Stuart Doremus Simonton

Stuart Simonton left his hometown on Vernon, Louisiana in Jackson Parish, where he was born in 1893 for Ruston Institute (now Louisiana Tech University) in Ruston, Louisiana before heading for Baton Rouge and L.S.U. in 1912. He enrolled in the College of Agriculture and graduated with a B.S. in 1917, a few months after the United States entered World War I. He immediately reported for his initial military training at Ft. Logan H. Roots in Arkansas. Rather than pursue the normal course of training in the infantry, Simonton instead chose to enter the new and rapidly expanding field of military aeronautics, and he began with flight training in Rantoul, Illinois, at Chanute Air Field, named for Octave Chanute, a French-American engineer and aviation pioneer who had befriended Wilbur and Orville Wright. The Wright brothers had successfully completed their first flights in North Carolina in 1903, but development of aviation proceeded slowly in the United States until its entry into World War I in 1917. Rapidly acting to push forward with expanding aviation technology, the US established Chanute Air Field just weeks after war was declared. Joining just a few hundred other soldiers, Simonton was part of an exciting and bold experiment that would soon grow to change the nature of warfare in the twentieth century. The high risks of this venture became apparent to Simonton when during a test flight the magneto in his engine failed and his plane spiraled to earth and crashed. Fortunately, some men on the ground who had witnessed the crash were able to pull his body from the wreckage. Though critically injured, he was still barely alive. After initial hospitalization in Illinois, he returned home to Vernon for a three-month period of recuperation. During this time, he gave his father a detailed account of his near-fatal flight that shows Simonton’s newly acquired skill as a pilot and his courage under stress.

Simonton rejoined his squadron on February 1, 1918 but his superiors determined that after his injury he was ineligible for further piloting. He then transferred to the School of Military Aeronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. During an intense blizzard shortly after he arrived, he came down with pneumonia and died on April 21, 1918. His burial was at Greenwood Cemetery in Ruston, Louisiana.