THE FORTUNES OF OUR FAMILY improved significantly with the move to Flint. There was lots of building, and my father was able to establish himself in the construction business. I worked for him and others all through high school and junior college. And my mother no longer needed to take in washing nor work outside the home.
My goal remained to become like Tom Swift, and I studied toward that end. Flint had an excellent public school system, and, as before, I enjoyed very much attending classes. The city had an even larger library than Ishpeming’s, and I quickly became a regular visitor there, too.
It was a year yet before Charles Lindbergh’s historic transatlantic solo crossing would awaken the world to the excitement and potential in the air, but in 1926 there was enough stirring of interest that the city’s Kiwanis Club sponsored a model airplane building contest for schoolchildren.
I carved out a model of my Merlin battleplane, and it won second prize—$25. That didn’t cause much excitement at school. I was always talking aviation, making it the subject of my reports when given a choice, and getting A’s in my studies.
After graduation from high school, I was tempted to digress from my dedicated course. After all, I had worked hard and saved $350 from lathing, and I thought I owed it to myself to take a ship and work my way around the world, have some adventure. But one of the dedicated teachers it has been my good fortune to know, Miss Bertha Baker, spent most of one afternoon explaining to me why there should be no gap between high school and junior college. She convinced me. And I entered Flint Junior College.
In junior college, I was able to take engineering courses for the first time. I studied physics, mathematics, and calculus. I reached the point where I could tutor in calculus and make some money. I loved mathematics and still do. It was a very good junior college, and I received a solid background for my more advanced university courses later.
As often as I could on vacations and weekends, I worked at lathing. My average pay per day was $10 to $12. I’d have to put up 2,000 laths for that $10. That took a lot of nail pounding.
In summers, I also worked for the Buick Motor Car Company, swinging fenders on the production line or working on motor repair and block test. I would be so dirty and oily after a day’s work that I was not allowed to sit down on the streetcar going home. It really didn’t bother me too much. I was reading and studying all the time, standing up. In that period, I even tried to understand Einstein. Only 12 people in the whole world were supposed to be able to do so; I wanted to be the 13th!
At long last in Flint I had my first airplane flight. It cost $5 for three minutes. It was a big clumsy machine—an old Standard biplane, a four-passenger model with a single pilot. We got all the way up to 700 feet before the engine quit and we had to make a forced landing. But it was fun! It was noisy, it was drafty, it was great! I still wanted to design airplanes.
Actually, I began to think maybe I should learn to fly because all of the early great designers—Glenn Curtiss, the Wright brothers, Glenn Martin—they all knew how to fly.
So one rainy morning after I had been graduated from junior college but had not yet enrolled in a university, I went out to Bishop Airport in Flint, prepared to hand over my entire fortune at the time, $300, for 10 hours of flight instruction. In the shack that served as his office I found the pilot, Jim White. He talked to me for some time, inquiring about what I hoped to do with my future.
“Kelly,” he said then, “you don’t want to start off on your career by giving me $300 to learn to fly. That won’t get you far enough. You have good grades; you will go a lot farther if you go on to the university. I won’t take your money. You don’t want to end up as an airport bum like me.”
Well, he needed that money perhaps even more than I did. But he was a big man. It was another fortunate encounter for me to meet another person who guided me with wisdom at a critical point in my life. I took his advice, and I’ve always been thankful for it.
Flint Junior College had a championship football team. I played on it. After graduation, several of us were offered scholarships at a university in the South known for its athletic prowess. I went down during summer vacation to get in some football practice.
When it came time to enroll, I was planning to select courses that could lead to my transferring to aeronautical engineering in another university after a year. I soon found out what my options were.
“Here, kid, here’s your curriculum,” the coach told me one day.
“But I haven’t chosen my courses yet,” I said, surprised.
“Yes, you have,” he insisted. “You’re a coach’s assistant. You’re taking physical education.”
“But, sir, I’m going to be an engineer. I’ve wanted to be an airplane designer all my life. I want to study aeronautical engineering,” I protested.
“Kid, you’re a coach’s assistant.” He repeated, “You’re a coach’s assistant. Take it or leave it.”
“Not me.” And that was that.
My next move was to phone the University of Michigan about athletic scholarships. They offered them, and my grades were good enough for admission, so I got in my trusty Ford Model T roadster and drove up to Ann Arbor to try for a scholarship there. My $300 would do no more than pay the tuition.
Just about the second thing I found out was that an undergraduate was not allowed to have a car on campus. So I decided to take my car home and then come back to try out for football.
On the way, I was forced off the road and across a culvert by a big Pontiac. I was draped across the windshield and had a deep gash in my forehead. Worse than that, the cut later became infected. I couldn’t go out for football.
It was one of the best things that ever happened to me, because now I had to try to find work in an engineering line. I did, but not before I had washed at least 10,000 dishes, as many glasses, even more silverware, and carried out tons of garbage working in a fraternity house that first semester. The year was 1929, and there was almost no building at Ann Arbor so I couldn’t work at lathing.
The best thing about that kitchen job was the way we were treated by the wonderful black cook. She saw to it that her twelve fellows in the kitchen working for their meals were fed first before the fraternity brothers—and with the best portions.
After one semester, I became assistant to Professor Edward A. Stalker, head of the aeronautical engineering department at the university. It was a job I was to keep throughout my university career. But more importantly, it was my first work in engineering.