Sylvester Joseph “Steve” Wittman Bio 

Sylvester Joseph “Steve” Wittman was born April 5, 1904, in Byron, Wisconsin. He was the fifth and youngest child of Martin A. and Mary Ann Bauer Wittman.
An illness in infancy had claimed most of the vision in one eye. With a youthful fascination with mechanical things, especially airplanes, he thought his dream of flying unattainable.
In 1924, at age 20, he designed and built a single-place aircraft with a 14-horespower Harley-Davidson engine. Hardly airworthy, he named it the “Hardley Ableson”. But after buying a Standard J-1 biplane with a friend, after eight hours of instruction, he soloed.
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