This piece originally ran in the January 2025 issue of EAA Sport Aviation magazine.
On June 15, 1930, 30,000 people attended Wisconsin’s first state-sponsored air race. Events included a parachute-jumping contest and 30-mile closed course “free-for-all” races. The main event was the Governor’s Derby race, where five pilots, including Gov. Walter J. Kohler Sr.’s personal pilot, raced from Madison to Kohler, Wisconsin. David B. Read, an Oshkosh pilot who competed in the 1930 Wisconsin Air Race in his Waco biplane, won this trophy. He finished last in the Governor’s Derby after having to make an emergency landing due to oncoming weather but was first in the two “free-for-all” races, completing the 30-mile courses in less than 10 minutes. Read was a well-known pilot throughout the Fox Valley who experimented in building his own air racers during the late 1920s. By 1931, he abandoned the barnstormer life and started a marine taxi service on Lake Winnebago.