The Longest Flight

About the Book

It started as an innocent challenge and through sheer determination and pure tenacity, it developed into one of the greatest and most successful promotions ever conducted in the state of Arizona.

About the Author

Jim Gillaspie was attending Yuma Union High School when the endurance flight took place. His family moved to Socorro, New Mexico before Woody and Bob landed. He read about the completion of the flight in the local newspaper. Jim was an aircraft mechanic in Naval Aviation aboard the USS Oriskany during the Korean War before attending the University of Arizona where he earned a degree in mechanical engineering. He then worked at the Yuma Proving Ground for almost thirty years, retiring in 1988. Jim and his wife, Karen, live in Yuma; they have three children, four grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Shirley Woodhouse Murdock grew up on the same farm that she lives on now with her husband, Hubert "George" Murdock. She graduated from Colorado Woman's College in Denver, married a year after that, and moved back to the farm in 1954. Her father and mother were interested in aviation for many years before getting their private pilot's licenses. Her brother, Bob, got his Navy Wings in 1945. Shirley has written another book, The Mules Go in Front: A Story of Hardship & Triumph on Arizona's Lower Gila.