Dr. Lisa Daly, local aviation author, discusses Mabel Boll

Matthew McCarthy interviews Dr. Lisa Daly about early aviation and the importance of female pilots like Mabel Boll.

Recorded on Zoom, February 19, 2023
Interviewer: Matthew McCarthy
Videographer: Christina Hearn
Duration: 2 minutes, 14 seconds

Lisa Daly: I think a big thing for her is just the fame, the celebrity of it and this woman, she loved to be in the spotlight. She came from a fairly modest background and, kind of moved in the, got herself into the higher social scenes. And she, she had a very good habit of marrying wealthy, older men and, coming out of those relationships [laughs] with quite a bit of money herself, so she did have a few marriages to a few different, wealthy husbands.

LD: Some of them didn’t always end so well, that some ended because of the husband dying. Some ended, in divorce because she also kind of socialized a lot with some of the other movers and shakers, particularly around like the New York scene and such.

LD: So in 1927, aviation, it had just captured everyone’s imagination. I mean earlier in the year you had aviators who were trying for the Orteig prize. Male aviators who were trying for this prize to go from New York to Paris and, ultimately it was Lindbergh who won that race. But there were a number of other aviators who were trying for that as well. One of them was Charles Levine and his aircraft, the Columbia.

LD: And so Mabel Boll knew Levine and, so that’s, yeah, she had a few strings she could pull there, to try and get involved with the Columbia, try for something like a transatlantic race. But I mean a big thing would have been the fame, would have been the money.

LD: It was just…such a big part of social imagination at that point because airplanes, yeah, there had been the Great Atlantic Air Race back in 1919 but that was 1919, this is now 1927. And we’re starting to talk about transatlantic flight again. So there’s this huge romance and sense of adventure around it, which seems like it’s perfect for someone who seems to be quite the ‘adventurous socialite.’