Woman says dad flew through Arch 50 years ago

ST. LOUIS -- For 50 years, an unsolved mystery in St. Louis centered around who piloted the small plane that flew through the legs of the newly completed Gateway Arch in 1966.

A suburban St. Louis woman says it was her father.

The 630-foot tall monument to westward expansion was newly completed when, on June 22, 1966, a small plane suddenly from the west, made a low pass over the Old Courthouse and flew straight through the Arch legs. A group of tourists and a National Park Service guide only could look on in surprise.

"It shook the whole Arch slightly," a worker at the Arch said at the time. "Scared me silly. I thought the whole thing was coming down."

The pilot zoomed away across the Mississippi River, never to be identified.

Until now.

Donna Dorris, who is 75 and lives in Madison, Illinois, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch her father, Earl Bolin, was a bit of a daredevil. She said the family held onto the story as a secret for five decades.

The decision to come clean followed a recent mention of the stunt on its 50th anniversary, in the "This Day in History" column in the Post-Dispatch.

Bolin, who died of emphysema at the age of 59, five years after the stunt, lived in Madison in 1966 and worked at the Nickel Plate railroad yards. He flew small airplanes as a hobby.

On the day of the flight, Dorris, a young mother at the time, was standing in her front yard when her father, who lived across the street, walked up and told her, "You might want to catch the news tonight."

She asked why.

"Well, I went over and flew through the Arch today," Bolin told her.

"Are you kidding me?" she said. "You could have crashed."

"I know what I'm doing," he replied. "I haven't gotten any phone calls. I guess I got away with it."

Dorris said her dad enjoyed a good adventure, but he knew flying through the Arch was a no-no.

The Federal Aviation Agency had warned any pilot who flew through the legs would be penalized. severely. The FAA collected the names and addresses of 12 witnesses who saw the flight, and a canvass was started within a 75-mile radius to find the plane and pilot.

"We don't take this as a joke," an FAA supervising inspector said at the time. "If the plane had hit the Arch or any of the downtown buildings, it would have killed a number of people in addition to the occupants of the plane."

Bolin told his daughter after the flight he sped up and returned to Illinois, landing and keeping the plane at a now-defunct airport near Granite City.

The newspaper points out a loose end: Witnesses said it was a twin-engine plane that flew through the Arch, but Bolin never owned such a plane. He had a Cessna, a Piper and a Piper Cub, though the family couldn't remember what he flew at the time.

There were at least 10 copycats in subsequent years, including a pilot who flew a helicopter through the arch in 1984 and who was sanctioned by the FAA. The proliferation of security cameras and camera phones makes it unlikely anyone could get away with a between-the-legs flight today.