Last week I started the story of Dr. Frank M. Bell who was born and raised in Columbus, was an aviation pioneer, a “leading spirit” of the Catalina Island sailing community, had the first automobile in El Paso, was the hero of a trainwreck in Kansas, was tried but acquitted of murdering his brother-in-law in San Francisco and died in 1914 after an “aeroplane accident” in Meridian.
A lot of Bell’s story sounded fishy. Carolyn Kaye and I started digging into it, and there was even a shot at Bell’s story by Ken P’Pool. Last week I quoted extensively from a newspaper account of Bell winning a prize around 1910 for flying three times around the dome of the cathedral at Rheims, France. I soon heard from Ken that the cathedral at Rheims has no dome and the only aviation prize given at Rheims around that time that I could find was awarded to Glen Curtis. It seems that several descriptions of Bell as being a teller of tall tales had a very real basis.
Even with some questions raised, he still led an amazing life. He first entered the public spotlight after a deadly train crash in 1904. Carolyn found numerous newspaper accounts of the wreck from all over. In January 1904 headlines across the nation screamed, “People Plunged to Certain Death in the Darkness of Night.” A “most distressing scene” near Topeka, Kansas, was described where in the early morning January darkness of 1904, a passenger train traveling at 65 mph collided head-on with a freight train pulling fully loaded cattle cars. In the mangled passenger cars 17 people lost their lives and more than 30 were injured. Out of the smoking wreckage appeared a “young doctor” who had been on board and only slightly injured. Before any help arrived, he took matters into his own hands. He treated the injured and helped others out of the wreckage. His actions attracted national attention.
The Manning Times of Manning, South Carolina, carried the story on Jan. 13, 1904:
“On the passenger train, in the sleeper, was a young physician who walked with a crutch as the result of some spinal trouble. He was thrown down and slightly injured but was the first man to emerge from the sleeper and immediately began aiding the injured. He had a portion of the chair car and the berths in the sleeper cleared and to them the victims were carried. The physician was without instruments or medicine, and the only thing he could do was to bind up wounds with bandages which he made by tearing up sleeper sheets and pillow cases, and giving the patients whiskey to deaden the pain.
The young doctor found a fireman who was injured in the leg. An artery was broken, and he took it up with a penknife and tied it, with a thread, probably preventing the fireman from bleeding to death. He performed innumerable acts of a like nature before the arrival of the Topeka physicians. …The hero mentioned by Mr. Parsons was Dr. Frank M. Bell.”
A week later it was reported that Frank Bell was not a doctor, as he had attended but never graduated from medical school.
Bell, however, continued to call himself a doctor.
The El Paso Herald had reported that, “Mr. Bell came to EI Paso in 1890 and was among the first electrical engineers here. He helped to establish the electric plant under Pete Wehner. Later, when this was consolidated with the electric plant owned by Z.T. White, Mr. Bell was connected with Mr. White, and did much of the first electrical wiring in the city.”
Bell was also credited with owning in 1901 the first automobile in El Paso.
Bell moved to California about 1908 where he married and joined the social scene on Catalina Island. He bought a steam powered yacht, the Aloha, and had a new steam engine made in El Paso and shipped to California. After a short marriage his wife filed for divorce. Bell responded claiming a relationship between his wife and her attorney O.P. Widaman. A two-year feud between Bell and Widaman ensued with both charging the other with attempted murder and other crimes. After repeated criminal trials, both men were found not guilty. At one point it was alleged that Bell threw a United States deputy marshal from the deck of the Aloha into San Pedro Bay when he attempted to serve papers on him.
The feud ended in 1910 with Bell shooting and killing Widaman as he stepped off a trolley car. The case made national news, including a story that one attorney asked a witness a question that was 40,000 words long and was said to have been the longest single question ever asked during a criminal trial. Bell was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.
After his acquittal, Bell returned to Texas where he decided to take up flying. He traveled to St. Louis and learned to fly at Tony Janus’ aviation school. For the next three years he toured states including South Dakota, California, Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi, “demonstrating the use of aeroplanes in time of war and giving lectures on the subject in connection with his demonstrations.”
He appeared in the news in 1912 when he assisted Capt. Albert Berry with the “first … parachute drop from an aeroplane.” It was made over the parade grounds of the Jefferson Barracks at St. Louis in front of “the assembled officers and soldiers.”
In March 1913 Bell was granted a patent for improving flying machines by moving the engine in front of the pilot. He also began working on the development of aerial bombing. He died in an airplane crash at Meridian while demonstrating aerial bombing. His crash in Meridian followed his visit in Columbus by only a couple of weeks.
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
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