Verdun-born Murial Hanning-Lee, a stewardess, author and early-aviation pioneer did a whole lot of things right in her brief life. Ignoring a nagging premonition in 1957 was not one of them.
Hanning-Lee did not have an easy childhood. Her mother died when she was a baby and by age eight her single-father dad agreed to allow her to unofficially join her best-friend's family.
Hanning-Lee was not just a beautiful young woman, she had an exceptionally bright mind, as proven by her ability to remember details from the great number of books she consumed.
She joined the Montreal Red Cross during WWII and at the end of the war moved to London, England to take work as a a stenographic replacement.
She loved London and right after the war, at the age of 21 - very much in the pioneering age of civil aviation - she took a job as a stewardess and then kicked around at a variety of airlines until taking a steady job with Aquila about eight years later.
Hanning-Lee had a lot of insights and tales about those early years of civil aviation history, so much so that she started penning a book about her experiences, undoubtedly recruiting the assistance of her good friend Jerrald Tickell, an Irish writer who she know from Hornsby, North London and who was 20 years her senior.
Tickell had written several books about aviation and he later recounted that she told him something unusual.
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A new colleague, 22-year-old Angela Kitchner needed some training and Hanning-Lee volunteered for the flight so she could help train the newby.
But out of the blue, Tickell recounts, Hanning-Lee developed a terrible premonition.
"She was so convinced something was going to happen. She thought of getting a doctor's certificate stating unfitness to fly. She kept saying, 'I don't want to go on this flight.' She only decided to go at the last minute."
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The flight was on Solent G-AKNU, a flying boat which lands on water.
It left Southampton at 22:46 and was to fly to Lisboa and then Las Palmas and Madeira. But a propeller feathered and the plane crashed into a chalk pit near the village of Shalcombe in the Isle of Wight.
The flight crashed on the Isle of Wight on November 15, 1957, killing 43 - including the girl she was training - and leaving 14 survivors.
Her book, Head in the Clouds, can be purchased used at various online book resellers. It might be available at some local libraries but I haven't checked.
One reader described her book in 2008 as, "some fantastic stories when flying was 'glam', era of the flying boat, and real thinking on your feet. No shy girl this one!"
One recent tribute to the dead crew members singles her out, "Most of all, Muriel Hanning Lee the lovely Canadian airhostess for whom I fell in a big way. Although my senior by many years she was very sweet to me," wrote Jim Colthup from Woodbridge.
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| Murial Hanning-Lee |
Hanning-Lee was not just a beautiful young woman, she had an exceptionally bright mind, as proven by her ability to remember details from the great number of books she consumed.
She joined the Montreal Red Cross during WWII and at the end of the war moved to London, England to take work as a a stenographic replacement.
She loved London and right after the war, at the age of 21 - very much in the pioneering age of civil aviation - she took a job as a stewardess and then kicked around at a variety of airlines until taking a steady job with Aquila about eight years later.
Hanning-Lee had a lot of insights and tales about those early years of civil aviation history, so much so that she started penning a book about her experiences, undoubtedly recruiting the assistance of her good friend Jerrald Tickell, an Irish writer who she know from Hornsby, North London and who was 20 years her senior.
Tickell had written several books about aviation and he later recounted that she told him something unusual.
A new colleague, 22-year-old Angela Kitchner needed some training and Hanning-Lee volunteered for the flight so she could help train the newby.But out of the blue, Tickell recounts, Hanning-Lee developed a terrible premonition.
"She was so convinced something was going to happen. She thought of getting a doctor's certificate stating unfitness to fly. She kept saying, 'I don't want to go on this flight.' She only decided to go at the last minute."
The flight was on Solent G-AKNU, a flying boat which lands on water.It left Southampton at 22:46 and was to fly to Lisboa and then Las Palmas and Madeira. But a propeller feathered and the plane crashed into a chalk pit near the village of Shalcombe in the Isle of Wight.
The flight crashed on the Isle of Wight on November 15, 1957, killing 43 - including the girl she was training - and leaving 14 survivors.
Her book, Head in the Clouds, can be purchased used at various online book resellers. It might be available at some local libraries but I haven't checked.
One reader described her book in 2008 as, "some fantastic stories when flying was 'glam', era of the flying boat, and real thinking on your feet. No shy girl this one!"
One recent tribute to the dead crew members singles her out, "Most of all, Muriel Hanning Lee the lovely Canadian airhostess for whom I fell in a big way. Although my senior by many years she was very sweet to me," wrote Jim Colthup from Woodbridge.