Elliott White Springs(1896-1959)

Elliott White Springs was born on 31 July, 1896, at Lancaster, South Carolina, the son of Leroy (1861-1931) and Grace Allison White Springs. His father was a member of the firm Heath, Springs & Co., which operated a general merchandise, cotton mill and banking enterprise. Grace Springs died when he was around ten. His step-mother, Lena Jones Springs (1883-1942), whom his father married in 1914, was active in the women's suffragette movement. At the 1924 Democratic Convention she became the first of her gender to have her name put in nomination for the office of Vice-President of the United States by a major political party.

Springs graduated from the Culver Military Academy in 1913 and Princeton University in 1917. After Princeton he traveled to England where he studied military aviation at Oxford University and joined the British Royal Flying Corp. Flying with the BRFC and later United States Air Service, Springs became the fifth-ranking American flying ace by shooting down eleven enemy aircraft, an achievement that earned him both the British Distinguished Flying Cross and the United States Distinguished Service Medal. After the war he joined the Army Air Reserve and worked as a test pilot for a private aircraft company. On 25 August, 1919, he competed in the first round trip international airplane race between New York and Toronto. Springs retired from the Army Air Reserve in 1942 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel after briefly being called back for active service.

Elliott White Springs' original ambition was to be a dime novel author but fate intervened and instead he became a war hero and eventually a very successful businessman. He was president of Spring Cotton Mills Inc., which at the time of his death was the 7th largest textile firm and the 248th largest corporation in America. Springs surprised just about everybody he knew when he was able turn the fortunes of his late father's company's around during depths of the Great Depression. This was largely done through modernization and some very creative advertising. Springs also served as president of the Bank of Lancaster, the Kanawah Insurance Company and one of the smallest railroads in America that had as one of its board members, Gypsy Rose Lee. In the 1930s Springs, who was an avid collector of classic automobiles, purchased a private railroad car that was formerly owned by American steel magnate Charles M. Schwab's and set it up at his Spring Cotton Mills factory as his private office.

Despite Springs business accomplishments, he still considered himself primarily an author. He was able to find the time to write nine books and a number of short stories and articles for publication in magazines and journals. His hugely successful, "Warbirds: the Diary of an Unknown Aviator" (1926), is considered by many as one of the most significant books ever written about World War I aviators. His other books include: "Nocturne Militaire" (1927), "Above the Bright Blue Sky" (1928), "Leave Me with a Smile" (1928), "In the Cool of the Evening" (1929), "Romance of the Air" (1930), "War Birds and Lady Birds" (1931), "The Rise and Fall of Carol Banks" (1931), "Pent up on a Penthouse (1931)" and "Clothes Make the Man" (1948).

Elliott White Springs died of pancreatic cancer on 15 October, 1959, at Memorial Hospital in New York. He was survived by his wife of 37 years, Frances Hubbard Ley and their daughter Anne. He was preceded in death by is son, Leroy "Sonny" Springs II, (1925-1946), who was killed in an aviation accident. The writer Burke Davis chronicled Springs life in his 1987 book, "War Bird: the life and times of Elliott White Springs".