photograph courtesy memphis and shelby county room, benjamin l. hooks central library
“The Dixie Eagle,” poses with her biplane at the old Memphis Municipal Airport.
Dear Vance: In February you wrote about J.C. Harbin, who operated several businesses in Whitehaven in the mid-1900s, but you didn’t tell the full story of his wife, Emma, a famous aviatrix. What happened to her? — T.C., Memphis.
Dear T.C.: I devoted my February column to John Clyde Harbin, because he was involved in so many ventures here: restaurant, tourist court, race track, swimming pool, and even a shopping center. Lack of space prevented me from saying too much about his wife, and that’s a shame, because in many ways her accomplishments were more remarkable than his, earning her national recognition as “The Dixie Eagle.”
Emma Rose Miller was born in the little town of Drew, Mississippi, on July 5, 1897. At some point, she encountered J.C. Harbin — how and where, I don’t know — and they married. After running a small restaurant in DeSoto County for a few years, they moved to Whitehaven in the 1920s and opened Harbin’s Tourist Court.
Although Emma Harbin helped run the motel and restaurant, she quickly made a name for herself with her athletic endeavors. One I mentioned earlier was her attempt to set a record for “tank swimming” — floating in a pool for more than 50 hours, an ordeal that seems just dreadful to me.
But somehow she encountered two of this area’s most famous fliers, Vernon and Phoebe Omlie, and they helped her earn a pilot’s license — one of the very few women in this area (heck, in the entire country) to do so. A 1929 Commercial Appeal article praised this accomplishment, noting that “Mrs. J.C. Harbin, who already has won laurels at swimming, passed the Department of Commerce test for a private pilot’s license at the Memphis Airport [and] ‘soloed’ in less time than the average male student.”
For the 1932 Fall Air Festival, her “acrobatic thrillers” included “hair-raising tail spins, slow rolls and snap rolls, thrilling loops, and graceful Immelman turns,” whatever those were. The newspaper coverage noted that the Sterick Building would serve as the “pylon” for many of her loops, meaning that these stunts took place over Downtown.
Within a year, she was invited to join the Betsy Ross Air Corps, “the only patriotic organization of women fliers in the U.S.A.,” and took part in just about every aerial event in this area, developing a reputation as a “clever stunt performer.”
photograph courtesy memphis and shelby county room, benjamin l. hooks central library
Emma Harbin during her stunt-flying days.
Harbin would sometimes carry a passenger along, and she made national news in 1932 when a local musician, Bessie Bradbury, claimed her ears “popped” after a high-altitude flight, and when she landed the deafness that had plagued her for two years was gone. Other Memphians with hearing problems lined up for this miracle cure. Newspapers reported, “So many requests for flights have come to Mrs. Harbin that she has been thinking of going into the business.” She told reporters, “I don’t own a plane, so they would have to pay the small rental for the ship, but I wouldn’t ask a penny for my services.”
But did it really work? The CA noted, “Airplane riding to improve the hearing of deaf patients has shown marked results, but doctors are not agreed as to whether the improvement is likely to be permanent.”
Well, those doctors finally agreed that it wasn’t, so Harbin eventually stopped her “aerial cures” and returned to stunt flying. For the 1932 Fall Air Festival, her “acrobatic thrillers” included “hair-raising tail spins, slow rolls and snap rolls, thrilling loops, and graceful Immelman turns,” whatever those were. The newspaper coverage noted that the Sterick Building would serve as the “pylon” for many of her loops, meaning that these stunts took place over Downtown. This seems incredibly risky, not just for the pilots involved, but for all the people watching from the buildings nearby and the streets below.
It’s hard to convey the excitement and glamour that surrounded this new mode of transportation. The Commercial Appeal ran a full-page story about the “Latest in Air Togs,” with women fliers demonstrating pilot fashions. The newspaper also devoted space to an aviation column, with stories and photos about races and stunts taking place in other cities. Looking back, some of the events held here seemed downright foolhardy.
In 1933, the Dixie Aviation Club presented an air festival at the Memphis Municipal Airport that included “contests aplenty.” Among them were “balloon bursting, where the pilot is given three balloons to burst after a passenger has thrown them from the cockpit” and “bomb dropping, with the pilot attempting to score a hit on a moving tractor with two-pound sacks of flour.” (I wonder how the driver of that tractor felt about this stunt?) For her part, Harbin (“one of the nation’s outstanding women stunt fliers”) would perform something extremely dangerous: “She will fly her ship across the airfield with one wheel touching the ground the entire time.”
And then — it all came to an end, but not in the fiery crash that you probably expected. Because of unspecified health problems, in 1934 Harbin was unable to pass the annual physical exam required to renew her pilot’s license. “The Dixie Eagle” was grounded.
Her marriage to J.C. Harbin also fell apart. A 1934 Commercial Appeal headline announced, “Dixie Eagle Wants to Soar Alone” and she filed for divorce. She won, and got custody of their three children: 18-year-old Clyde, and 11-year-old twins Emily and John Jr.
Harbin then embarked on a number of ventures that didn’t involve flying. In 1934, a tiny newspaper ad shows she opened a small restaurant at Central and East Parkway, called simply Emma Harbin’s, with a menu offering “real Italian spaghetti and ravioli, steaks, seafood, barbecue, baked ham, and dinners.” It didn’t remain in business very long, and within two years, she unveiled more ambitious plans.
Still described as “the Memphis aviatrix,” Harbin hired the prominent local architect Estes Mann to design an ultra-modern tourist court on 10 acres of land “on the Bristol Highway [now Summer] north of the WMC radio station.” The complex would include 10 cottages, a laundry, gas station, and an art-deco “tourist center with dining room, café, and dance floor.” I’m not sure these plans ever left the drawing board, however, since I never found any news stories saying the elaborate complex opened.
In January 1940, Hardin married Kirby Waldrup, a Memphis postal carrier. The union lasted barely a year, with “The Dixie Eagle” filing for divorce in January 1941.
illustration courtesy special collections, university of memphis libraries
A Commercial Appeal illustration tried to give readers an idea of the stunts Harbin would perform over Downtown.
On her own again, she tried other occupations. In the early 1940s, she posted ads announcing she was the “sole agent” for the General Realty Company. When World War II began, she took a job at the Fisher Body Plant in North Memphis. A division of General Motors, this factory had been crafting wooden frames for automobiles but converted to wartime production building aircraft.
Though she hadn’t flown in years, Harbin was still such a celebrity — remembered as “the daredevil of the skies” — that she took part in a weekly radio show, Victory Is Our Business, broadcast on WMC and WMPS, which described the local war effort. For a while, she also contributed an aviation column to The Commercial Appeal.
photograph courtesy william harbin
Look carefully, and you can see the little frog that Harbin always pinned to her flying jacket.
Remember those twins of hers? In 1944, they both joined the U.S. Army Air Corps. Son John was stationed in preflight training school in Bakersfield, California, and daughter Emily became a member of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), stationed in Orlando, Florida. Hardin moved with her son to California, where the newspapers reported “she is going into a business venture with the San Francisco Marine Instrument Company.”
In her flying days, Harbin always carried a little frog-shaped pin as a good-luck token. “Tucked away in her bags is the frog,” that newspaper story continued, “who will soon be flying high again, pinned on the jacket of young Harbin. It should bring good luck to the young flier who plans to follow in the footsteps of his mother. Promised to a thousand admirers and trophy hunters, the little green frog is now going to work with the Dixie Eagle’s son.”
I’m not sure how long Harbin stayed in California. After the war, though, she returned to Memphis and operated the Harbin Mill and Cabinet Company, while living alone in a house on Mallory Road. And it was there, on January 18, 1948, that she died after years of battling heart disease. “The Dixie Eagle,” described as “one of the most picturesque fliers Memphis has ever known,” was just 50 years old. A simple stone marks her grave in Forest Hill Cemetery.
Got a question for Vance?
Email: askvance@memphismagazine.com
Mail: Vance Lauderdale, Memphis magazine, P.O. Box 1738, Memphis, TN 38101
