BIOGRAPHY

J. Hector Worden Collection of Pablo Larumbe, 9-21-08

 

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES via email from H. Ben Schmid, 2-10-11      1. He was born Feb. 6, 1885 @Asbutry Park, New Jersey.      2. He died in Dallas, Texas on May 6, 1916 in an aeroplane crash.      3, He and his wife had moved to Dallas in 1916. After the funeral in Dallas, his father J. Hector Worden, Sr., of New York took the body to St. Louis. I don't know where he is buried. The above information can be varified by checking the Dallas Morning News archives May 7, 1916, "Aviator Killed by fall near Dallas". I have a number of photos of the plane. Worden is in block letters on the plane. My father and his two brothers left for WWI in France in 1918. The third brother died of the flu epidemic in 1918 in Dallas.

 

INSTRUCTOR AT MOISANT SCHOOL      Early in 1911, Alfred Moisant opened an aviation school at Hempstead Plains, near Garden City, Long Island, where a vast acreage was admirably adaptable to practice flying. Alfred had the assistance of Harold Kantner, an early exhibition flyer, as well as of George H. Arnold, Mortimer F.. Bates, J. Hector Worden, and Chief Pilot Shakir S. Jerwan---"all licensed aviators," as the prospectus put it From Henry Villard's CONTACT The Story of the Early Birds Thomas Y. Crowell Co.

 

Extract from Revolución Mexicana / Contrarrevolución en Yucatan" Vol 61, October 1967 Courtesy of Gerardo Garcia de León

The government of President Francisco I Madero made arrangements with the Moissant International School, long established in the United States of America, for the acquisition of an aeroplane and the training of pilots. In the month of September of 1912, Francisco Alvarez.and Hector Worden arrived in the city of Torreon, with two Moissant-Blériot aeroplanes, being at the disposal of General Victoriano Huerta of the Northern Division. However, their skills as pilots were not utilized, not being considered to be worthwhile.

 

"Dallas Enters World Aviation Race" Knoxville Journal and Tribune, Knoxville, Tennessee: May 26, 1914, Transcribed by Bob Davis - 3-2-07 "San Francisco, May 25. - The first city to enter as a contestant in the Panama-Pacific exposition around the world aviation race in 1915 is Dallas, Tex. The exposition bureau of aeronautics announced today that Dallas chamber of commerce had sent word that the city would be represented by Capt. J. H. Worden, with a monoplane. The city will build his machine and finance his flight, the letter stated. Capt. Worden is attached to the Mexican federal army. He is a Cherokee Indian and a former student at Carlisle. He was graduated from a French school of aviation."

 

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