"Tinney Flyers Corporation presents Senorita Deborah DeCostello - world's most daring aviatrix."

So read the poster printed for the Leelanau County Fair, scheduled for Empire on Sept. 29-30, 1920.

DeCostello

Her stunt was described as the “most spectacular and daring act in the world,” adding her performance as a “daring death defying 5000 feet parachute leap from airplane in full flight.”

It turned out the act was not only daring, but fatal, as the stunt tragically claimed the life of the 26-year-old aviatrix.

Following World War I, the word “barnstorming” gained a new definition – “to tour as a stunt flyer.” The novelty and popularity of the rather new invention, the airplane, took the country by storm, and a younger generation may have been unaware that “barnstorming” had originally meant “to travel about giving political speeches, giving lectures, or presenting plays.”

By either definition, barnstorming meant traveling to rural or small town America. And in September 1920, that meant Empire.

Senorita DeCostello left her airplane over the fairgrounds and was descending with her parachute when strong winds carried her out over Lake Michigan, where she drowned.

Some weeks later, her body washed ashore at the village’s lakefront.

Since no family members came forward to claim the body, she was buried in St. Philip's cemetery, where her tombstone simply reads “Deborah DeCostello, 1893-1920.”

The Enterprise devoted just one paragraph to the incident in its edition of Oct. 7.

The account didn’t even have a headline – just “cut-offs” separating it from more mundane “news,” such as “Little Irene Buckler celebrated her eighth birthday…”

The newspaper’s account, in its entirety, read as follows: “Empire Fair Aviatrix believed to be lost in Lake Michigan, Miss Deborah DeCostello 24 years old featured at the Leelanau-Benzie fair in a dare-devil parachute drop from an aeroplane on Friday Oct. 1st. It appears that before she was ready to attempt the drop in the parachute, the rope was accidentally cut and the high wind carried her far out in lake Michigan. As we go to press the body has not been found.”

The procedure was for the aviatrix to dangle beneath the aircraft by a rope until she was ready to make her descent.

Although there are records of men parachuting as early as the late 18th century, the practice of parachuting from heavier-then-air craft was a very recent one in 1920.

DeCostello’s jumps were of the “drag-off” or “lift-off” method that was eventually replaced by the “free-fall” jump. The latter technique was sufficiently developed by World War II, and widely used by military forces.

Attempts at Empire by DeCostello to carry out the stunt on two previous days were thwarted by strong autumnal winds, but the aviatrix was determined to provide the promised performance.

The pilot of the biplane that carried her aloft was powerless to do anything other than make a few futile attempts to “snag” the aviatrix once she started drifting out over the big lake. Rescue craft were dispatched from the U.S. Lifesaving Station at Sleeping Bear Point, but were unable to locate DeCostello.

Harriet Quimby, another pioneering aviatrix, was born at Arcadia, just a few miles down the shoreline from Empire. The two Lake Michigan villages were roughly the same size and both were built on lumbering activity.

Quimby, who was born in 1875, later moved with her family to California, and worked as a journalist. In 1911, she was the first woman to be awarded a pilot’s license and the following year she became the first woman to fly across the English Channel. The feat didn’t garner the level of attention at the time one might expect. That was largely due to the fact it took place on April 16, 1912 – the day after the liner Titanic plunged to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean after colliding with an iceberg.

A few months later, on July 1, Quimby was aloft near Squantum, Mass., with William Willard when their plane, for unknown reasons, “lurched.” Quimby and Willard were ejected from the plane and killed.

In 1991, the pioneering Quimby was the subject of a U.S. postal stamp.

Both Quimby and DeCostello defied death and lost. The most famous aviatrix of all, Amelia Earhart, is also presumed to have lost her life in an attempt to fly around the world alone in 1937. The emphasis is on “presumed,” because Earhart’s disappearance remains a mystery. Nevertheless, people have tried to solve the mystery for the past 70 years.

Earhart, who was born in Atchison, Kan., in 1898, logged a number of aeronautical “firsts,” and like Quimby is far from forgotten.

But poor Senorita DeCostello is remembered today only by a modest tombstone at Empire – despite the fact her attempted feat was once billed as “the most spectacular and daring act in the world.”