Her interest in aviation dated to her attendance in January 1910 at the Los Angeles International Aviation Meet, the first air meet in the United States. It soared to enthusiasm in October that year when she attended a big international air meet at Belmont Park, N.Y., the nation's third such meet (after the Harvard-Boston meet a month earlier). At that time she lived with her widowed mother in New York City's Hotel Victoria and numbered among her friends many of the day's most interesting people, including the small but new and exciting aviation community.

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At Belmont Park, Harriet marveled at 7t the 'birdmen-heroes' perched on the wings of their Curtiss, Wright, and Farman biplanes, or seated half-in and halfout of the cockpits of the faster Blériot and Antoinette monoplanes. She cheered with the rest as wealthy young John Moisant (an architect with mining investments) upheld the honor of the United States by flying his Blériot to the Statue of Liberty back (36 miles in 34 minutes) to defeat the best that Europe could offer.

Already 'an ardent sportswoman and expert autoist' (as one reporter later wrote), Quimby decided to take the next natural step into adventure — and learn to fly. That evening when she happened to see Moisant having dinner at the Hotel Astor, she asked him to teach her to fly. He agreed, possibly not really taking her seriously. Quimby did not abandon the idea, even when Moisant died as his monoplane plunged to earth at an air meet in New Orleans on December 1, 1910.

John Moisant left a legacy, the Moisant Aviation School, which opened in April 1911. It was there that Harriet Quimby enrolled in the summer of 1911, entering into a friendly competition with Moisant's sister, Mathilde, for the honor of becoming the nation's first licensed woman pilot. Both flew Moisant monoplanes, copies of the famous Blériot design. (Mathilde received her license on August 17, 1911, to become this country's second licensed woman aviator.)

Would her bosses at Leslie's frown at their drama critic's unwomanly activities? Quimby dodged the question by taking her flight lessons at dawn and concealing her femininity in a flying suit and face-shielding hood. The secret was short-lived, especially after her first solo flight and license award when she accepted an invitation to join the Moisant International Aviators, an exhibition team.

Shortly after receiving her license, Quimby won headlines by making a moonlight flight over Staten Island, N.Y., to the amazement of a crowd of 20,000, a feat for which she received $1,500. During a meet at the Nassau Boulevard airfield in September 1911, she beat the leading French aviatrix, Helene Dutrieu, in a cross-country race, winning $600.

The following month, having added to her experience in several large exhibitions with the Moisant group, she teamed up with Mathilde Moisant on a flying tour of Mexico. She flew over Mexico City, the first woman to do so, as part of the inauguration ceremonies for President Francisco Madero. A secret no longer, Quimby's flying had won the approval of her journalistic bosses at Leslie's Weekly. She continued to contribute to Leslie's and wrote an account of her Mexican tour for that magazine.

If her flying feats made it difficult to ignore Harriet Quimby, her personality and dainty elegance made it even more so. Spectacular was the word on all counts. 'Lovable,' 'popular,' 'charming' and 'intelligent' were a few of the adjectives applied by the newspapers. The few photographs available, though hardly doing her full justice, provide a hint of her grace and good looks. From all accounts she was, as the columnist noted, 'a glamorous, green-eyed beauty.'

To those attractions, add her flight costume: trousers tucked into highlaced boots, a long-sleeved blouse, choker collar and a monklike hood-all of plum-colored satin and all designed by Quimby herself. Other early women fliers also dispensed with the sweeping skirts and huge picture hats of the day in favor of garb better suited to dignified and decent decorum on the breezy wings of a biplane or in the almost equally wind-blown cockpits of the monoplanes.

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