From Joyce:
Adrian Reeves came from a loving, close family, and when he left to visit his late friend’s parents in Canada in 1922 it was expected that he would return within a few months. Instead, on the ship which was taking him to Canada, he fell in love with Anne Matthew, a young Scottish lady also going to Canada to visit. They were married the following year in Detroit, Michigan, established their home there, and had two children, one of whom is my grandmother, Joyce. Adrian’s only brother, Eric Reeves, now also lived in Detroit, and their mother, Jane Campbell Reeves, came to visit them in 1932 and meet their families. Adrian had been a decorated RAF pilot in the First World War, and in Detroit he had built an airfield, called National Air Service, where he taught flying . The office was an old building which had been a post office during the civil war, and which sat beside the runways.
During Jane’s visit, Adrian put on an air show. It was advertised that during the intermission. Captain Reeves’ elderly mother who was visiting from Ireland would be taken up in an aircraft for her first flight. Adrian’s mother was slender, middle-aged and fairy athletic, but the crowd saw an old lady walking out of the office toward me airstrip dressed in ankle length Muck silk, leaning heavily on a cane and taking small shuffling steps as she approached the plane. The loudspeaker announced that Captain Reeves’ mother was about to experience her very first flight in an aircraft, and her son would be the pilot.
As the crowd watched, the old lady was assisted into the cockpit and her escorts walked jauntily off the airstrip as the loudspeaker announced that Captain Reeves would shortly arrive to take off. Then the plane began to move, at first slowly and jerkily, then picking up speed as it took off into the air. The crowd was in an uproar and one woman fainted. The plane flew above them, and did a loop-the-loop as they all watched in horror, then came back and landed. Captain Reeves emerged from the cockpit stood before them and removed the black dress, revealing his usual flight gear and bowing to his stunned audience. Adrian Reeves had a medal for stunt flying.
I didn’t know my grandfather was also a stunt pilot, and apparently a prankster too!
Aunt Joyce must have told this story to her granddaughter.