9/6/2004:
It was one hundred years ago last Friday that one of Fargo-Moorhead’s most colorful characters was born. Florence Gunderson grew up in Clay County and was nine years old when she saw her first airplane. At 13, she learned to drive, and a few years later, she and her brother George built themselves a racer from a used car. It wasn’t fast enough, so their next bought a motorcycle. George was riding on the gas tank, and later said, “A tire blew out when the speedometer showed better than 70 miles an hour and Florence went sailing through the air.”
Florence’s first airplane ride came during a fair in Fargo; she earned a free ride by distributing posters; as a passenger, she found the ride disappointing. When her parents moved to a farm in northern Minnesota, Florence left Moorhead High to go with them. Country life proved too tame for her, though, and she was soon back in Fargo working in jobs that allowed her to drive trucks.
Florence had become Mrs. Charles Klingensmith by the time Charles Lindbergh made his historic flight across the Atlantic. Once more, Florence was lured by speed and adventure, and she took flying lessons. Her first solo flight was in 1928. Now, there was no turning back for “Tree-Tops Klingensmith.” Her next adventure was parachuting from 1700 feet. It was a bad dive, and she was knocked unconscious, but only two weeks later, she made a more successful dive in Brainerd, followed by several in Bismarck.
In order to make a living, the state’s first licensed female pilot set her sites on a new Monocouple. “I’ll risk my neck, if you’ll risk your money,” she told potential investors, and on April 19, 1929, Klingensmith had a new plane christened “Miss Fargo.”
Tree-Tops performed her first major stunt exactly one year later. Cars lined roads almost two miles around Hector Airport as the 23 year-old she made 143 continuous inside loops in one hour and 13 minutes – breaking the unofficial women’s world record by almost 100 loops. Just a few months later, New York’s Laura Ingalls made 980 loops, and the following summer, Tree-Tops met the challenge in Minneapolis, where 50,000 spectators watched her make 1,078 loops. After in 4_ hours, she touched down, saying she was “A trifle groggy and gagged by gas fumes.”
As a racer, Tree-Tops collected the most coveted prize in women’s aviation, the Amelia Earhart Trophy, at the 1932 Nationals. The following year, she was the first woman to compete in the $10,000 Phillips competition, featuring eight of the Nation’s best male pilots. She borrowed a bright red, lightweight, Gee Bee Sportster with a custom motor that tripled its horsepower.
The 100-mile race consisted of 12 laps around pylons. Florence was in 4th place after eight laps, averaging more than 200 mph. She was flying over the grandstands during her next pass when the fabric tore on one of the wings. She immediately veered off course, holding steady as she aimed for a plowed field to the south. Suddenly, the plane nosed into the earth from 350 feet up. Florence died instantly. Her parachute was found tangled in the fuselage, leading many to believe she tried to bail out.
The crash was shown to be from structural failure and not pilot error, yet Florence’s death soon became an excuse to bar women from competing against men. When officials prohibited them from entering the Bendix Air Race at the 1934 Nationals, the women protested. Amelia Earhart, herself, protested by refusing to fly actress Mary Pickford to Cleveland to open the air races. Instead, the women held their own air meet in Ohio. It’s pretty safe to say Tree-Tops would have been proud of them.
Dakota Datebook written by Merry Helm