Eddie A. Schneider “grew up” at Roosevelt Field, where he was a flunkey, mechanic and student flyer. He flew in the last two air tours, and in August of 1930, flew his Cessna to a round-trip transcontinental record for pilots under twenty-one. He made the trip in 57 hours, 14 minutes, carried greetings both ways between Los Angeles Mayor Porter, and Jersey City’s Frank Hague. Eddie Schneider was publicized as a Jersey City boy with a bare 300 hours flight time. In the late nineteen-thirties, Schneider went to Spain to fly for the Loyalists in the Revolution. But whatever promises of salary and glory were made him; he was back in New York within a short time. And as though cursed by the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War, like so many other young men, Eddie Schneider was killed in a student training accident at Floyd Bennett Field just two days before Christmas, 1940. He was twenty-nine.
Source: NationalAirTour.org
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