Colt 1911 Manual belonging to Richard Upjohn Light

Description

Colt 1911 Manual belonging to famed aviator and neurosurgeon Dr. Richard Upjohn Light. 32 pages.
Dr. Richard Upjohn Light was born in Kalamazoo and graduated in 1920 from Culver Military Academy in Culver, Ind. His interest in aviation was awakened when, as a child, he watched the Wright brothers, who had been boyhood friends of his father, practicing their early flights in Dayton, Ohio. After graduating from Yale University in 1924, he went to the University of Michigan Medical School. He then postponed his residency to join the Army Air Corps, training at Kelly Field, Texas, in the biplanes of that era. He qualified as a pilot in 1929, then enrolled at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston as a resident in neurosurgery. His family said he was the last resident trained by Dr. Harvey Cushing, widely regarded as the father of neurosurgery. He was an avid cinematographer, and for many years his film of Dr. Cushing's 2,000th brain-tumor removal was shown at annual meetings of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. He also helped develop surgical tools like an electric drill to replace the brace and bit device used to penetrate the skull. In 1934, he and a fellow Yale graduate, acting as radio operator, set forth from New Haven, Conn., in a single-engine float plane on a widely publicized round-the-world journey, with landings in Greenland, Iceland, the Faeroe Islands, Europe, the Middle East, India, the West Indies and Manila. There, confronted with winter weather over the Pacific, they dismantled their plane and shipped it to Vancouver, British Columbia. Then they flew to California, Mexico, Cuba and finally to College Point, N.Y. In 1937, he and his first wife, Rachael Mary Upjohn, a distant cousin, flew a single-engine plane the length of South America, crossed the South Atlantic by ship, then flew north from Cape Town, South Africa. The resulting study and aerial photos were published by the American Geographical Society as a book, "Focus on Africa." He was elected to the council of the American Geographical Society in 1941 and served as the organization's president from 1947 to 1955. From 1937 to 1968, he was a director of Upjohn Co., the pharmaceuticals giant founded by W. E. Upjohn, his grandfather.