Harold L. "Smiling Bud" Coffee Photographs

Scope and Contents

This collection consists of eight black and white photographs, each measuring approximately 5.75 by 3.5 inches, relating to Harold L. "Smiling Bud" Coffee. All the photographs were taken at Westwood Airport in California in August 1920 and include handwritten captions on the reverse. Two different Lincoln (Aircraft) Standard L-S-3 (L.S.3) aircraft are shown in the photographs, one with a Hispano Suiza engine and one with a Hall-Scott engine. Several of the photographs show Coffee and several show Harold and Margaret Frodsham. Harold Frodsham was an employee of the Red River Lumber Company in Westwood, California and a prolific photographer, although it appears that these photographs were taken by someone else since Frodsham is pictured in most of them. The photographs are marked on the reverse with a name that appears to be Grafler or Graflen, and this may be the photographer.

Arrangement

Photographs are in the order they were received, with like images grouped together.

Biographical / Historical

Harold L. "Smiling Bud" Coffee (1898--1921) graduated from Oakland Technical High School before enlisting in the US Army Aviation Section, Signal Corps in 1917. Coffee served stateside during World War I as a flight instructor, attaining the rank of second lieutenant. After the War, Coffee continued in a career in commercial aviation including exhibition and stunt flying as well as making deliveries by airplane. In early July 1921, Coffee set a record flying from Wyoming to San Francisco to convey photographs from the boxing fight between Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier for a news organization. Coffee was asked to pilot a Jacuzzi Brothers monoplane in order to scout for a possible passenger route from Oakland, California to the Yosemite Valley. The aircraft left from Durant Field in Oakland on July 12, 2021 with Coffee at the controls. On board were Giocondo Jacuzzi, John H. Kauke (an aviation writer), and Archibald Duncan McLeish (a technician from the Jacuzzi Brothers plant). The aircraft landed successfully in Yosemite. On the return flight on July 14, 1921, scheduled to land in Modesto, California, the aircraft broke apart in the air and crashed to the ground within the city limits of Modesto, killing all four people on board.