several years ago to honor pioneer airmail pilots has found a permanent home.
His monument will be dedicated at 3 p.m. Sunday at the American Philatelic Center in Bellefonte.
The ceremony is expected to attract airmail enthusiasts, historians and philatelists who will honor the memory of pilots who carried the mail from 1919 to 1927.
The flight through the Allegheny Mountains was considered to be the most dangerous leg of the route that connected New York and Chicago. This stretch became known as "Hell's Stretch" when 34 pilots lost their lives in an early effort to establish airmail service.
Mulvehill donated the 9-foot, 2,800-pound stone to American Philatelic Society after repeated attempts to locate it in Cambria County.
He and the society collaborated on the inscription. Depicted on the top of the monument is a biplane of the early 1900s.
Mulvehill, who lives in the Ebensburg area, initially wanted to place the monument at the Ebensburg Airport, which offered visibility and easy access from U.S. Route 22.
"I'm tickled to death to see the monument finally displayed," Mulvehill said.
"It will tell the public about the bravery of these pioneers."
Former astronaut Col. Henry "Hank" Hartsfield will be the featured speaker at the dedication.
Hartsfield served in the Air Force from 1955 to 1977 and has logged more than 7,400 hours of flying time with more than 483 hours in space.
While he was with NASA, Hartsfield was a member of support crew for Apollo 16 and the Skylab 2, 3 and 4 missions.
On Aug. 30, 1984, Hartsfield -- along with crew members Mike Coats, Judy Resnik, Steve Hawley, Mike Mullane and Charlie Walker -- launched from Kennedy Space Center on the maiden flight of the Space Shuttle Discovery.
The memorial's dedication comes on the 87th anniversary of the first regular airmail service, on a route that carried letters from New York to Washington.
By fall 1918, test flights had identified Bellefonte as a refueling stop on the proposed New York-Chicago leg for transcontinental mail.
The official dedication begins at 2 p.m. with a musical presentation, followed by a memorial ceremony. Following the invocation and the presenting of the colors, Hartsfield will speak and assist with the laying of a wreath.
"The ceremony will end with the playing of taps" Mulvehill said.
Mulvehill, a retired Navy pilot with 30 years of service, took it upon himself to spend more than $2,000 for the memorial in honor of these airmail pilots.
In 1919, World War I veterans were hired by the government to navigate the 2,666-mile coast-to-coast flights in planes that had open cockpits, bare instrumentation and only a compass for navigation.
Nationwide, Mulvehill says, in the first year of operation, 1,263 flights were made and 55 pilots were killed.
More fatalities happened in this region between 1919 and 1927 than in any other part of the transcontinental route because of unpredictable and changing weather conditions.
Tom Lavis can be reached at tlavis@tribdem.com."
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