A Legacy of Dreams Taking Flight

I noticed the wheels first. The five feet between the operator and asphalt alarmed me. A bastardized bicycle. What Londoners did to the passenger bus, this guy did to a bike. Some Athenians are not content with the distance between their head and pavement.

It reminded me of Ben Epps.

Epps’ discontent for the transportation his two feet provided led to his legendary status in our great city. His ingenuity, creativity, and engineering imbued him to create an environment of excitement throughout Athens.

When horses crowded the streets, he built automobiles and motorized bicycles in his shop on Washington Street, now 8E’s Bar. Still, it did not satiate his desire for creative motion. He constantly tinkered with his creations, with varying results. In Athens, he introduced many firsts.

As word of the Wright brothers’ air-feat spread throughout the South and the world in 1903, Epps combined his skills, knowledge, and compulsive innovation to create an airplane of his own. In 1907, at only nineteen, he became the first person to fly a plane in Georgia. Still, aviation only touches on Epps’ proclivities.

A variety of creations could come bumping, sputtering, and clanking out of his garage. He was constantly innovating and displaying his work.

If Athenians missed him in the air during the week they could always catch him at the airfield on Sundays for his stunt show, where his specialty was a Loop the Loop with the engines off. Then, he would go to each car offering rides for a price to the brave.

Yet, on the blistering day he took his first flight he also became Georgia’s first plane crash victim. He stopped to pose next to the shambles of what took him years to create and went back to the drawing board.

His colleagues ridiculed him. Surely the muffled insults from older mechanics, machinists, and contractors inflamed his desire to prove them wrong. He did, often. His ingenuity became sharper. His spirit and his head held higher. His piloting, more mature.

The papers described the horrific results of his crashes such as a fracture at the base of his skull, deep lacerations, broken arms, and sometimes the deaths of his passengers. Flight was extremely dangerous, only those that kept with it long enough had the burden of frequent disaster.

Engine failure caused his final crash. At the age of 49, his life and death became forever linked to his dream.

Into the halls of fame he flew as a testament to his ability to dust himself off and face death, fear, and the frightened faces of his wife and seven children. He consistently validated his imagination.

From double-decker bicycles, unicyclists, and armless street painters, modern Athens is a menagerie of skilled and creative citizens. The city thrives on and attracts those who match and build on her history.

It is hard to imagine Athens without such vivacity. Yet Ben Epps was extraordinary. He was nationally renowned for his work. He is nationally praised for his legacy. Locally, his mark is subtle but reverberating.

He was not the first Athenian to breathe life into a dream. He will not be the last. Many like him roam downtown streets, unaware of his influence, scheming for ways to survive on their creativity.

In those moments after a hard landing, I turn the corner on College Avenue and onto Washington Street. I look up at the flight of “The Spirit of Athens” at City Hall and wonder, sometimes aloud, of what lies ahead. I stand in front of the statue of Ben Epps across from his shop. He looks proudly down a street that has changed irrevocably since he rolled out his first plane.

I think Epps would love what our city has become. Although, I think he may have blended in much more than he intended.