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o o The Madison County Journal Features IB June 29, 2017 A Madison County man and... The first days of flight Zumpt Huffs contribution to aviation was lost to history until a local author set the record straight Pictured is Ben Epps (L) and Zumpt Huff with the first plane (Epps-Huff I) in front of Epps Garage on East Washington Street in downtown Athens on May 13,1909. This plane, used exclusively as a glider, was the only biplane the pair built. Photos courtesy of Dan Aldridge By Margie Richards margie@mainstreetnews.com It’s likely that no one living in Madison County today (or even decades ago) ever heard of a man with the unique name of “Zumpt” Huff. (His mother told him she got the name from the Bible, but no one was ever able to find such a name in scripture.) Zumpt was bom in the Bluestone Creek/Mason Mill area of the county in 1889, the first child of a one- room schoolhouse teacher (Anabel Wilbanks Huff) and a farmer turned professional photographer (James Albert Huff). As Winterville author Dan Aldridge, Jr. says, Zumpt has not been remembered for more than 100 years, even though at the tender age of 19, he along with Ben Epps (the aviator for whom the Ben Epps Airport in Athens is named), did something that no one in the United States had ever done before - they built and flew the first monoplane in the country, and the first plane of any kind ever flown in Georgia. As Aldridge points out in his 2016 book, To Lasso the Clouds, The Beginning of Aviation in Georgia, about the Zumpt Huff and Ben Epps partnership, the Wright brothers and all other avia tors before them had only flown biplanes. Aldridge became interest ed in Ben Epps when the Atlanta Journal Constitution published an article in 2007 (then believed to be the 100 th anniversary of the event), along with a picture of Ben Epps standing next to a monoplane in front of his business in downtown Athens. The photo was dated 1907. No particular date for the flight, or even a season of the year, was mentioned. And there was no mention of a second man. or a part nership. “I thought to myself that surely the newspapers of the time covered the flight,” .. - • ZUMPT HUFF IN HIS LATER YEARS he said. That started what became a far more compli cated search than he had imagined (and the discovery of Zumpt Huff) and ended with tracing down Huff’s family and eventually locat ing a damaged collage and scrapbook that Huff had made at age 81 about his partnership with Epps and that first flight. AN UNLIKELY PAIRING The unlikely pairing of Huff and Epps began after Huff’s family, who moved around a lot due to his father’s photography busi ness, became residents of Athens in 1904 and Huff, at the age of 15, got a job in downtown Athens with a start-up electrical compa ny named Morton & Taylor Electrical Contractors. In January 1905, he met the company’s newest employ ee, Ben Epps. The pair bond ed over their shared interests and talents in all forms of vehicular travel, particularly the newest form, aviation. By the end of 1908, Epps had started his own electri cal contracting business and Huff was working around the comer at a motion theater called the Crystal Theatre as an assistant projector oper ator. They continued their friendship, reading every thing they could about the Wright brothers and their accomplishments and decid ed to form a partnership with the goal of building their own airplane. The first plane they built was a biplane glider, which crashed at the then horse track in Athens while being pulled by an automobile. After that, they decided to build another plane with a different design - a mono plane (with one single, fixed wing). Neither had ever seen a picture of such an aircraft, but Epps created a design of what he believed one should look like. That one was finished in the summer of 1909. The undercarriage, Aldridge explained, was three bicycle wheels in a triangle. The “cockpit” was a wagon bench under the 35-foot wing. It was not a success. Their third plane was finished in August. Also a monoplane, it was lighter, smaller and more stable with better balance. It was powered by a two-cylinder engine called an “Anzani engine” that came off a pacer-motorcycle owned by Bobby Walthour, a two time Atlanta world champi on bicyclist in motor-paced racing competition, who Aldridge speculates was perhaps the greatest athlete in the world at the time. The pair announced a test flight of the plane to be held in Lynwood Park in Athens on the morning of Aug. 28, 1909. A num ber of newspapers covered the event and a large crowd assembled to watch the Epps-Huff III plane’s “first” flight. The plane, with Epps in the pilot’s seat, made it a distance of 150 feet. Unbeknownst to everyone except a then editor (a man by the last name of Rowe) at the Athens Banner Herald, who acted as witness, the pair had made an earlier test flight at 3 a.m. in the park under a full moon. Both Epps and Huff sat side-by- side on the bench seat as the Epps-Huff HI took off on its maiden flight. It traveled a distance of 300 feet. It was this flight that was the first flight of a monoplane in the nation and the very first airplane to take to the air in Georgia, according to Aldridge’s research. Before Aldridge proved otherwise the flight was believed to have occurred sometime in 1907. By per forming many hours of research over several years, coupled with careful obser vation of the changing sky line of buildings in photos of downtown Athens that had been in Huff’s possession and elsewhere, he was able to determine that the flight actually occurred in 1909. He also discovered from Huff’s scrapbook that he had come up with the correct year (though he missed the exact date by a few days) before his death. With only his memory to rely on and a handful of pictures from more than 60 years ago, Huff had also been uncertain of exactly when the flight took place. Once he had the correct year and a date, Aldrich dis covered that papers all over the state and beyond had covered the event and that it was sent out over the AP wire service. He also dis covered that it was always reported that the Epps-Huff II was the plane flown that day. “It was actually the third plane they made that flew that day. the papers never got that right.” he said. After completing his book, Aldridge submitted an appli cation on Huff’s behalf for him to be inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, OH. Epps and Huff built three more monoplanes after their history-making flight, per fecting their design a little more each time. The last one was finished in 1910. “But building planes was expensive and time consum ing,” Aldridge said. “Neither Epps nor Huff had the finan cial means to turn their air plane hobby into a commer cial venture.” The whole enterprise, from start to finish, was financed using their own meager incomes. After they parted ways, Epps remained in Athens and continued his involve ment in aviation for the rest of his life, but for Huff, who moved to Atlanta and later to Florida, his aviation days were over. “The accomplishment of these young men, Epps was 21 and Huff 19, was nothing short of miracu lous,” Aldridge said. After all, neither had any formal education or training in airplane design or aerody namics, and except for one suggestion about building a “pusher-type” design, they received no third party help. Instead, they relied on trade journals, their imaginations and God-given talents, along with characters of “tenacious perseverance.” Aldridge noted. The magnitude of their accomplishment was noted by one local paper. The Oglethorpe Echo, in September 1909, which proclaimed them “a second pair of Wright Brothers.” “Their achievement opened the door that brought the age of air trav el to Georgia, the state that would one day lay claim to the home of the nation’s busiest airport,” Aldridge said. Zumpt Huff died in at the ripe old age of 86 in 1975. “The greatest benefit to me personally has been the people I have met, partic ularly the Huff and Epps families,” Aldrich said. “The aviation community is also huge, and it’s been a real thrill hearing from so many of them.” As president of the Friends of Georgia Libraries. Aldrich has also traveled around the state giving presentations and he has had articles published in the magazines Georgia Backroads (Spring, 2017) and in the Smithsonian Air and Space (May. 2017). Copies of Aldrich’s book are available on Amazon or by going to danaldridge. org. After a public flight of 150 feet, the Epps-Huff III crashed into a terrace as the crowd looked on. Ben Epps (L) and Zumpt Huff inspect the damage.