History
The field is named in honor of Captain Lawrence C. Gray, who lost his life during a free balloon flight at the field on November 4, 1927. Captain Gray (1889–1927) served as a private in World War I and after the war attended balloon and flying schools, receiving a commission. He then joined the Army Air Service and the Airship School where he made test flights. Captain Gray became a pioneer in stratospheric flight, setting a U.S. altitude record of 29,000 feet on his first flight. He reached higher heights, including 42,000 feet on the fatal November flight on which he died of oxygen deprivation.
Read more about this topic: Gray Army Airfield
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)