graduating from the Little Falls High School, I decided to take a course in Mechanical Engineering, and two years later entered the College of Engineering of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. While I was attending the University I became intensely interested in aviation. Since I saw my first airplane near Washington, D. C., in 1912, I had been fascinated with flying, although up to the time I enrolled in a flying school in 1922 I had never been near enough to a plane to touch it. The long hours of study at college were very trying for me. I had spent most of my life outdoors and had never before found it necessary to spend more than a part of my time in study. At Wisconsin my chief recreation consisted of shooting-matches with the rifle and pistol teams of rival Universities, and in running around on my motorcycle which I had ridden down from Minnesota when I entered the University.
