To people who knew him, Vern C. Gorst was the granddad of United Airlines, one of the world's great airlines. On United's 25th anniversary, a Portland newspaper put it this way:
    "The cocoon from which United Airlines emerged as one of the world's great air transports was started a quarter of a century ago by a man who didn't mind challenging the unknown. Some of the pioneers had substantial financial resources; others, such as Vern C. Gorst of Coos Bay, Oregon, had more enthusiasm than cash, enthusiasm that resulted in the birth of Pacific Air Transport, which 25 years ago this September 15 made its first scheduled flight. . . ."
    It takes a long time and much must happen before a person becomes a granddad. Gorst was a gold miner, bus line operator and pioneer aviator who brought here the first airplane most Coos Bay people had ever seen.
    He was born in Minnesota on the 100th anniversary of the nation, so his parents named him Vern Centennial Gorst. Because of Indian troubles, his father and uncle's family moved to Port Orchard, Wash., when Vern was 12 years old. He grew up there where his father had a lumber mill and in 1896 went to Alaska to prospect for gold.
    Gorst and another young man had a claim in the Cook Inlet area they sold for $21,000. He returned to Seattle with the money and a pocket of gold nuggets when he was just 21 to attend the University of Washington, where he studied business, mining engineering and surveying.
    The gold rush attracted him back to Alaska in 1898 where he exhibited for the first time his talents in the field of transportation. He carried provisions on his back over the Chilkoot Pass for a dollar a pound.
    The last stretch at the top of the pass was the most difficult part of the route, so Gorst and several young men got together and installed a pulley at the top of the pass, ran a long rope through it and attached sleds to each end of the rope. Provisions were loaded on the sled at the bottom and men on the other end of the rope at the top would ride down to pull up the other sled.
    Gorst and his partners hand-sawed lumber to make boats to go down the Yukon River. He finally settled at Sixteen Eldorado, where he was employed to mine gold and where he later had a mine of his own.
    In the Klondike, Gorst met and married his wife Julie Aug. 7, 1901. She was from Sacramento, Calif., and had gone to Alaska during the gold rush with the family of her girlfriend. They left Alaska in 1903 and went to Port Orchard, where he ran a boat launch business until 1910.
    During this time they went down to the dry diggings at Tonopah, Nev., where their first son, Everett, died when he was 21 months old. A daughter, Murtis, was born in 1907 and a son, Wilbur, was born in 1909. As early as 1903 Gorst had become interested in what the Wright brothers were doing, so named his son after Wilbur Wright.
    In 1910 Gorst sold his boat business and moved with his family to Jacksonville. At Jacksonville there wasn't as much gold as he expected, so in the winter of 1910-11 he started the first auto stage in Oregon.
    He came to Coos Bay in 1912, began counting the number of people riding boats and people walking between North Bend and Marshfield, so decided to start an auto stage. His partner was Charles King, who had become his business associate in the Jacksonville stage line.
    Gorst and King had a prosperous year in 1912-13, so Gorst talked Charlie King into buying an airplane. The plane was built by Glenn L. Martin and was delivered to Gorst in Balboa, Calif. It was a hydroplane with a main pontoon and two wing pontoons and was powered by a Curtiss OX-2 engine, the predecessor of the famous OX-5 that powered many planes that World War I pilots flew.
    In those early days of flying there was no such thing as trainer planes with dual controls. but Gorst had some flying instruction from Silas Christofferson, who made aviation history by flying his "bamboo birdcage" off the roof of the Multnomah Hotel in Portland with some eight pounds of mail and landing in Vancouver, Wash., to make the first air mail delivery between two states.
    Frank Champion, who was Gorst's pilot, and Gorst planned to take up passengers for several days before taking the plane to North Bend, so dropped cards from the plane telling adventurous people of plane rides from Long Beach. On landing with the first passenger, waves damaged the wings which had to be repaired at the Martin factory. The plane was dismantled and shipped to North Bend.
    The plane hangar was at the foot of Washington Street in North Bend where the old milk dock used to be and was made of shiplap used as siding. A pilot was needed, so Ed Steele, a mechanic for Gorst and King, was given $600 and sent to California to learn to fly.
    Wilbur Gorst likes to tell what happened next. "Dad saw that brand-new plane sitting there and just had to try it out. So he would get up at five o'clock in the morning and go up and down the bay in it.
    "The engine just had short exhaust stacks so it made an awful lot of racket and a lot of people kicked about it, but that didn't make any difference.
    "He zigzagged up and down the bay and took short hops and on the third day he made his first turn in the air about where McCullough Bridge is now--a 180-degree turn. Lyle Chappell, who was later mayor of North Bend, says he flew with dad before Ed Steele got back from California.
    "When Ed Steele got back he said, "Who has been flying the airplane?" Percy Phillips said, "Vern has." Ed had a bit of temper, so he picked up a wrench and threw it through the side of the hangar. Dad used to lift me up to show the hole to me.
    "He used to take people up and they had a contest on to see who could get up the highest. L. J. Simpson had the record because he had the most money for the trip and could stay up the longest and of course, the highest."
    They had a contract to do exhibition flying during a celebration in 1913 in Toledo. On the second day of flying, Steele struck a log boom piling and damaged the right wing, so they sold the plane there just as it was. King and Mrs. Gorst persuaded Gorst to give up flying, which he did for 11½ years.
    It was during these years that Gorst and King started a bus line up the beach to the Umpqua using Model T Fords. Gorst also took the engine out of an old Hupmobile, installed a floor, pontoons and an OX-2 engine with the propeller in the back. The vehicle, a sort of amphibious sand buggy, could cross the bay and do 70 miles an hour on the beach. They called it the Fast Freight to Florence.
    There were about seven bus lines Gorst started during this time. There was the Gorst Auto Lines that was the first bus line to carry passengers to Coquille. The Coast Auto Lines that ran to Port Orford, Roseburg and Marshfield was later sold to Greyhound.
    There was a feeder line by way of Golden and Silver Falls to Scottsburg and a line from Florence to Mapleton. In 1915 he started a bus line from San Francisco to Vallejo and in 1923 he started Motor Coach, Inc., which ran from Santa Monica to Los Angeles.
    The birthplace of United Airlines was the Coos Bay Hotel at the corner of Sherman and Virginia avenues in North Bend--a building still in use. Late in 1925 Gorst told a group of Pacific Northwest stage line operators meeting at the hotel of his vision that planes would soon be hauling passengers and mail. He proposed the operators go into the air transport business
    The operators contributed $1,000 for Gorst to make a survey of a route from San Francisco to Vancouver. V. C. Gorst and "Pat" Patterson, a stunt flier, used a Waco 9 to survey the route between Nov. 21 and Dec. 10, 1925. His report to the stage operators was that an air mail route was feasible, so they subscribed $14,000 worth of stock in the proposed $500,000 Pacific Transport Company.
    The stock was sold for $100 a share and most sales were for one to 10 shares, but Julius Meier. the Portland department store owner, bought $25,000 worth. Gorst raised $175,000, including $40,000 of his own money which he obtained from sale of all his bus lines except the Marshfield-North Bend line.
    When the government asked for bids on a Seattle to Los Angeles air mail route; Gorst was the only bidder because transport operators then felt the Siskiyou Mountains were almost impossible to fly over much of the year.
    Gorst exchanged his air mail contract for 250 shares of voting stock in Pacific Air Transport (PAT) to add to the 134 shares he already owned to give him control of the company which had only 500 shares of voting stock.
    PAT began operations Sept. 15, 1926 with 10 pilots, a Swallow, a Waco and two Travelaire planes. After a demonstration ride from San Diego to Seattle in a plane designed by Claude Ryan, who had a small plane factory in San Diego, Gorst ordered 10 planes for approximately $3,700 each.
    The planes were the Ryan M-1 monoplane, one later to become famous as the "Spirit of St. Louis"--the plane that Charles W. Lindberg flew from New York to Paris. In telling about the planes, Wilbur Gorst said, "The reason Lindbergh got a Ryan for his trip was because of what Dad had done with them. Everybody thought you couldn't fly across the Siskiyous on a scheduled run."
    Gorst had a contract for the first 10 planes built--but did not have the Wright Whirlwind engines, costing $5,000 each. Varney Airlines of Pasco, Wash., had contracts for the engines, but not for the planes, which were needed for its line to Elko, Nev. Varney Airlines was one of the four airlines that eventually merged to form United Airlines.
    So Gorst swapped plane contracts for engine contracts with Gorst, getting planes Serial Nos. 1, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8, with the first delivery to PAT in March 1926 and the last three planes in July. Lindbergh's plane was a brougham, which was a plane with a cabin instead of the open cockpit that mail planes had, and was No. 28 or 29, Wilbur Gorst believes, although other sources give the number as Serial No. 16.
    In addition to Ryan and Lindbergh, Gorst also knew two other men important in the history of aviation, William E. Boeing and William A. Patterson.
    Boeing was from a wealthy Seattle family that had made money from the Northwest lumber industry. He bought his first flying boat in 1915 and learned to fly from Glenn Martin.
    When Boeing cracked up the plane near Seattle and found it would take at least six months to get another plane from the Martin factory, he decided to build his own planes. Using planes built in his own factory, he formed the Boeing Air Transport (BAT) on July 1, 1927, which flew the route from San Francisco to Chicago.
    William A. Patterson was a young bank officer in the Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco who made Gorst a $5,000 loan and became interested in aviation. The bank president told Patterson he didn't think the flying machine business would ever amount to much and that Patterson had better stay close to the flying machine men until the bank got its money back.
    Patterson began to spend most of his spare time at Crissey Field and became a volunteer advisor to Gorst on business. In 1934 he became president of United Airlines and held that post into the age of jet transports.
    While Gorst's headquarters were at Crissey Field in San Francisco, he kept his home and family in Marshfield. Wilbur Gorst said, "He would circle our house and I'd get in the Model T Ford and go down there and run up and down the field to mash down the grass and weeds so he could see where the runway was and he would land. We kept the plane where the Thunderbird Motel is now."
    He said the runway began near the hangar and ran in a northerly direction to about where the skating rink is now. A small drainage ditch crossed the runway, so some 60 feet of wooden planking had to be built for the portion of the runway over the ditch. At that time a two-lane road and walkway was on a causeway about where U.S. Highway 101 is now. The area has since been filled.
    Losses for the new airline were great, and three of the original 10 pilots were killed before the winter storms were over. Pilots for PAT got $400 a month, with a good deal of that amount being in stock they considered almost worthless. PAT President Gorst received the same salary as his pilots.
    During the summer of 1927 business was good but therewere other pressing problems. PAT was losing money, competition was developing and planes were beginning to carry passengers. The Ryan mail planes were not designed to carry passengers, although two could sometimes be carried sitting on the sacks of air mail.
    The new Boeing B-40 Gorst needed carried a price tag of $25,000 each and he was unable to raise the money. Patterson suggested that Boeing buy PAT and Boeing offered $200 a share. Gorst accepted the offer when Boeing agreed to keep all PAT employees and to buy all the stock held by other shareholders at the same $200 or better price.
    Later four airlines united to form United Airlines: Gorst's Pacific Air Transport with a route from Los Angeles to Vancouver, B.C.; Varney Air Lines of Pasco, Wash., with a route to Boise, Idaho and Elko, Nev.; Boeing Air Transport with the San Francisco to Chicago route, and National Air Transport with a route from Dallas, Tex., to Chicago and Chicago to New York.
    Gorst continued his interest in air transport, forming Barnes and Gorst, which flew mail contracts from Seattle to Victoria, B.C.; the Gorst Air Transport that had a Seattle to Bremerton air freight service and the Seattle Flying Service and School. Gorst Air Transport flew charter planes from Seattle to Alaska but he never was able to get an air mail contract for this route.
    He sold out in 1936 and went to live in Port Orchard for a few years, then returned to operate the old Gorst and King bus line from North Bend to Coos Bay. Mrs. Gorst died in 1940.
    Wilbur Gorst, who worked in the Boeing plant until after the war, returned to Coos Bay and assisted in operating the line. He now lives in Barview. The bus line was operated until automobiles became available after the end of the war and people no longer needed the bus service, so Gorst retired.
    [Vern Gorst] never lost his interest in flying and kept up his pilot's license, the last one dated 1952. He raised trout in 11 fish ponds at his home and would fly the fish to Portland in his Aerocoupe plane to pay for his hobbies of flying and fish farming. His last trip was with his grandson to Port Orchard on July 4, 1953.
    When he died in August 1953, United Airlines dispatched a plane to carry his body to Sacramento, where he is buried in East Lawn Cemetery. It was a fitting honor and tribute to its granddad.
The World, Coos Bay, September 21, 1974, page B22