Pioneer aviatrix, socialite, company president, horsewoman, wartime pilot and artist, Aline Rhonie Hofheimer lived an exceptional life, one that only now, over 40 years after her death, is being chronicled by aviation historians. Born August 16, 1909, in York, PA, the daughter of Arthur and Helen Milius Hofheimer, Aline came as a child with her family to Warren c. 1912. She grew up on Long Acre Farms, the family's luxurious country estate in Washington Valley (where the Pheasant Run Shopping Center is now) with her sisters, Marjorie, Doris, Joy and Natalie. As a teenager she attended Plainfield's Hartridge School, where she was remembered as an accomplished horsewoman, a skill she learned on the family's estate. After Hartridge she attended New York City's exclusive Dalton School (1922-26). Aline Hofheimer married twice, first in the late 1920s to L. Richard Bamberger, a New York City stockbroker. After their divorce in 1930, she changed her name to Aline Rhonie, taking her middle name as her surname. Her second marriage on May 25, 1933, was to Reginald L. Brooks, a well-known clubman and amateur aviator who was the nephew of Lady Astor. Aline caught the flying fever when she was not yet 20, piloting gliders, seaplanes and twin-engine craft out of the Aviation Country Club on Long Island since at least 1930, the year she earned her pilot's license. Brooks, flying since l925 out of the same airport, had made a name for himself as a daring pilot and stunt flier. "The wedding ceremony came as a surprise to many in society here," reported the New York Times on May 26th, "and in Long Island aviation circles, where Mr. Brooks and his bride are well known. The bride is a prominent aviatrix. She owns her own plane and holds a transport pilot's license." (Both marriages were childless, the second ending in divorce in June 1937.) During the Thirties, Aline Rhonie Brooks mixed flying and art, her second love. In 1934 she made headlines, flying from New York to Mexico City, the first woman to make the trip solo, "because she wanted to talk murals with Diego Rivera," according to an article about her in the New York World Telegram. Aline had taken lessons with the noted American painted John Sloan from the time she was 14; from Rivera, with whom she studied for several months, she learned the art of fresco painting, a skill she put to immediate use. Returning to Roosevelt Field on Long Island, Rhonie began work on her magnum opus, a fresco mural that was to measure 106' by 12.5'. Painted on the north wall of hanger F, it depicted 500 air notables, 200 lesser-known personalities and 268 planes and hangers from the pre-Lindbergh era of American aviation. Rhonie worked on the mural for nearly four years, completing it in 1938. (In 1960, when word came that the hanger was to be demolished, she spent $20,000 of her own money to have the mural removed from the hanger wall and placed in storage, where it remains to this day.) World War II found Rhonie (who was nicknamed "Pat" for reasons unknown) in England. Holder of a British flying license since 1936, she volunteered to evacuate mothers and children from endangered London, flying them to airfields in the countryside. She worked with the Red Cross in England, then drove an ambulance in France and later in the United States. In 1940 she flew solo 10,000 miles across the United States, raising funds for aviators' canteens in England and France. A volunteer with the New York Civil Air Patrol, in 1942 she became the fourth woman to join the WAFS (Women's Auxiliary Flying Squadron), a unit that ferried military aircraft within the United States, serving as a flight leader. She left the WAFS a short time later and headed to England in 1943, serving as first officer in the British Air Transport Auxiliary, spending two years ferrying aircraft, including heavy bombers. She served in the ATA until November 1944. Among her awards were the King George VI Medal (British) and the Medal de la Reconnaissance, Chevalier de la Croix de Lorraine (French). After the war Rhonie remained active in the aircraft industry, co-founding the Luscombe Airplane Co. in Kansas City and serving as president and chairman of the board of Allison Radar Corp., from 1949 to 1951. She completed a fresco panel for the Smithsonian Institute and her art works, in media as varied as oil, tempera, casein, lithography and water color, found their way into numerous private collections. A member of numerous organizations ranging from the Free French Veterans to the Aviation Historical Society, she maintained an office in New York City and a home in Sands Point, N.Y. Her ashes were scattered at sea following her death in Palm Beach, Florida, on January 7, 1963. [References: NY Mirror Magazine, 11/20/1960; New York Times, 5/26/1933; Dictionary of Am. Women, p. 1069; Website, ATA; "The Pre-Lindbergh Era of American Aviation, A Fresco Mural by Aline Rhonie, FIAL," by Aline Rhonie, 1960; 1920 Census, Warren Twsp, NJ; New York World Telegram, 5/16/1940; New York Mirror, May 21 and 22, 1940.] © Warren Township Historical Society |