Rochelle resident Alice Marks recently took a ride in this 89-year-old Boeing 40-C.

ROCHELLE — Saturday afternoon wasn’t just a regular afternoon for Rochelle native Alice Eakle Marks. The 89-year-old airplane enthusiast received the flight of a lifetime Saturday when she was taken on a short ride in a restored Boeing 40-C airplane, one of the company’s first passenger airplanes.

Marks grew up in an aviation family near Waterman and eventually moved to Rochelle later in life.

Her father, Paul Eakle, was the caretaker for McGirr field, which was the first stop west of Chicago for the airmail route to Omaha, Neb. Her love of aviation began as a young girl at this field.

Alice sat in many open-cockpit biplanes as she grew up along the Transcontinental Air Mail route near Waterman, 40 miles west of Chicago, where her parents managed an emergency airfield for airmail pilots. She met a number of heroes of early aviation, and served as a U.S. Airways Weather Observer until 1942.

She sketched a picture of Amelia Erhart, which she delivered in person in 1936, and met Ira Biffle, the pilot who taught Charles Lindberg to fly.

Marks can recall her adolescent years with fondness of helping her father, meeting pilots and observing the different planes that would make emergency landings on the airstrip, but one plane always stood out. That plane was the Boeing 40.

For eight decades Alice, who spent most of her adult life just south of Rochelle, wished she had gone up in a Boeing 40 before they all disappeared from the skies.

Then on Saturday July 24, at age 89, her dream finally came true, in Washington.

Her son-in-law, Cliff Sanderlin, said Marks’ obsession with the Boeing 40 stems from the distinct sound the plane makes.



For the complete article see the 07-27-2010 issue.

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