Early Life
Post was born in Grand Saline, Texas (Van Zandt County), to cotton farmer parents William Francis and Mae Quinlan Post. His family moved to Oklahoma when he was five. He was an indifferent student, but managed to complete the seventh grade. By 1920, his family settled on a farm near Maysville, Oklahoma.
Young Wiley's first view of an airplane in flight came in 1913 at the county fair in Lawton, Oklahoma. The plane was a Curtiss-Wright "Pusher type". The event so inspired him that he immediately enrolled in the Sweeney Automobile and Aviation School in Kansas City. Seven months later, he returned to Oklahoma and went to work at the Chickasaw and Lawton Construction Company.
During World War I, Wiley wanted to become a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Service (USAS).. Joining the training camp at the University of Oklahoma, he learned radio technology. Germany surrendered before he completed his training, the war ended, and he went to work as a "roughneck" in the Oklahoma oilfields. The work was unsteady and he turned briefly to armed robbery. He was arrested in 1921 and sent to the Oklahoma State Reformatory
Read more about this topic: Wiley Post
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Although good early childhood programs can benefit all children, they are not a quick fix for all of society’s ills—from crime in the streets to adolescent pregnancy, from school failure to unemployment. We must emphasize that good quality early childhood programs can help change the social and educational outcomes for many children, but they are not a panacea; they cannot ameliorate the effects of all harmful social and psychological environments.”
—Barbara Bowman (20th century)
“It is no small mischief to a boy, that many of the best years of his life should be devoted to the learning of what can never be of any real use to any human being. His mind is necessarily rendered frivolous and superficial by the long habit of attaching importance to words instead of things; to sound instead of sense.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)