Hunsaker, Jerome Clarke
(26 August 1886–10 September 1984)
- David A. Valone
Extract
Hunsaker, Jerome Clarke (26 August 1886–10 September 1984), aeronautical engineer and aviation pioneer, was born in Creston, Iowa, the son of Walter J. Hunsaker, a newspaper publisher, and Alma Clarke. Hunsaker was raised in Detroit and Saginaw, Michigan. He enrolled in the U.S. Naval Academy and graduated first in his class in 1908. He was then assigned to the naval construction corps, and shortly afterward he was sent by the navy to begin graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he intended to study ship construction. Hunsaker, however, soon became fascinated by the phenomenon of flight and the study of aeronautical engineering. In 1911 he married Alice Porter Avery, with whom he had four children....
