Fort Worth plane maker had both eyes on the sky, but both feet on the ground

It began, literally, with a wing and a prayer.

Well, OK, three wings.

In the mid-1930s, Fort Worth entrepreneur Cassell D. Hibbs and mechanic Clarence Holden were manufacturing airplane propellers in a small building at 2826 East Vickery Blvd.

Soon Hibbs got a better idea: Instead of making propellers for people who want to build their own airplanes, why not make the entire airplane? He told Holden’s wife Lillian that he thought the two of them could design, build, and sell an airplane — in kit form — for just $100.

Lillian Holden was intrigued.

But Mrs. Holden was an unlikely aeronautical designer. She had dropped out of school after the tenth grade. She had no aeronautical training. She had never piloted an airplane. In fact, she told the Fort Worth Press in 1962: “I have never in my life been off the ground.”

“But I always had an inventive mind,” she told the Star-Telegram in 1983.

Holden felt the weight of her undertaking. She recalled in 1983: “One night ... I got down on my knees and said, ‘Lord, now listen. Lord, you know I’ve always been afraid of airplanes. Don’t let me build one, not one that somebody gets hurt in.’”

Holden and Hibbs envisioned a triplane with a tubular metal skeleton, canvas skin and a Ford automobile motor.

They tinkered for months.

At last Holden and Hibbs had built their prototype. When they tested the plane’s maneuverability on the ground they had no intention of getting the prototype into the air.

But the little plane had other ideas.

“You just couldn’t keep it on the ground,” Holden recalled. “It would roll forward and then just seem to jump up into the air and sail along, come back to earth and then jump off again.”

Encouraged, Holden and Hibbs built a second airplane. This one they hoped to get into the air.

They did.

“Mr. Hibbs wanted to name it the Flea after he saw the first one hopping off the ground. There had been a Flea plane in Europe — it killed six people, so I insisted we call it the American Flea Ship.”

Hibbs and Holden formed Universal Aircraft Co. in 1938 and began to sell both kits and plans for the Flea. They sold about 400.

Soon they wanted to mass produce the Flea, but, Holden recalled, “We didn’t have the money.”

So, Holden and Hibbs began looking for a manufacturer who could mass produce the Flea.

They had no luck, and Holden bought out Cassell Hibbs’ share of the company, became the sole patent owner and continued to seek financing.

Predictably, as a woman working in a “man’s field,” she bucked some strong headwinds. But she persevered. She sold “a good many” of her plans at $99.95.

In 1970, the American Aircraft Association presented her with a plaque recognizing her as the “aircraft designer and co-inventor of the American Flea.”

Lillian Holden died in 1983 at age 92. Her Flea was never mass produced.

But a few of her airplanes are on display in museums. In fact, one hangs from the ceiling of Fort Worth’s Vintage Flying Museum, a reminder of a time when a Flea and even a woman who had both feet on the ground could reach the sky.

Mike Nichols blogs about Fort Worth history at www.hometownbyhandlebar.com.

This story was originally published September 5, 2019 at 6:21 PM.