Not long ago I mentioned the land between Route 1 and Lake Carnegie, pointing out that much of it is owned by Princeton University, even though it’s in West Windsor. Over the years that land has been the site of numerous activities. The annual Princeton Hospital Fete, for example, was a big one for a long time. And a couple of times when Lake Carnegie had to be dredged, where did the mud go? On the fields of West Windsor, of course.
There have even been houses where people lived — on Logan Drive, for example. Although that name will no longer be found there, what’s left of the road between Harrison Street and Route 1 is still there. In fact, when we first came to West Windsor we got to know some of the people who lived there quite well. That was mainly because our kids went to school together.
It was also because one of the fathers worked for Princeton University in an office that I had some dealings with in my job as a research engineer with a West Windsor company. His name was Steve Kidd, and he was assistant director of the Princeton Office of Research and Project Development. When I talked to him it didn’t take long to realize that he had been an airplane pilot at one time. As an aeronautical research engineer myself, we spoke the same language.
Since he was a bit older than I — he died in 1998 at the age of 81 — his pilot stories were a bit more like what I had read about when I was little. For example, he told me of having once flown a Ford Trimotor across the country. Ford Trimotor? Yes, Ford actually made an airplane once, and it had three engines — of the radial type, of course, as all airplanes did then. Apparently, Ford was trying to get into the airliner manufacturing business. But trimotors was not the way to compete with Douglas, which used only two engines and a better overall design approach. Anyway, Steve didn’t fly trimotors again.
His main flying job later on was ferrying new Piper airplanes to customers from their factory in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. And that was how he met his wife, Geraldine. The following account appeared in her obituary in The Times of Trenton on April 24, 2011:
“Gerry attended college in Memphis, TN, and later became a pilot, working for Piper Aircraft Company out of Lock Haven, PA, ferrying planes throughout the eastern United States. She met her future husband, Stephen Kidd, when she had a dramatic accident while ferrying planes with him. As he recounted in Flying magazine: ‘Occasionally, a customer would order two or three planes to be delivered together, and we would organize a group flight. Atlanta needed two Cruisers, and I was paired with one of the more attractive pilots, a girl named Gerry. (This was not entirely a coincidence, thanks to my friend, the dispatcher). We signed out two Cruisers Saturday morning with Hagerstown our first stop. It was a beautiful day and we arrived and departed Hagerstown on schedule, flying south 5,000 feet above the Sky Line Drive. Trimming out at altitude, I checked my partner’s position, but Gerry was nowhere to be seen — until I looked back and far below. She was in a spiral glide, headed toward a valley.
“By diving steeply, I caught up with her as she set up an approach to a swath of snow-covered farm nestled between the hills. Following at a respectable distance, I watched her clear the treetops, slip, flare, and touch down, all very neatly. Then the wheels dug into the soft snow and the tail vaulted over the wings for an abrupt flip, ending in a puff of snow. The plane was not in the least crumpled. My instant decision was to stay in the air rather than risk having two inverted planes on the ground.”
He went on to describe how she waved him off and eventually caught the train north while he landed nearby and came back to salvage the plane. They later married on November 14, 1948.
