{"id":18705,"date":"2010-10-14T20:42:09","date_gmt":"2010-10-15T00:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miserybay.usanethosting.com\/wordpress\/?p=18705"},"modified":"2010-10-14T20:42:09","modified_gmt":"2010-10-15T00:42:09","slug":"back-87","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/back-87\/","title":{"rendered":"A Look Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Clem Sohn’s Family, Career, and Fatal jump
\nby Barry Bauer
\nThe following is an account of Clem Sohn’s family, career, and fatal jump compiled by the late Harold Tolles whose wife, Helen, was a first cousin of Clem’s. Clem’s mother and Ed Motz, Larry Motz, and Helen Motz Tolles’ mother were sisters. Also included is a brief video of Clem’s last jump in France.
\nClem (Clemens\/Clements) Augustine Sohn never married. However, he contributed much to aviation. Since I do not have many family notes on the Kramer families and the unique relationship that Clem had with Helen’s (my wife) family, I will include much of his biography here.
\nLefty\/Fran and Clem were left without a mother when Rose (Rosalia) Sohn nee Kramer died. Their father died in the 1950’s, I believe, from a heart attack following a scuffle with a drunk while putting him into the Lansing, Michigan City jail “tank.” Gottlieb was a Lansing City Policeman at the time. Lefty\/Fran was 10 years old and Clem was 8 years old when their mother died.
\nAfter the death of their mother, Lefty\/Fran lived with Helen’s parents, John and Christine Motz, 6775 West Walker Road, Clinton County (St. Johns), Michigan 48879 for a time, and he attend-ed the Frink grade School three-quarters of a mile east of the home on the north-west corner of Walker and Lowell Roads; the same school that Helen and her broth-ers attended later.
\nClem stayed most of those pre-high school years with his Uncle Bill and Aunt Margaret Kissane, 2501 North DeWitt Road, Clinton County (St. Johns), Michigan 48879, but he spent a number of his summers with Helen’s parents. The Kissane and Motz farms were about 4.5 miles apart. Strangely, Uncle Bill Kissane was our Bingham Township; Clinton County (St. Johns), Michigan Supervisor for many years, and Harold Benson, the present Bingham Township Supervisor owns and lives on the same farm.
\nClem was ALWAYS interested in flying and he liked to build model airplanes dur-ing the summers he spent with Helen’s family. Unfortunately, he could never seem to build one that would fly.
\nAfter Uncle Gottlieb married his second wife, Louise, Clem returned to Lansing to live with them, and he attended Lansing (Michigan) Eastern High School to complete his high school education. While in high school, Clem became a student flyer under the tutelage of famous stunt and racing pilot Art (Arthur) Davis at Davis’ East Lansing, Michigan airport, and Clem was a veteran pilot by the time he grad-uated from Eastern High in 1930.
\nDuring the summer months-following high school graduation, Clem worked in a Lansing gas station. That fall, Clem went to work at the Luce County Airport in New-berry (Upper Peninsula), Michigan. The airport consisted of an old barn for the hanger, and the runway ran through a potato field. When Clem was not busy at the airport, he worked in the potato harvest.
\nClem returned to Lansing, Michigan the following year, and went to work for Art Davis rebuilding planes for Art’s air races. It was during this period of time that Clem, Art, and Art’s wife, Rhoda, became close lasting friends. Helen’s brothers, Ed and Larry, spent much time with Clem at the airport during this per-iod of time, and all three idolized Clem. Larry took up flying at this time, and he continued to fly before WWII as well as in a club at the Ionia, Michigan airport.
\nIn 1933 Clem decided that he wanted to try delayed parachuting, and he started jumping at the Ionia County Fairground. Helen’s brothers, Ed and Larry, would be there every jumping day. At one time, Clem held the world’s free-fall record of 18,500 feet before pulling the rip cord; followed today by sky divers. It was during this time that Clem was doing delayed parachuting at the Ionia County Fairground that he drew up his first batwing design. Ed and Larry Motz were with him that day.
\n[picasa width=”500″ height=”375″ bgcolor=”#000000″ autoplay=”1″ showcaption=”1″ user=”sjindy” album=”es_1010clem”]
\nIn 1934 Clem purchased a J-5 Waco biplane, put in a bigger engine, and remodeled the wings into a taper wing Waco. About once a week thereafter, he would buzz Helen’s parents farm (south to north east of the house) at tree top level, and the chickens would fly for the hen house’ One day, he landed in the field across the road to the north of the Motz’ farmhouse (Boettger’s farm), Ed and Larry drove over to meet him, Clem flew them to Houghton Lake, Michigan for the night, and they returned the following day.
\nClem continued to perfect his bat wings made of sail cloth webbing and steel tub-ing attached to his arms and between his legs so that he could swoop and dive while descending, and he performed at many county fairs and air shows the next two years (starting at Ionia and St. Johns, Michigan) allover the world where he drew large crowds. It was inevitable that Clem should be called “Bat Man Sohn,” “Bird Man,” “Human Bat,” “Original Batwing Jumper,” or “The Bat Man.”
\nHowever, Clem never considered himself a stunt man. He always thought of himself as an aviation pioneer, and that his skydiving was a first in the annals of aviation. Both the Michigan State Historical Society and the Smithsonian Institute later agreed with him.
\nIn June of 1936 Clem performed at an air show near London, England, and he almost met with disaster that day. At 8oo feet, he pulled the ripcord of his main chute, and the chute became entangled with his wings. He then pulled the ripcord of his smaller emergency chute between his legs at 200 feet, and he fell through a parked car roof. The steel tubing of his wings broke his arm and dislocated his shoulder on impact. That was as low as anyone had pulled a chute ripcord, and lived to talk about it.
\nThe following year, Clem was invited to participate in the 1937 Paris Air Show to be held April 23 to June 6, 1937 at the Vincennes, France Airport. Clem and Rhoda Davis booked passage across the Atlantic, the ship encountered high winds and heavy seas, and they were late in arriving.
\nClem did not consider it imperative that his chutes be repacked because of dampness, and this has been reported to be the reason for his death.
\nOn Sunday, April 25, 1937, Clem took off from the Vincennes Airport with the pilot, stepped off the plane at about 10,000 feet in front of some 100,000 spectators, went through his maneuvers down to below 3,000 feet, and then something went wrong. The crowd could see him desperately pulling at shrouds of his chute. Clem slammed into the ground at over 100 mph, tearing a hole several feet deep into the ground, and he died instantly.
\n<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/object>
\nHelen and I started dating (blind date) January 3, 1937, and we were returning from Owosso, Michigan that night of April 25, 1937 when we heard the chilling news break on the 1936 Philco diagonal slide-dial radio in my black 1935 Ford Coupe.
\nWe stopped at the home of Lefty\/Fran and Marion Sohn about 11 AM on East Steel Street, St. Johns, Michigan, got them out of bed, told them, and Lefty\/Fran took it VERY hard. We then went to Helen’s home, got her parents and brothers out of bed, and told them. They took it very hard, too. To our knowledge, Helen and I were the first of the family to get that sad news.
\nWe moved to Castle Rock, Colorado in September of 1958. One evening in April of 1965. I was reading the newspaper in a chair under a bridge lamp, and Helen was lying on the davenport watching the television program “Bold Men,” a CBS documentary. Suddenly, Helen jumped off the davenport, and yelled: “My God, there’s Clem falling to his death!” I looked up, but it was too late.
\nSo I wrote to the Denver CBS affiliate, KLZ, radio station, and heard nothing for about four weeks. Then, in the mail came a 16mm sound strip from Wolper Productions, Inc., 8544 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, CA 90069. I looked at the film strip, recognized Clem falling to his death on it, but could find no local 16mm sound projector. I wrote back to Wolper, thanked them, tried to pay them for this key section of film snipped out, and asked them where they obtained this information. In their reply (I still have), they refused to take any money as they were happy to have been of service to us. Further, they had no way of knowing who actually took these motion pictures of Clem (probably free-lance photographer), but they said that the footage was obtained from the old Pathe Newsreel Archives.
\nWe could hardly wait to get to Michigan that summer to borrow the Osgood Funeral Home Bell and Howell sound projector (the only one in that region with 16mm sound) in St. Johns, Michigan to show this short footage to the rest of the family at Ed. Motz’ farm home, 6775 West Walker Road, St. Johns, Michigan 48879. The film strip shows clearly that Clem had entangled shrouds which suggest to me that weather humidity may not have been the reason for his chutes not opening. I submit that the entanglement was due to complexity of the paraphernalia.
\nHelen and I moved to our present home near Sonoita, Arizona in April of 1969. In 1985, Helen was reading a paperback autobiography by Margot Fonteyn, the great ballerina; Warner Books Edition; First Printing; April, 1977. On Page 70 of her book, Margot says, “Only one admirer really touched my heart, and him I never met. He was Clem Sohn, the Bird Man. He had invented a bird suit in which he could fly to the ground from an aircraft. There was a lot of publicity about his arrival in England to give a demonstration of his flight. After our ballet performance one Saturday matinee I received a little bunch of flowers with a note saying, “I don’t want to be a Birdman any more, I wish I was a ballerina like You.” Clem Sohn.
\n“A week later he had flown to his death. I mourn him still and wish that I had had the chance to talk to him.” In order to understand this quote, we must assume that Clem and Rhoda sailed from America to England first, and then they crossed The Channel to France. Otherwise, we do not know if Margot is referring to the trip to England in 1936 or the trip to France in 1937.
\nIt had to be a terrible shock to Rhoda to see Clem fall to his death, a sad trip for her and Clem’s body to the Fowler Catholic Cemetery in a rough box, and heart-breaking to see Clem’s aviation comrades flying over the cemetery to drop wreaths at the gravesite as Clem’s body was being lowered into the grave.
\nAs Helen and I were preparing our Michigan trip from here early in 1987, we learned that the Clinton County, Michigan Historical Society was planning a 50th Year Commemorate on Clem at the Fowler, Michigan Cemetery, west and north of Fowler, at 1PM, April 25, 1987. So, we took the Wolper film footage on Clem with us. Upon our arrival, we learned that Ed Motz’ son-in-law Barry Bauer had a Zenith camcorder. We then borrowed Osgood’s Bell and Howell projector again, centered the camcorder on the silver projection screen, and transferred the action over to three copies of VHS VCR tape. They came out great.
\nOne was for the Michigan Historical Society, one was for Ed Motz, and one was for Helen and I. We met Catherine Rumbaugh, Director of the Clinton County Historical Society, at the cemetery, and gave her one copy. The 50th Year Commemorate at the cemetery went very well, over 300 were in attendance, and sky divers performed without charge in respect to Clem’s contributions to aviation. A light lunch and discussion followed at the Fowler Most Holy Trinity Church. We saw people there we had not seen in at least 50 years, and family members were there from as far away as California where Roy Raymond Kramer and family live.
\nClem’s Eastern High School plaque had his name as Clements A. Sohn. Clem signed his name as Clement J. Sohn, and the name on his cemetery stone is Clements J. Sohn! I checked the Clinton County, Michigan Clerk’s records, and their records show Clem’s name to be Clemens A. Sohn. I then checked with Caroline Klein, Secretary for The Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Fowler, Michigan. She found Clem’s birth record, but it is in Latin. Father Bosse was in that day, and he interpreted the writing for us. It turns out that Clem could use the first name of Clemens or Clements, and that his middle name is Augustine.
\nRetired Father Schmidt walked in as we were discussing this. He overheard the conversation, and said that this is no surprise to him because Gottlieb (Clem’s father) had a brother named August. Since the Clinton County, Michigan Court House records show no legal name change by Clem, I have to assume that the initial “J” on Clem’s cemetery stone is not correct.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clem Sohn’s Family, Career, and Fatal jump<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,21,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lookback","category-album","category-features"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}