From the neatly labeled materials that Helen left for family, I started with the pilot folder. The items, mostly from 1932-1936, consisted of a training log, pilot license, newspaper clippings, a few picture of her in or leaning on planes, an invite to fly with a famous racing couple (Jim and Mary Haizlip, who are worth a looksee). But one item was older. On a scrap of paper seemingly ripped out of a journal, with handwriting and language were different than her usual writing, it said:

“Thursday 3/14/19

During school hours is too dry and dull to write here. For once I really didn’t go to the doctor’s. Instead I came home and ran over my Latin (literally) and wrote a composition on ‘Americanism’. At five o’clock I changed my dress and had my supper and I left the house at five-thirty to meet my father in New York at 6:15pm. When I got off the car at Park Row, New York, he was already there and we then took the subway to 23rd street station and walked about four blocks to Madison Square Garden (which is a building about the size of the Hippodrome in St Paul, only larger) and walked in upon the Aero Show!! No one could ever tell about all we saw there, it would be impossible! There were big aeroplanes and small ones, and flying boats, and planes that didn’t swim, and balloons and…”

This was her at age 16, going with her father to Madison Square Garden to see an air show. She would have travelled to meet her father from Flatbush, Brooklyn, where she lived with her parents, Frank and Gertrude Skinner, and her much younger sister Mary Elizabeth (my maternal grandmother and namesake).

Bit of trivia: the current Madison Square Garden isn’t where it used to be, which is why she could get off at 23rd Street and walk four blocks and be there. It was where Madison Square Park is now. 

She also mentions in the note, ‘For once I really didn’t go to the doctor’s.’ This refers to childhood health problems — seemingly mostly sinus in nature — that persisted well into adulthood. Those problems are also why she knew how big the Hippodrome in St. Paul was — she left Brooklyn for a while to live in the mid-west, where the air was supposed to be better (another theory is that she hated the aforementioned church and went to live with family friends to get away from her strict parents).

As the internet has absolutely everything, I found an ad for the air show on Ebay and purchased it.