DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, right here in Van Zandt County, Texas. Now settle in, because this one reaches all the way from a little community called Corinth to the far edge of the sky itself. On November 22, 1898, William Francis and Mae Laine Post welcomed a boy into the world right here in Corinth, Van Zandt County.
They named him Wiley Hardeman Post. The family moved to Oklahoma when Wiley was still a boy, but this county claims him, and rightly so. Something took root in that young man — a pull toward flight, an itch that wouldn't quit.
In the late 1920s he went and got himself flight training, made his first solo flight, and earned an air transport license. Now here's where the story gets the kind of grit that separates a dreamer from a legend. Wiley Post lost one eye in an oil field accident.
One eye. And he did not walk away from aviation. He went right back up — barnstorming, flying commercial routes, teaching others to fly.
One-eyed. In an open cockpit. Against the sky.
He started stacking up records like cordwood. In 1930 he won the national air races. Then in 1931, he and a navigator named Harold Gatty circled the entire world together — 15,474 miles in less than nine days.
The world took notice. But Wiley Post wasn't finished. In 1933 he went around the world again — this time solo — in less than eight days.
Just him and the horizon. He didn't stop at breaking records, either. He invented and developed the first pressurized flight suit, because the stratosphere doesn't particularly care whether you can breathe.
He explored stratospheric flight, used an early Sperry autopilot mechanism, and worked with the U.S. Army Air Corps on an experimental automatic direction finding radio compass — what they called an ADF radio compass. He was a pioneer in the use of liquid oxygen for high altitude flight.
The man was practically building the future with his hands. His plane, the Winnie Mae, earned a permanent place in the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. — still there, still keeping watch. But in 1935, on a trip to Alaska, Wiley Post and humorist Will Rogers died together in a plane crash.
And just like that, the sky that had given him everything took him back. A boy from Corinth, Van Zandt County, Texas — who flew around the world twice, who suited up for the stratosphere, who did it all with one eye and a relentless nerve. That's Wiley Hardeman Post.
What the marker says
Pioneer aviator Wiley Hardeman Post was born on November 22, 1898, in the community of Corinth in Van Zandt County, to William Francis and Mae Laine Post, who moved to Oklahoma when Wiley was a boy. Wiley was inspired as a youth to learn to fly. In the late 1920s he obtained flight training, made his first solo flight, and acquired an air transport license. Despite the loss of one eye in an oil field accident, Post worked as a barnstormer, commercial pilot and flight instructor. Post set many flight records and won the national air races in 1930. He and Harold Gatty circled the world, flying 15,474 miles in less than 9 days in 1931. Post soloed around the world in less than 8 days in 1933. Post invented and developed the first pressurized flight suit, explored stratospheric flight, and used an early Sperry autopilot mechanism. He worked with the U. S. Army Air Corps on an experimental automatic direction finding (ADF) radio compass, and was a pioneer in the use of liquid oxygen for high altitude flight. Post and humorist Will Rogers died in a plane crash on a trip to Alaska in 1935. His plane the "Winnie Mae" is in the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. (1996)