
A car dealer from Enid who grew up on a farm and had no formal training saw an airplane in Oklahoma City in 1910, recognized it as the transportation of the future and returned home, where he built one of his own. That car dealer was Clyde V. Cessna, whose name became synonymous with monoplanes and who later started the Cessna Aircraft Co. A speaker at a 1953 testimonial banquet in Wichita related that Cessna, who had been an Overland automobile dealer in Enid for several years, watched two Frenchmen...