Yuma has a rich and colorful aviation history. On October 25, 1911 Robert Fowler became the first person to land an airplane in Arizona. The inaugural Women’s Air Derby included an extended stop in Yuma on August 19, 1929. The Yuma Army Airfield was the training site for hundreds of World War II pilots. In 1949 Bob Woodhouse and Woody Jongeward completed an epic endurance flight of 1,124 hours in their “City of Yuma” airplane. And during Yuma’s no-waiting “wedding chapel era” (1928-1956), aerial elopements of California couples were commonplace. Among those who eloped to Yuma by air were six extraordinary women aviators.
Ruth Blaney Alexander and Robert Elliott—June 21, 1930
Ruth Blaney Alexander’s aviation achievements were remarkable in light of the fact that she was a licensed pilot for less than a year. Unfortunately, when she died in 1930 at the age of 25, news of Alexander’s tangled marital status overshadowed her role as a pioneering woman aviator.
The day after Ruth Alexander earned her pilot’s license on November 17, 1929, she set her first women’s flight altitude record. Alexander broke her own record multiple times, but when she reached 26,000 feet on July 11, 1930, she set an altitude record for all light plane pilots, men or women. Due to a faulty oxygen supply, Ruth lost consciousness for a few minutes at the peak of her record flight, but she managed to regain control of her plane and avoid disaster.
On September 18, 1930 Ruth Alexander departed from San Diego’s Lindbergh Field on what was planned as a cross-country flight to New York City. Ruth’s parents from Irving, Kansas had traveled to Wichita where a mid-flight stop had been scheduled. And waiting for Ruth in New York was Robert Elliott, an ensign in the U.S. Navy. Unbeknownst to Ruth’s friends and family, Robert Elliott had become Ruth’s third husband on June 21, 1930 when the couple eloped by air to Yuma from San Diego. Even the Yuma newspaper failed to report this marriage, possibly because Ruth used her maiden name, Ruth Blaney, on her wedding license application.
The fatal accident occurred shortly after Ruth Alexander took off in thick fog in a plane that was overloaded with fuel. The extra weight was given as a likely cause for the plane going into a spin and crashing. Investigators later searched Ruth’s hotel room, where they found her recent wedding license, her wedding ring, and a “To Be Opened in Case of Accident” letter addressed to her mother.
Ruth Barron and Nat Zitto—December 11, 1930
On December 11, 1930 Ruth Barron and Nat Zitto, both pilots, flew to Yuma for marriage. (The newspaper incorrectly listed the groom’s name as “Matthew” Zitto.) A few months earlier Ruth Barron had a mishap in Arizona during the second annual Women’s Air Derby which began in Long Beach and concluded in Chicago. Barron was missing for several hours after taking off from Calexico on August 18. Race competitors and officials feared that Ruth Barron had met the same fate suffered by Marvel Crosson at the previous Women’s Air Derby. (Crosson had been killed when, after taking off from Yuma, her plane crashed near Wellton, Arizona.) In the 1930 race a clogged fuel line forced Ruth Barron to land her airplane in a cornfield near Holbrook. After walking several miles Ruth was picked up by a rancher and was eventually able to repair her plane and resume her journey. Impressively, she finished the race, but she arrived in Chicago much later than the other contestants.
When Ruth Barron married William Nason in Kobe, Japan on January 20, 1932, she was apparently still legally married (at least in the United States) to Nat Zitto. The announcement above indicates that the Yuma marriage was not dissolved until October 1934. William Nason was the American vice consul at Kobe, Japan. The couple soon separated, and by 1934, Ruth was living with her parents in her hometown of Rochester, New York. She held on to a dream of someday making a non-stop flight across the Pacific Ocean from Japan to San Francisco.
Ruth Barron Nason died on July 3, 1936 when her plane burst into flames and crashed near Omaha, Nebraska. An overheated engine was given as the most likely cause of the fire. Ruth had taken off from Rochester, New York and was heading for Denver where she had been recently invited to compete in an air race. She was 26 years old.
Marjorie Crawford: Three-time Yuma bride
Marjorie Crawford appears in this photo of entrants in the 1929 Women’s Air Derby (nicknamed the “Powder Puff Derby” by humorist Will Rogers). Crawford is third from the right between Amelia Earhart and Ruth Elder. For unknown reasons, Crawford withdrew shortly before the competition began, so she was not among the 20 flyers who took off on August 19, 1929 from Santa Monica, California.
Numerous articles were published about Marjorie Crawford in the early 1930s—most concerned her Yuma marriages—and they invariably referred to her as a “well-known actress and aviatrix.” However, film credits and aviation contest results for Crawford are almost non-existent. Biographical details are also sketchy, although Marjorie stated in interviews that she was a native of Waterford, Ireland, and that she began flying at the age of 15.
Marjorie Crawford and William Wellman—December 22, 1930
The above photos are from Wild Bill Wellman: Hollywood Rebel (2015), written by William Wellman, Jr., the legendary director’s son. William Wellman directed over 80 films, including such classics as Wings (1927), The Public Enemy (1930), and A Star Is Born (1936).
Marjorie Crawford and William Wellman—December 22, 1931
William Wellman’s divorce from third wife Margery Chapin had not been finalized when he and Marjorie Crawford eloped to Yuma on December 22, 1930. To make things legal the couple returned to Yuma exactly one year later and got married again—by the same Baptist minister, Rev. W.S. Brown. The marriage ended in divorce in March 1933. (Wellman’s fifth marriage, to Dorothy Coonan, lasted 41 years until his death in 1975.)
Marjorie Crawford and R.C. “Danny” Dowling—May 3, 1934
Marjorie Crawford Wellman’s marriage to R.C. “Danny” Dowling was a bizarre episode that attracted much press coverage. On March 31, 1934 the couple applied for a marriage license at the Yuma courthouse before checking into a local hotel. The marriage did not take place, however, since Marjorie—after escaping from the hotel room–fled to the police with a tale of being forcibly driven to Yuma at gunpoint by Danny Dowling in order to be married against her will. Dowling was arrested and put on trial for kidnapping. Sensational testimony was given by both parties, but Dowling escaped conviction when the couple decided to marry after all! On May 3, 1934 Marjorie Crawford Wellman and R.C. Dowling were married in Wellton, Arizona by Rev. W.S. Brown, the same Baptist minister who had officiated at Marjorie Crawford’s two previous Yuma County marriages. The above article notes that the “incensed” district attorney dropped the kidnapping charge, concluding that the couple’s skirmish had been a publicity stunt.
Publicity stunt or not, the Crawford-Dowling marriage did not last. After being granted a divorce from Danny Dowling in October 1934, Marjorie Crawford seems to have completely dropped out of the public eye. Perhaps the sensational press coverage of her kidnapping saga taught Marjorie to avoid future publicity at all costs.
Ruth Elder and Arnold Gillespie—May 9, 1933
On May 10, 1933, after purchasing a wedding ring at a Yuma jewelry store, famed aviator Ruth Elder and movie “art director” Albert Arnold Gillespie were married at the courthouse by Justice of the Peace Earl Freeman.
For a pilot who nearly crossed the Atlantic Ocean a few years earlier, Ruth Elder’s October 9, 1933 flight from Santa Monica to Yuma should have been a short, routine jaunt, but high winds forced Ruth’s plane down in Indio where she and husband-to-be Arnold Gillespie took shelter until the following day. Elder was 30 years old when she married her 4th husband in Yuma. Gillespie was just beginning a long Hollywood career as a special effects artist. He won the first of his three Academy Awards in 1944, the year of his divorce from Ruth Elder.
For a time, Ruth Elder’s fame as an aviator rivaled that of Amelia Earhart. On October 11, 1927, five months after Charles Lindbergh’s historic transatlantic flight, Ruth Elder and and her flight instructor George Haldeman attempted to fly from Lakeland, Florida to Paris, France. Ruth had quit her job as a dental assistant and divorced her second husband before attempting to become the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air. As the above article indicates, Ruth Elder’s “American Girl” plane was forced down about 300 miles from land by a broken oil line. The flyers were rescued by a Dutch tanker ship and were transported to the nearby Azores Islands of Portugal. When Elder and Haldeman arrived back in the U.S., they were greeted as heroes with a ticker-tape parade, as well as meetings with New York mayor Jimmy Walker and President Calvin Coolidge. And Hollywood soon came calling on Ruth Elder . . .
Ruth Elder’s aviation career, as well as her brief foray into acting, ended not long after the 1929 Women’s Air Derby. In that race, Ruth finished fifth despite experiencing engine trouble and flying off course when her maps were blown out of her plane’s cockpit. After becoming a mother in 1940, Elder remained out of the spotlight—at least until the next marriage came along. (There were six in all, as well as a remarriage to husband number six.) Ruth Elder died at age 74 in 1977 after suffering with emphysema for several years.
Melba Gorby and William Beard—October 5, 1933
When Melba Gorby and William Beard flew to Yuma to get married on October 5, 1933, they “piloted alternately” according to one source. That is because they were both pilots, and also because that was the nature of their partnership. The couple met when William Beard, a professor and son of two illustrious American historians, signed up for flying lessons from aviator Melba Gorby.
Melba Gorby Beard died in 1987 at age 80 after a lifetime in aviation—as a pilot, a flight instructor and a licensed mechanic who restored old planes. She also served the Ninety-Nines women aviators organization in numerous capacities. Melba’s humility is illustrated by this quote from Stars of the Sky, Legends All, by Ann Lewis Cooper and Sharon Rajnus: “Her daughter Arlene was fascinated by the impact her mother created as a pioneer among women pilots. She admitted that she’d always thought that her father was the well-known and respected parent. It delighted Arlene to learn of her mother’s popularity and deserved admiration.”
Virginia Varney and Peter Dreyfus—January 2, 1937
Virginia Varney and Peter Dreyfus, both age 24, were “secretly” married in Yuma on January 2, 1937. The 1940 census lists Virginia Varney as a single nursing student living in Baltimore, Maryland, so it appears that the marriage was a brief one.
As a young girl in 1921—sixteen years before she flew to Yuma for marriage—Virginia Varney made aviation history. According to the San Francisco Call, 8-year-old Virginia Varney flew the entire flight from San Francisco to the Yosemite Valley, accompanied by her mother. The girl’s father, aviation magnate Walter Varney, made the trip in a separate airplane.
Virginia Varney Lambert died January 1, 1997 at the age of 84. Her obituary noted that she was survived by a son and two grandchildren. It also stated that after her early aviation exploits, Virginia “continued to fly avidly for many years.” But the most prominent portion of the obituary related to Varney’s World War II service in the 118th Unit from Johns Hopkins Nursing. Virginia Varney, pictured above on the far left, achieved the rank of 1st Lieutenant in the Army Nursing Corps, and served in Papua, New Guinea and in Leyte Gulf. It was at this time that she met her second husband, Lt. Colonel Richard Lambert.
Legacies
This May 1930 photo features Hollywood pilot Art Goebel with several members of the Ninety-Nines women aviators organization. Three of the pictured women flew to Yuma for marriage: Melba Gorby, Ruth Alexander, and Marjorie Crawford. Not pictured is Ruth Elder, who was a charter/lifetime member of the Ninety-Nines. Being a woman pilot in the early days of aviation meant being part of a very exclusive sisterhood of which a love of flying was the common thread. Though their personal lives may have been imperfect, the six women I have profiled were all courageous trailblazers who frequently faced obstacles, dangers, and detractors. By pursuing their dreams in the face of such odds, these pioneers contributed to the growth of women in aviation by inspiring future generations of flyers.
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