Telegram from Jordan on September 6, 1918
The first line of the Western Union telegram was in code [in care of] C 651 and contained sixty words charged to the U.S. government. Capt. Benjamin B. Lipsner received this telegram from John A. Jordan, who wired it from Bryan, Ohio, at 7:28 p.m. on September 6, 1918. A handwritten notation in the lower left corner reads, “Rec.d 8:23 p.m. Phoned Capt. Lipsner. . . .”
The telegram from Jordan, a Post Office Department representative, informed Lipsner in Chicago that pilot Edward V. “Turk” Gardner landed in Bryan, Ohio, at 5:15 p.m. on September 6, 1918, the second day of the New York-to-Chicago pathfinder survey flight. Jordan told him that Gardner took-off for Chicago at 5:50 p.m. without difficulty.
Gardner assumed he would be landing in Chicago at night in poor light. He told Jordan to have runway lights available—two fires lighted in corners of the landing field and a third smaller one in the center of the field near the area where he would be landing. Jordan added that Gardner by error had left a sack of mail in Bryan, Ohio, and ended by informing Lipsner that he was leaving for Chicago.
