Written By: Edie Muldrew
So many high school clubs are on the cutting edge of technology. Robotics clubs, coding clubs, video game clubs are a dime a dozen nowadays. But back in the 1930s, flight was the new frontier and highschoolers wanted in on it too. At Eastwood High School, students and staff organized their own glider club. They couldn’t simply walk into any store and pick up a glider, they had to make one themselves!
The Mead Glider, also known as the “Rhön / Rhöne Ranger” was a glider design sold in kit form by Mead Gliders of Chicago. The company was short-lived. Ted Mead, the founder, only made glider kits for two years before government restrictions on glider design, construction, and flight made him feel that gliders were on their way out. He went on to make kayaks and ice trucks. The Ranger had a simple open wooden frame fuselage with doped fabric covered rear section, wings, and control surfaces, and so was ideal for the club to construct. In 1930, they purchased a Mead Glider kit for $105 and started constructing it near the school.
We don’t have a lot of information about the club, but this photo of at least some of the members tells us who they were! From left to right, C. Yancey, who drove the car towing the glider, an unnamed member, Mr. McCoy, who was the teacher sponsor for the club, Mac (Mikey) Sutherland, who was their test pilot, and Bob Wheatley and Howard Barker , who were the organizers of the club. They called their glider “The Grey Goose” and flew it for at least a year! While it was a great opportunity for the youth of the day, I don’t know how comfortale I would feel in the cockpit of a glider a 16 year old built!
Eastwood Highschool doesn’t exist anymore (Eastglen is where it used to be), but their legacy lives on through these photographs of some intrepid young aviators at the controls of their very own glider.
