“Frank was born, of all places for a flyer to be born, in Marshalltown, Iowa, on March 28, 1897. Iowa’s flat, you know. Wouldn’t think that there’d be much inspiration for flying out there. But maybe all that flat prairie was just so much inspiration to get away from it all, and get up into the air. Anyway, young Frank put plenty of grey hairs in his mother’s head with his love for climbing. Just crazy about high places. Always up a tree, so to speak. “Little Frank was mighty pretty, I guess. Maybe he wouldn’t like my saying it, but he must have been a smart kid, too. At a very tender age, my lads, our friend Frank Hawks was playing children’s parts in Minneapolis. But then the family moved to California—maybe to live down the scandal of a performing son, and Frank got serious, being mightly busy just going to high school. “Maybe it was fate, but something happened that changed Frank Hawks’ ideas about what he wanted to be when he grew up. The Christofferson brothers, who were pretty great shakes in those days, and pioneers in flying, set up a shop on the beach outside Frank’s home town. They took up passengers. But they charged plenty for it, and Frank, while he hung around a lot, never had the money to go up, although he was mighty anxious to fly. “Finally he got an idea. If he couldn’t get up in the usual way, he’d find a way he could go up. So young Frank got himself a pencil, a notebook, and a mighty important look, and approached one of the Christoffersons. ‘I'm from the newspaper, Mr. Christofferson,’ he says, ‘and I’d like an interview with you.’ And he interviewed him just as serious as you please, with Christofferson pleased as could be, thinking of the publicity and the new passengers he’d get. Then young Frank asked if he couldn’t go up, in order to write his impressions of an airplane ride. Of course, of course. “So Frank Hawks got his first ride in an airplane, and decided on his future career. Aviation got a recruit and Christofferson waited a long time for his interview to appear. In fact, he waited indefinitely. “The problem for Frank then was to get another ride. He finally went to the flyer, and told him what he had done. He was forgiven, and worked out his passage for that ride and other rides by working around the flying field. It was then he learned to fly. But business was not too good, and the brothers moved on. Frank Hawks went on with his high school work, and was graduated in 1916. Thought he ought to have more book learning, so he went on to the University of California. “But the war stopped that. When he was twenty, Hawks joined the army, the Flying Corps. He was too good, though. Too good for his own good. They never sent him to France, where he wanted to go. Instead, they made him an instructor, so that he could teach green recruits how to fly. At the end of the war he was discharged, with the title of Captain.