One of the many great things about America is that it has always been a place where people can reenvent themselves. That's true in Texas, where people who were legends in their own mind have become legends in their own time. Others have used the Texas myth as part of their own mythology, and Samuel Franklin Cody would seem to fit that description, at least to a point. Like a lot of legends Cody changed his name. He was born Franklin Samuel Cowdery but adopted the more marketable moniker that he took with him into the history books. He claimed to be born in Birdville, Texas, probably because it fit neatly with his image as an aviation pioneer, but he was actually born in Davenport, Iowa, in 1867.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 He truly was an aviation pioneer, but not in Texas or even in this country. Cody is known as the father of British aviation and is recognized as the first person to make a powered airplane flight in England. That much we know. How much of what Cody left us about his life before that point is a matter of speculation and scholarship. Though he wasn't born in Texas, he may have gotten here as fast as he could. He was an expert rider, roper and marksman and starred in his own Wild West shows in England. Because of that, he is often confused with Buffalo Bill Cody. S.F. Cody did little to clear up the confusion and, in fact, dressed like Buffalo Bill and sprouted the same moustache and goatee. The resemblance was striking and intentional.  Cody worked in Texas for at least part of his early days. Other claims are not so clear, such as the one he told his wife about his family being victims of a Sioux raid in which Cody barely excaped certain death by crawling away and watching the family farm burn to the ground. In some versions, his whole family is killed, and in other versions they survive. In this story, he crawled nine miles to a Fort Worth military hospital, where he recovered from his wounds and went on to become a horse trader and cowboy.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             He claims to have gone up the Chisholm Trail in 1875, where a Chinese chuck wagon cook built a giant kite for him. His impulse to take that giant kite and make one even bigger, one capable of carrying a person for a considerable distance, can be called a Texas-sized idea. Of course, there are other stories about how Cody got interested in kites and the science of flight, but this one fits his favored image of the cowboy turned pioneer of British aviation. No doubt, inspired by the success of Buffalo Bill's Wild West shows, the former Frank Cowdery joined Adam D. Forepaugh's Wild West show, where he was billed as "Captain Cody, King of the Cowboys."  He later joined Annie Oakley's show. He married Maud Lee in Pennsylvania in 1889 and went to England, where they were billed as Buffalo Bills son and daughter. When Buffalo Bill threatened legal action, the couple disappeared and soon broke up. Two years later, he began touring once again with a new leading lady, who would become his wife.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     When bicyling became popular in England, Cody cashed in by racing the bicyclists on a horse and generally winning the race. Part of his story has him prospecting in Alaska during the gold rush, and he penned some dramas to go along with his Wild West show, including The Klondyke Nugget and Wild Alaska. At some point, either on the Chisholm Trail or after he started touring England, he got interested in Kites and experimented with making big, man-lifting kites. His contemporaries thought of him as eccentric at best, a crank at worst. The British Navy wasn't quite so skeptical, and he developed weather kites that earned him a fellowship in the Royal Meteorological Society. He also helped develop and pilot an airship over a fifty-mile course, a landmark in British aviation history. On October 16, 1908, at Farnborough, England, Cody flew the Army Aeroplane No. 1, which he also designed, for about half a minute at an altitude of thirty to fourty feet. That is the first powered flight in England and is his claim to fame in that country, where he is held in the same high regard as the Wright brothers are in this country.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Cody made many planes of varying designs, made many flights and survived all of his many crashes except for the last one, which occurred in 1913 when he made a test flight of a float plane that he planned to use in a crossing of the Atlantic. A large monument at Britain's Farnborough Aviation Center honors Cody for his achievements as the "Father of British Aviation."  In the end, his was a story that even he couldn't have made up.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     -Forgotten Tales of Texas-  by Clay Coppedge