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“My machine will be the first owned in Portland,” he boasted. “The other one that will be exhibited will not be fully completed by the time mine arrives and there is no assurance that it will really fly.” Clearly, it was his fervent hope that it would not. The battle lines were drawn, and everyone knew what was at stake. It was Wemme’s money against Burkhart’s skill. The winner got to be Oregon’s first owner of a working airplane. The exhibition took place in early February, and it was a resounding success. Thousands of Portlanders flocked to see the airplanes — paying an extra 75 cents for the privilege. And then, knowing their cover was blown and that they would have to move quickly, Burkhart and Crawford hastily arranged to move their plane back to Albany to get it in the air. It’s not clear why they did this, rather than finding a place around Portland to undertake their test flight. It’s also not clear how much the transportation time delayed them. But it wasn’t until early April that Johnny Burkhart launched his “katydid on ice skates” for the first time, making several short flights in it that were duly witnessed by officials. But a week or two earlier, out at the old Rose City Track, Henry Wemme’s “store-bought” airplane had already been in the air. Wemme had hired a professional pilot, Charles Hamilton of New York, to make the flight, which had gone off without a hitch. So Henry Wemme got his bragging rights: he’d owned the first automobile in Oregon, and now he’d also owned the first airplane to make a successful controlled flight — even if he himself had not been in it. Burkhart and Crawford had to content themselves with having made the first successful controlled flight in an Oregon-built plane.
He fell in love. The new-found apple of Johnny's eye was a local girl named Mabel Goss. He fell hard, and soon he popped The Question. But she (and her parents; remember, it was 1912) were adamant about one thing: She would not live the terrified life of an aviator’s wife. To have her, he would have to give up the sky. Johnny doesn’t seem to have hesitated. On June 2, 1913, he married Mabel, and after that his interest in aviation became purely technical and photographic. He went on to find great success in both of these fields. He was commissioned a captain in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War I, but the Armistice was signed while he was still waiting in New York to go overseas — and while he was there, he contracted tuberculosis. The dreaded disease took just eight years to wear John Burkhart down and kill him. He died in 1926, just 43 years old.
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