WINGS OF FATE
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The Story of Frank Sheehan (1902-1927)
Valentine's Day 1927 was special for 18-year-old Ruby Beal, former basketball star of the Owensboro High Red Angels. She had been a bride less than 48 hours and Valentines and honeymoons seemed made for each other.
She and her new husband, Frank Sheehan,26, checked out of the Hotel Owensboro at 7:30 a.m. to move into their new apartment and set up housekeeping.
Sheehan had to interrupt the honeymoon briefly though. He was president of the newly formed Kentucky Aircraft Corp. and wanted to test the fifth plane off his assembly line.
He had planned to make the flight on Saturday, but that was the day he and his former secretary were to be married in Evansville.
They had spent the weekend on a honymoon there and returned to the Hotel Owensboro Sunday afternoon. Now it was Monday and Sheehan couldn't put off the test flight any longer.
He and Ruby drove out to Sheehan's field near Doyle Station (Daniels Lane and the L&N tracks).
Sheehan as president of the firm didn't really have to take the plane up, but left over from his days in the aerial circus was the desire to take each of his planes on it's maiden flight.
It was chilly and windy that day, the bright red Kentucky Cardinal was waiting on the sod runway and Sheehan was ready to get it over with.
John Barker, manager of the Hotel Whitely across from Union Station, was a World War (there had been only one then) pilot who had later flown the mails between Washington and New York. He was a friend of Sheehan's so he drove out to watch the excitement.
Kenneth Mattingly, Sheehan's partner from the aerial circus days, took a parachute out of a bag and handed it to the pilot. Sheehan, who had never used a parachute waved it away as usual.
Smiling, he climbed into the cockpit and promised his bride a ride as soon as he finished the test run.
Cardinal No. 5 (there were 10 on the assembly line) had already been sold to a Florida Man who was on his way to Owensboro to pick it up -- if it handled properly.
The biplane was 24 feet long with a wing spread of 29 feet. Empty, it weighed 1,000 pounds. The plane had a 90 horsepower engine, could travel at speeds of 105 miles per hour and had a cruising range of 400 miles. Sheehan was asking $1,980 for it.
Advertisements for the Cardinal called it "almost crash proof". It was built of Spruce and Balsa wood and high-quality steel.
With his emoloyes and friends waving from the ground, Sheehan lifted off at 9:20 a.m. flying south into a stiff wind. Then he turned above Triplett Street, heading back towards the Ohio River.
As he began a circle over the Ohio to head back for the 30 acre airfield, people watching from the streets of Owensboro saw a strip of canvas rip from one of the wings.
The plane came over the business district heading toward the southwest. Hundreds of people on the street stopped to watch it.
Fire Chief E. E. Cureton and several firemen at old Station No. 1 on 4th Street heard the plane and ran outside to watch. They estimated it was 600 to 700 feet up and thought it was making a perfect flight.
When Sheehan was over 7th Street, the upper right wing snapped off and in seconds the lower right wing followed, part of it landing in a yard.
Out at the airfield, those waiting for Sheehan's return saw the plane begin to tumble. Barker, Mattingly and the others started running for their cars as Mrs Sheehan cried, "Oh, I hope he's not hurt."
Those on Frederica Street heard Sheehan yelling from the sky for them to get out of the way.
Hillard Gray, a trucker for Koll Grocery, was heading south on Frederica at 9:42 a.m. Suddenly, 10 feet ahead of him, just past 9th Street, the Cardinal smashed into the street. Gary braked his truck missing the wreckage by a couple of feet.
People began to descend on the site from Owensboro Junior High (at the southwest corner) and The Carnegie Library (Owensboro Area Museum). Then from all over town they came by the hundreds as an ambulance from the Davis and Glenn undertaking establishment pulled up to the scene.
Fire Chief Cureton had taken charge of the crash scene and directed the work of removing Sheehan's broken body from the wreckage of his plane.
When the body was removed, the crowd moved in for a closer look. Someone dropped a lighted cigarette into the gas and oil on the street. The wreckage was soon engulfed in flames.
Back at Sheehan's office, lying on his desk, was an incomplete aviation insurance application he had received shortly before his wedding but had never had time to complete.
The Chamber of Commerce canceled it's meeting for that night. Sheehan was to have been the guest speaker.
The young piolet-executive was the son of a former Glenmore Distilling Co., executive. He was a Louisville native and had served in the World War as an airplane engine inspector.
In 1923, Sheehan came to the Owensboro area with Mattingly to fly newspapers from the Evansville Press to Henderson.
The two had barnstormed, carrying passengers some 31,000 miles in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi without an accident. A show of theirs here in 1923 attracted some 3,000 spectators.
Sheehan had once told a cousin, Roy Morningstar, "I hope Death finds me in the cockpit of an airplane when my time comes." He added that he wanted to be cremated and have his ashes scattered to the winds from a plane high over the earth.
However, he was buried in Louisville Cave Hill Cemetery.
If anyone should ever erect a monument to Sheehan's dream, words of John Greenleaf Lhittier might make the best inscription: "For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.'"
In time Ruby Beal Sheehan remarried, this time to E.L. Newton, a local oil producer. In 1932 she had a son, E.L.(Roy)Newton.
The son, Roy, lives in Atlanta and is married to the former Virginia Field of Owensboro.
Tragedy continued to stalk her though. On Nov. 3, 1946, the Newtons were returning to their home at 315 West 14th Street in Owensboro from an afternoon in Evansville. Ruby Beal Sheehan Newton, age 37 was killed in an auto accident that afternoon.
Sheehan's airfield is farmland today. One of his hangars remains as a storage facility on land now owned by the James C. Ellis estate. And nobody builds airplanes commercially in Owensboro now.
Photos from the News Article
Part of The Crowd That Gathered
"This article was published in 1976 as part of the History of Owensboro...This story has always been special to me because my mother happened to look out her kitchen window at just the precise moment when the airplane was about to crash in the street.
Story rewritten by Rita Wedding.
August 22, 2005
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