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FLYING WITH WILEY POST 225
But neither Rogers nor Post had any premonition of danger. In fact, Rogers smiled at the thought, in an interview in Portland, Oregon, a few days before the tragedy.
"When are you going to write a book on your life?" interviewers asked Will.
"I don't know," he replied. "I ain't near enough dead yet. One publisher has been after me a long time to write my memoirs. But shucks, you got to be old and pretty near dead to have anything to look back on. I'm a long ways from being dead. Feel just as frisky as a colt."
With the bodies of the two famous Americans strapped to cots, Crosson flew from Point Barrow to Fairbanks, and with scarcely any rest, continued down the coast to Seattle. There he turned the job over to W. A. Winston, a Pan-American Lines pilot, who flew to Los Angeles where Rogers' body was taken out. Then he flew on to Oklahoma City where the funeral services were to be held for Post.
It was the longest funeral journey ever undertaken in the air. Crosson did not stop at Los Angeles, where vast throngs were waiting to pay homage to Rogers. He remained with his brother flier. In the tragic story of that last flight, Crosson is of more than passing interest.
A war-time flier of the top flight, he moved from the easy flying conditions in California in 1926 to face the rigors of aerial exploration in the land of the midnight sun. As a matter of routine, he flew out of Fairbanks on many missions with only his compass and his unerring birdman instinct to guide him over
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