Early aviatrix dodged a doomed flight in 1932

In September 1932, an airplane set off from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, N.Y., attempting a nonstop flight to Rome.

Four months before, Amelia Earhart had become the first woman - and only the second pilot after Charles Lindbergh in 1927 - to fly solo across the Atlantic.

The September flight carried a pilot, a physician, and a nurse.

All were lost at sea.

The nurse had replaced Ida Mae Hampton of Northfield, N.J., near Atlantic City, who had declined an invitation to copilot what newspapers at the time called the "American Nurse" flight.

On Oct. 10, Ida Mae Hampton Wassell, 99, died of dementia at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale in New York City.

On Sept. 18, 1932, the Sunday after the Wednesday that the American Nurse flight failed to arrive in Rome, the Atlantic City Press reported on its front page why Ida Mae Hampton had turned down the invitation to copilot.

"As far as I can see, flying across the ocean offers no more opportunity for scientific research than does flying over land," she told the newspaper. "I think cross-country flights are fine and should be encouraged. But I do not believe in spectacular ocean flights."

The newspaper reported that she "has made numerous flights over nearby states."

Last week, her son William H. Wassell said a doctor named Leon Pisculli had organized the flight "to study the effect of fatigue on transatlantic fliers."

A 1932 Associated Press report stated that the fourth passenger on the doomed flight was a woodchuck.

It said Pisculli "had a theory that many flights failed because the cabins filled with gas and that the woodchuck would feel the effects of such gas before the other occupants did."

Mrs. Wassell had earned her pilot's license in 1928, when she was 18, at Bader Field in Atlantic City, the first South Jersey woman to do so, her son said.

In 1929, 99 of the 285 women across the nation who were licensed pilots formed a support group, the Ninety-Nines, for which Earhart became president.

Mrs. Wassell was one of them, her son said.

Born in Hammonton, N.J., Mrs. Wassell was a graduate of the Ogontz School for Young Ladies, from which Earhart had dropped out when she was 19, in 1917. It is now the Abington campus of Pennsylvania State University.

In April 1933, seven months after Mrs. Wassell turned down the transatlantic flight, she was a bit more adventurous.

The front page of the Atlantic City Press reported that, a week shy of her 23d birthday, she had eloped with 34-year-old William S. Wassell.

During World War II, Mrs. Wassell piloted courier flights for the Civil Air Patrol between Philadelphia and Washington, her son said.

In 1946, the Wassell Pie Bakery in Philadelphia was one of three such firms closed by a monthlong strike. Newspaper reports stated that the bakery, at 4041 Ridge Ave., and the two others produced most of the pies used in area restaurants.

Mrs. Wassell's son said his father had founded the bakery in the 1920s and sold it in 1958.

When the Tucson (Ariz.) Watercolor Guild was founded in May 1947, Mrs. Wassell, an amateur artist, was on the board of directors, along with Margaret Sanger, the birth-control advocate.

Besides her son, Mrs. Wassell is survived by daughter Barbara Pradelle, four grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren. Her husband died in 1969.

A memorial was set for May 1 at a relative's residence in Northfield.