DELTA COUNTY, Mich. (WZMQ) – A Delta County historian and author is sharing her family’s history of aviation in a new book.
“My grandpa and his sisters were wing walkers in the flying circus in the 1920s, back in the barnstorming days,” said Kylie Kalishek, author of All of Them but Fear.
The Kalishek siblings were some of America’s early aviation pioneers. They got their start in the Upper Peninsula.
“They were originally from Gladstone,” Kalishek said. “My grandpa Clifford’s older sister, Sarah, went out to California at 15 and started wing walking. She would hang from planes by her teeth and jump from one plane to another.”
More Kalisheks joined Sarah to form a high-flying, fear-defying act.
“My grandpa was a parachute jumper and a motorcycle racer,” said Kalishek. “He started wing walking as well. Then, their little sister Isabella joined, and she was wing walking under the name Babe Kalishek.”
The Kalishek siblings were groundbreaking in more ways than one. Kylie is particularly proud to be a Kalishek woman.
“Their sister Lydia was the first woman in the world to run an airport,” she said. “They were pioneers in the industry, all flying before Amelia Earhart. In a time where women couldn’t even legally wear pants, I had three of them flying airplanes and hanging off of them.”
Kylie Kalishek has spent the last decade researching her family’s extensive history, collecting articles, photos, and videos. She compiled everything to craft All of Them but Fear, which is on sale now.
“The quote of the book comes from a question that was asked of my Aunt Sarah,” she explained. “They said, ‘What emotions do you feel when you’re thousands of feet in the air performing?’ She looked up like she was visualizing her stunts, and she said, ‘All of them but fear.'”
On Thursday, March 26, Kalishek will give a presentation on Sarah, Clifford, Isabella, and Lydia at the Escanaba Public Library. Attendees will be able to order a copy of All of Them but Fear and learn about some incredible local history, which Kalishek says is also a big part of the story of aviation in the United States.
“This history means everything to me,” she said. “Their legacy, I think, is to dream big.”
As a descendant of that legacy, Kylie Kalishek says her mission is to keep it alive.
“This is hopefully the first of many books that I’ll be writing on this history,” she said. “It had been forgotten. Their names are lost among the greats. Everybody knows Besse Coleman and Amelia Earhart, but nobody’s heard of the Kalishek family. Being able to preserve this history that was all but lost means everything.”
Thursday’s presentation at the library, located at 400 Ludington Street, begins at 5:30 p.m. For more information on the event, click here.
