Ivan R. Gates Collection (MS-646)

Ivan Rhuele Gates was born January 15, 1890, in Rockford, Michigan (a little north of Grand Rapids), son of Aaron Gates and Anna (Bell) Gates. At the age of 19 he moved to Los Angeles and became an automobile salesman. Shortly thereafter, he became interested in aviation and moved to San Francisco to open an automobile brokerage house.

By 1911, Gates had purchased a bi-plane and received one of the earliest pilot's licenses. A serious automobile accident grounded him for a time, but he met French pilot and mechanic Didier Masson. Masson refused to fly the bi-plane Gates had acquired, so "Van" set out to design and build his own plane. The focus became stability and soundness to satisfy Masson. These characteristics became central in later Gates designs. Ultimately, Gates planes would carry a million passengers with the loss of only one life, and that through pilot error, not aircraft failure.

Gates toured back East in one of his own planes in 1912. He started his first air works in San Francisco in 1913 and established the first flying school on the west coast, at Richmond, California, shortly thereafter. All the while he was still in the automobile business to raise enough money to continue in aviation and engaged in auto racing, both staging races and participating in them. In November 1916, he married Clemonce A. Thompson, in San Francisco.

When World War I broke out, Gates joined the armed forces, with an interest in the Army Air Corps, but before he could finish training and get to Europe, the armistice was in place. While waiting for a place in the Air Corps, he staged a number of Air meets, using the profits to supply sweaters, helmets, gloves to military pilots.

Gates formed the Gates Flying Circus, along with partner Clyde Pangborn, to show off the early pilots and daredevils of the air. Along with these demonstrations were often air meets / races. In the process, he helped to develop many airports around the country, so the planes could land somewhere other than a cornfield. This also helped the nation see the potential of commercial aviation. In October 1922, he married his second wife Hazel G. Wilson, in Denver, Colorado. By 1929, Hazel had learned to pilot an airplane as well.

In 1927, Gates saw that the days of the Flying Circus were over, so with Charles Day, he founded Gates-Day Aviation Company. They started by updating the Army's aircraft trainer, then went on to design and build dozens of advanced aircraft. At the end of 1928, the name was changed to the New Standard Aircraft Company. Gates sold his interest in the company and started the Gates Aircraft Corporation and Gates Flying Service, both in New York City. The Gates Aircraft Corporation seems to have been most notable for producing the Belgian RSV, a convertible monoplane/biplane used by the Belgian air force. Also in the late 1920s, Gates operated a flying school at Holmes Airport in Jackson Heights (Queens Borough), New York.

The onset of the Great Depression seriously damaged Gates’ aviation businesses, which went bankrupt in 1931. Gates tried operating an art exhibition space, but that venture met with little success. Despondent over his declining business situation, and after a fight (one of many, by some reports) with his wife on Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 1932, he told her he was going to jump out of the window of their 6th floor Manhattan apartment, then proceeded to do just that. Gates was cremated and (by his own request) his ashes scattered to the wind from an airplane over Holmes Airport by fellow flyers Clyde Pangborn and Swanes Taylor.

(The majority of the above biographical sketch was supplied by Cowan’s Auctions.)