Ormer Leslie Locklear

Locklear's trademark was changing planes in midair. Wikipedia's biography says he formed the Locklear Flying Circus in 1919 with fellow former Army fliers Skeets Elliott and Shirley Short and promoter William Pickens, then added a car-to-plane transfer and a two-plane act called the Dance of Death. In April 1920 Los Angeles fined him $25, the first aviation law violation issued there, for reckless flying. He starred in The Great Air Robbery before The Skywayman, and Elliott died beside him as co-pilot in the 1920 crash.

What the plaque says

Ormer Leslie Locklear (October 28, 1891 - August 2, 1920) (grave site 65 feet east) A native of Greenville, Texas, Ormer Leslie Locklear moved to Fort Worth with his family in 1906. He worked for his father's construction company until 1914, when he and his brother opened an automobile repair shop. Locklear enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Service in 1917, soon after the U.S. entered World War I. He trained in San Antonio and Austin before being assigned to Barron Field near Fort Worth as a flight instructor. He soon became known for his daring feats of precision flying and performed in barnstorming air shows to recruit pilots for military service. Locklear resigned his Army commission in 1919 to fly in the commercial air show circuit. Hired by the Universal Film Company as a stunt pilot for motion pictures, he moved to Hollywood and in 1920 was killed flying a stunt pilot for his second feature, "The Skywayman". The accident, believed to have been caused when the bright lights illuminating the night sky for filming blinded the pilot, was recorded on film and used in the movie's final scene. Thousands of mourners attended Locklear's Fort Worth funeral, which the Fox Film Corporation filmed and released later as a newsreel. (1992)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kimbell Art Museum — 0.9 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 1.3 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.
• Tarrant County Courthouse — 1.9 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 2.2 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.

More markers nearby

• Lawrence Clifton Elliott — 0.3 mi
• Ahavath Sholom Hebrew Cemetery — 0.3 mi
• Herbert M. Hinckley — 1.1 mi
• Oakwood Cemetery — 1.1 mi