Archive Record
Images
Additional Images [4]
Metadata
Catalog Number |
2019.001.141b |
Object Name |
Clipping, Newspaper |
Title |
Post and Gatty Get Stirring Welcome; Crowds Cheer World Fliers in Parade; Walker Decorates Them at City Hall |
Collection |
Wiley Post Collection |
Scope & Content |
A newspaper article which discusses in detail the roarous and eventful welcome that Wiley Post and Harold Gatty recieved in New York City as they made their way in a ticker-tape parade to meet the city's mayor on the day after completing their record-breaking world flight in July 1931. |
Year Range from |
1931 |
Year Range to |
1931 |
Transcription |
[Top] Post And Gatty Get Stirring Welcome; Crowds Cheer World Fliers In Parade; Walker Decorates Them At City Hall Confetti Storm Is Biggest Thousands in Broadway Give a Reception Like That to Lindbergh. Wives Share In Ovation Ticker Tape, Harbor Din and Voices of the Throngs Hail Fliers on Day of Glory. The ‘Winnie Did’ Honored Mayor Nicknames Their Ship In Bestowing Medals--Plane to Be Exhibited. A full page of pictures of the Post and Gatty welcome-Page 7. Wiley Post and Harold Gatty rode The whirligig of fame yesterday and It left them a little dizzy but very happy. They had flown around the world in less the nine days-faster than man had ever done it before-and the crowds that cheered them seemed to feel that nothing but the arrival of men from Mars could dim the wonder of it. Some compared the city’s welcome to the fliers to the tumultuous outburst that greeted Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh on his return from his famous flight to Paris. Others said it was like the greeting for Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd when he came back with his ships from the South Pole. It really was different from both. The crowds in the streets were as great as any that have gathered in the past to greet heroes who rode yesterday as onlookers at a show in which they once had played the leading part. Whistles shrieked as usual in the harbor, ticker tape fluttered and dropped in serpentine fashion from the skyscrapers along the path of glory that lower Broadway has become. Mayor Walker, who extended the city’s greeting and presented medals to the fliers, was his genial self, never overlooking an opportunity for a witticism or a pun. He said Post and Gatty undoubtedly looked upon the Winnie Mae as the "Winnie Must" when they were flying over Siberia and as the "Winnie Did" when they arrived over Roosevelt Field, the victors over time and space. Fliers Speechless at Ovation As chairman of the Mayor’s Committee for the Reception of Distinguished Guests, Dr. John H. Finley showed himself the peer of Grover Whalen, that dean of official greeters, but the thistle, rather than the gardenia, was his emblem. It was he who put into words the feeling that the flight around the world had something of the quality of a Martian visit when he pointed out to Mayor Walker that his guests had seen ten sunrises in the nine days between their take-off from Roosevelt Field and their safe return. It was the fliers themselves, their wives and friends, who managed somehow to make the stereotyped official welcome a little different. They somehow managed to make of The raucous bedlam of mobs and whistles a friendly, "homy" sort of affair. They were speechless at the demonstration themselves, but Florence C. Hall, the bespectacled Oklahoman who backed the flight, tried to express their feelings for them. Everybody had been so kind, he said, that he had to pinch himself to make sure whether he was "in the State of Oklahoma or New York." He wanted to thank everybody, he told the Mayor and the radio audience, on behalf of the fliers, their wives, his daughter, for whom the Winnie Mae was named; her husband, Lester, and her son, Lester Jr. Mrs. Gatty, wife of the Australian navigator, who, it was disclosed during the day, has obtained his first citizenship papers, went through the whole display with a half-puzzled look of wonder on her face. She arrived too late from California to see the riotous welcome her husband had received at Roosevelt Field and she Continued on Page Six. was entirely unprepared for the uproar of yesterday. When it was over she said it had been "wonderful, thrilling, gorgeous." Mrs. Post, wife of the one-eyed pilot who accomplished what other aviators believed impossible, said she, too, was "thrilled" and happy. She laughed and waved cheerily at the crowd and seemed to enjoy every minute of the reception. All the members of the party seemed eager to accept President Hoover’s invitation to visit the White House Monday. This morning Post will be at the controls of the Winnie Mae again, for he is to fly the famous monoplane to Floyd Bennett Field, the city airport, where it will be on exhibition until Sunday night. Refreshed by Short Sleep. Dog-tired as they were when they brought their plane to earth at Roosevelt Field, Post and Gatty arose early, declaring they had "slept fine," and oddly enough, looking as though they had. They had light breakfasts in their room at the Ritz-Carlton and then descended to the lobby, where Dr. Finley and William F. Deegan, Tenement House Commissioner and secretary of the welcoming committee, met them. The fliers had changed their wrinkled suits for others that they had arranged to have cleaned and pressed while they were away. Post was wearing a dark blue suit with a blue shirt and polka-dot tie. Gatty wore a cream-colored suit of summery material. His wife was all in white with a tight-fitting beret on her head. Mrs. Post, whose husband prefers to wear dark clothes, was dressed in blue. Both women carried large bouquets. Their appearance in the lobby drew alause from the crowd that had gathered there. Outside in the street, where 1,500 spectators had gathered, the cheering was taken up as the first bits of tattered paper fluttered earthward from windows crammed with admirers. From the moment until late in the afternoon, the fliers and their wives were only briefly out of hearing of applause and cheering. Even if they were still suffering from the deafness that comes from long trips behind a roaring engine, they heard it anyway. Traffic was stagnated for blocks around as the fliers made their way through the crowd and boarded the waiting automobiles, Post and Gatty climbed in beside Dr. Finley and Commissioner Deegan in the first car, with Chief Inspector John O’Brien sitting in uniform beside the driver, Mrs. Gatty and Mrs. Post, rode in the second car with other members of the reception committee. Most of the distinguished visitors in the past have come from abroad and it has become a tradition that those who follow must do likewise, even if they are here already. So the party boarded the Macom the city’s official reception boat at the foot of Forty-fifth Street and sailed down the river and the bay amid a terrific din that also has become a time-honored part of the show. As the Macom neared the Battery, two fireboats slithered past, spouting sparkling streams of water that formed made-to-order rainbows in the refracted light. It was almost noon and crowds were pouring from office buildings into the heavily patroled streets as the party landed at Pier A for the triumphal ride to City Hall, where Mayor Walker was watching for them from a balcony with John H. McCooey, Brooklyn Democratic leader. Ashore the fliers and their wives and escorts boarded automobiles again in the same order in which they had ridden from Ritz to the pier. They were followed in other cars by heroes of earlier flights. In the crowd that hailed the fliers were men and women of many races and nationalities, all eager to see these aviators who had succeeded in making their homelands seem a little nearer than before. Paper Storm Hides Buildings. Led by the Police Band and detachments of the Sixteenth Infantry, marines and sailors, the march of triumph started from the aBttery. Broadway then was almost a solid mass of men and women and the high towers of the massive buildings were half hidden by the paper storm. The cloying ticker-tape streamers hung like festoons from cornices and window ledges and twined themselves around the bayonets of the marching men. It fell about the shoulders of the fliers and their wives, who frequently had to disentangle themselves to wave their arms at the crowd. At City Hall everybody who had an invitation or could pen the name of an influential friend piled into the Aldermanic Chamber to see Mayor Walker present gold medals to the fliers. In the stuffy, overcrowded room there was speech-making at which the fliers were completely out- classed, and afterward more crowds, more cheering, more newsreels and photographs. When the fliers left City Hall they had Mayor Walker with them, but they left their military escort behind. The pace was swifter from City Hall to the Ritz-Carlton, where the Mayor and his committee played host at a luncheon from which Colonel Lindbergh, the most famous of all the aviators the last few years have produced, was almost barred by the failure of a hotel employee to recognize him immediately. Head down and fishing in his pockets for his invitation, Colonel Lindbergh was stopped at the door. He looked up to explain who he was and the doorman stepped back in surprise as he recognized the features that have become so well known. He was admitted without more ado. Their Rest Is Long Deferred. At the luncheon Mayor Walker introduced the latest heroes of the air to the other famous aviators with a word about the camaraderie of flying men. He wished there were more of it in politics, he added. The luncheon over, Post and Gatty returned to the hotel to resume the interrupted forty-eight hours sleep they had promised themselves since leaving Siberia. But there more interviewers awaited them. Gatty made it clear that he does not look upon his adventure merely as a dare-devil stunt that ended happily. He is firmly Convinced that he will live to see the day when the trail that he and Post have blazed around the world Will become a commercial air route. Today, after seeing the Winnie Mae safely billeted at Floyd Bennett Field, the fliers and receptions. They are to leave at 3 P.M. for a cruise in the waters of Long Island. Sound aboard William H. Todd’s yacht Saelmo, on which they will remain until Sunday. |
People |
Wiley Post Harold Gatty F. C. Hall Mae Post Elsie Gatty Charles Lindbergh |
Search Terms |
Ticker-Tape Parade Reception Welcome Ritz-Carlton Hotel Celebration Monoplane Landed Roosevelt Field Mayor New York New York City City Hall City Stirring Crowd Cheers Cheering Rest Morning World Flight Round-the-world Procession |