Wiley Post Research Paper

In the little town of Corinth Texas, on November 22, 1898, Mae Post gave birth to Wiley Hardeman Post. Wiley’s family were small time cotton famers who were struggling to feed Wiley and his five siblings. This forced Wiley’s family to try their luck elsewhere, they moved several times throughout Texas and Oklahoma before finally settling down on a farm in the town of Maysville, Oklahoma. Post died at the age of 37, but not before making several very important contributions to aviation as well as space travel.

In 1913, at the age of 15, Wiley Post saw his first real life airplane in flight at the county fair in Lawton, Oklahoma. Post immediately fell in love with the Curtiss “pusher” plane, and soon after he enrolled himself in the Sweeney Automobile & Aviation School in Kansas City. After graduation, Post returned to Oklahoma to work at the Chickasaw & Lawton Construction. Post quickly grew tired of his construction job and turned his attention back to what he really had a passion for; aviation. Eager to become a pilot, Post enrolled himself at the Students' Army Training Camp located at the University of Oklahoma where he was taught the fundamentals of radio technology/communication. Due to Germany’s defeat, Post did not get to become a pilot for the United States Army Air Services and was once again he was out of work. Post then pursued work in oil fields in Oklahoma. While working in the oil fields, he took a second job with the Burrell Tibbs' Flying Circus, where he originally worked as a parachute jumper and later learned how to fly. During the fall of 1926, Post was injured in the oil fields when a piece of metal struck his left eye leaving it permanently blind. With the money he received for his injury, Post purchased his f...

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...oon in Barrow Point Alaska. Both Post and his friend William Rogers were killed in this tragic accident.

Wiley Post was buried at the Memorial Park Cemetery in Edmond, Oklahoma. Hangars, aeronautical schools, and airports have been named in honor of the accomplishments of Wiley Post all across the southwest. As for the Winnie Mae, it has been retired to Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington's Dulles International Airport. Post’s short lived life left a huge impact on aviation and helped pave the way to the modern aviation that we have today with his record setting flights, aeronautical experiments, and drive to always push the limitations of aviation at the time. In 1979 the U.S. post office even issued a stamp in commemoration of the contributions that Post made to aviation that helped it get to where it is today.