The Tragic Leap of Lois Marshall

 

During the Great Depression, millions of Pennsylvanians found themselves facing an uncertain financial future, and many sought enterprising ways to keep the dark shadows of poverty at bay. Some risked jail time manufacturing moonshine, others traded labor for food and other necessities, and still others foraged for berries, bottles and scrap metal-- anything that could be sold, even if the reward was mere pennies. One woman from Allegheny County had a completely different strategy-- she jumped out of airplanes.

Born in 1912, Bridget Lois Sangelo lived in Turtle Creek, in a home at 422 Highland Avenue with her father and ten brothers and sisters. Andrew Sangelo, the head of the household, was employed as a bench hand by the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company. Lois, as she preferred to be called, was also employed by Westinghouse, and the meager earnings of Lois and her father were just enough to put food on the table. But then, at the peak of the Depression, Lois lost her job.

In June of 1934 a friend of the Sangelos approached Lois with an audacious idea to put her back on her feet. George E. Walters, who performed under the name "Donnie Marshall", was a local daredevil and thrill seeker who had made several hundred successful parachute jumps, but while his leaps had scratched his itch for adventure and dazzled crowds at Bettis Field in West Mifflin and led to a week-long tour with renowned barnstormer Clyde Pangborn, he couldn't find a way to cash in on his passion. Marshall believed that a "brother and sister" parachute act, however, could be a cash cow. There was just one problem-- he didn't have a sister. 

It didn't take much to convince Lois Sangelo. The glamour and promise of quick money appealed to the 21-year-old; it had only been seven years since Lindbergh had flown his custom-built monoplane, Spirit of St. Louis, across the Atlantic, and Amelia Earhart was a national celebrity. The sky, Lois realized, was the new Klondike, a wild and untamed frontier where any man-- or a woman-- could find fame and fortune. But not only had Lois never jumped out of a plane before, she had never even flown in one.

Donnie Marshall

Pennies From Heaven

On June 3, 1934, Bridget Lois Sangelo, going by the name of "Lois Marshall", planned to make her first parachute jump with her "brother" at Bettis Field. A large crowd gathered at the airfield, as the event was billed as the first brother-sister skydiving act in the United States. When asked if he was afraid of death, Donnie Marshall gave his trademark trademark-infringing response: "I'm good 'til the last drop!" 

While the leap was to be Donnie Marshall's 563rd jump, newspapers were more interested in the young blonde woman from Turtle Creek. When asked by reporters what made her decide to jump from an airplane, Lois merely shrugged and said, "I guess it runs in the family."

Unfortunately for the crowd of spectators, they would not witness history being made. As it turned out, no pilots wanted any part of it. Citing concerns for Lois' safety, each pilot at the airfield refused to take the duo up into the air, thereby forcing Lois Marshall's debut performance to be postponed until June 17, when veteran aviator Jim Franklyn agreed to take her up. As a result, it was a significantly smaller crowd which turned their eyes skyward to watch Miss Marshall pull her ripcord after falling 700 feet in her 1,500-foot debut leap. Lois' share of the proceeds were the coins tossed at her feet as she boarded the aircraft.

While the daring feat failed to fatten the Sangelo family bank account, Lois enjoyed every minute of it. Her second jump took place the next day, and that was quickly followed by her third jump. Her fourth jump wouldn't take place until July, but this would be the jump that put her picture on the front pages of every Pittsburgh newspaper.

A 1930s Waco cabin model, similar to the one used by Donnie and Lois Marshall (photo by National Waco Club)

 
Lois Marshall's Last Jump

On Sunday, July 8, 1934, a crowd of more than a thousand spectators were on hand at Wilkinsburg Airport to watch Lois Marshall's most impressive jump to date, from a height of 2,000 feet. Donnie Marshall accompanied his protege on the plane, which was piloted by George Haller. Only a few moments earlier, Donnie had made the jump himself, and as Haller's single-engine Waco biplane roared down the runway he offered Lois some last minute words of caution.

"Be sure to clear the tail assembly," he told her. During her last jump, Lois had barely managed to clear the tail. Harry Fogle had been the pilot for that jump, and now Fogle followed Haller's plane as a spotter, flying about five hundred feet behind and two hundred feet above Lois, Donnie and George Haller.

The sun was just beginning to set in the western sky as the plane reached an altitude of 1,800 feet. Lois double-checked her parachute, whispered a quiet prayer and stepped out onto the wing, her blonde hair streaming from beneath her aviator's helmet. From the ground, the onlookers gazed up with their binoculars and could see the setting sun glinting from Lois' white silk blouse and her riding boots, polished to a high shine. From up on the wing, nearly a half mile above the ground, Lois could see the broad waters of the Allegheny River to the north, and the serpentine Monongahela to the south. Directly beneath her lie Churchill Valley, and to the east, less than three miles away, she could see her hometown of Turtle Creek. Lois poised for a moment, then she leaped.

Much to her and Donnie's relief, Lois successfully cleared the dangerous tail assembly, and then her body straightened out, nearly parallel to the ground. Her form was perfect, but only for a moment. Just seconds later, it became clear to Donnie Marshall and spotter Harry Fogle that something was terribly wrong.

Lois' body began spinning end over end, over and over. Down she went... 200 feet... 300 feet... 400 feet. But still the crowd was unaware of the horror unfurling before their eyes. They continued to cheer, thinking that she was performing a stunt, somersaulting through the blue void and waiting until the last moment to pull the parachute's release cord. But, one by one, they were struck by the realization that they were eyewitnesses to a young woman's tragic death.

George Haller dropped his plane low and circled the spot where Lois fell. Airport workers followed his signal to the nearby Churchill Valley Country Club, along with hundreds of concerned friends and morbidly curious strangers. Lois had plunged through a large tree in a ravine about two hundred yards from the No. 2 green of the golf course. Her bent and broken body was taken to Columbia Hospital, but there was no reason to hurry; doctors stated that her death had been instantaneous. Mercifully, she had lost consciousness long before she struck the ground.

An Unlucky Charm

At the morgue, something unusual caught the attention of mortuary officials. Though they had been informed that Lois was unmarried, there appeared to be a wedding ring on her finger. The mystery was cleared up after one of Lois' sisters stated that it was just a cheap imitation ring from a dime store, which she had given to her big sister as a good luck charm.

Meanwhile, on Highland Avenue, a dark cloud hung over the Sangelo home. Nine children clung to their mother's side and wept over the loss of their big sister, while she and her husband stifled their grief and wondered how they'd ever be able to scrape up enough money for a decent burial for the beloved daughter who went to her death trying to raise money to improve their lives.

Also devastated by the tragedy was Donnie Marshall, the neighbor who had pitched the idea to Lois only to watch helplessly as the young woman plunged to her death. Marshall had made a thorough examination of the main parachute as well as Lois' emergency chute and was at a loss to explain to the deputy coroner what had gone wrong. The chutes had just returned from the factory, where they had been completely overhauled and returned in a like-new condition. The chutes were impounded by Wilkinsburg police until they could be examined by experts. 

 
Rumors Swirl Amid Investigation

Many suggested that Lois might've fainted immediately after jumping from the plane, and was therefore unable to pull the rip cord. Donnie Marshall, however, refuted this, as Lois had been holding the cord in her hand as she stood on the wing. "She had intended making a delayed jump," he explained. "She was to open the chute at two hundred feet. I watched for what seemed an age for the chute to flare out. It wasn't until she disappeared in the trees below that I realized what had happened." 

Marshall believed that Lois's hand had gotten tangled up in her smaller emergency parachute when she tried to release the main chute. Neither chute had deployed. Many experienced jumpers blamed the government, however. The emergency parachute, which had recently been required under Department of Commerce regulations, was viewed as a hazard, taking up valuable space, adding unnecessary weight, and creating a potential obstacle during a jump. Letters were written by veteran jumpers calling for the law to be repealed, but their pleas fell upon deaf ears.

On July 11, the body of Lois Marshall was laid to rest at St. Thomas Cemetery (now known as All Saints Cemetery) near Braddock. George Haller, the pilot who had taken the young woman into the air for her fatal jump, paid tribute by flying over the cemetery and dropping two dozen red roses over her grave. The coroner's jury reached a verdict on August 4, finding that Lois Marshall's death had been accidental, while the official investigation concluded that there had been nothing wrong with either of the two parachutes Lois had worn on the day of her death. Whatever happened to Lois between the the sky and the ground on that fateful evening in 1934 will never be known.

Good Til the Last Drop

As for George Walters, otherwise known as Donnie Marshall, he wasted no time in returning to his hobby. Though his protege's death had dealt him a terrible emotional blow, he made his next jump just days later, and he would later fulfill the dream he had shared with Bridget Lois Sangelo-- finding fame and fortune in the skies.

A 1940 ad promoting one of Marshall's jumps

After Lois' death, Donnie Marshall's feats of fearlessness became increasingly daring. He traveled the country, always attempting to outperform himself, stunning audiences at every stop. In March of 1935, just eight months after the tragedy at Wilkinsburg, Marshall plummeted several thousand feet before pulling his chute about 500 feet from the ground, landing safely in front of an enormous crowd at Stuart Airport in Florida. He would later be banned from performing at a Birmingham, Alabama air show after a jump in which he waited until he was only 100 feet above the ground before deploying his chute.

Around that time he watched as his close friend, Clem Sohn, became the first person to make a successful jump in a "bat-wing" suit, and he devoted several weeks to custom-building a wingsuit of his own (while some claim that California's Rex Finney pulled off this feat five years earlier, Finney's suit was designed with a flap of fabric between the legs, not under his arms). Marshall put his wingsuit to the test on May 19, 1935, in Augusta, Georgia, jumping from a plane at 7,000 feet and soaring in circles before pulling the cord on his chute at 1,500 feet. He landed safely near the side of a highway, about two miles from the airport. 

In the following years, Marshall not only continued to perform at air shows all over the country, but also did dozens of jumps for movies in Hollywood and was profiled by Ripley's Believe It Or Not. Later in his career, he even landed a lucrative endorsement deals with the Gulf Oil Corporation and Kay's Jewelers.

With the outbreak of WW2 and the wartime scarcity of silk, nylon and gasoline, air shows and daredevil parachute jumping took a long hiatus, and it seems that Donnie Marshall did the same. Interestingly, his draft card from 1940 shows "no permanent address" and his job title listed as "traveling man". An addendum to his draft registration shows that he had his name legally changed from George Walters to Don George Walters Marshall in 1943. 

Perhaps his upbringing had something to do with the "traveling man" persona he later embraced; born in East Pittsburgh on June 6, 1912, he was raised by his single mother, Tillie Walters, in a shabby third-floor apartment above the Slovak Social Club on Main Street before moving to a string of apartments as an adult. Although he often told reporters that his father had died in a parachuting accident, this appears to have been a story concocted by Marshall's imagination. After the war, Marshall never regained his fame. He moved to Jacksonville, Florida, with his wife, Beverly, and made an honest living-- albeit an unexciting one-- selling trailers and mobile homes.

Very early in his career, Donnie Marshall formed a club with 22 other parachutists, who called themselves the "Suicide Club", which included among its ranks Clem Sohn and Bridget Lois Sangelo. It proved to be a fitting name-- Marshall was the last surviving member of the club. He passed away from natural causes on September 6, 1994, at the age of 82.

 

Sources:

Pittsburgh Press, Nov. 1, 1931.

Pittsburgh Press, June 2, 1934.
Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, June 3, 1934.
Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, June 4, 1934.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 18, 1934.
Pittsburgh Press, July 9, 1934.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 9, 1934.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 12, 1934.
Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, July 12, 1934.
Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, Aug. 4, 1934.
Vero Beach Press Journal, March 22, 1935.
Atlanta Journal, June 9, 1935.
Winchester Evening Star, June 21, 1940.
Hagerstown Daily Mail, June 28, 1940.
Charlotte Observer, Nov. 9, 1941.

Florida Times-Union, Sept. 8, 1994.