class of 1902 and earned his M.D. degree from the University of Southern California School of Medicine in 1903. He established a prosperous eye, ear, nose and throat practice in Redlands and San Diego. On March 28, 1905, he married Marion Ashley of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Almost immediately, the Poundses became respected celebrities of San Diego civic affairs and high society, noted in local news snippets. In 1910 Pounds taught San Diego schoolteachers how to detect and prevent eye, ear and throat diseases in children. In 1913 the exclusive Sequan Country Club was incorporated with Pounds as its president, its membership limited to 100 families. In 1915 Marion Pounds was proposed as a candidate for the San Diego school board at a meeting of politically active women, an uncharacteristically progressive suggestion before women had won the right to vote throughout the nation. Pounds served as an assistant surgeon in the naval reserve, achieving the rank of lieutenant from 1915 to 1918, but was never called to duty during World War I. A January 1, 1917, report in the San Diego Union boasted that the town’s most prominent citizens, including Pounds, were “citizen sailor” members of the Navy Militia, part of a grand and largely successful campaign to transform San Diego into the Navy’s main Pacific coast base. After the war, Pounds moved his residence to Tegucigalpa and established himself there as an eye doctor. He is said to have witnessed the pioneer airplane flight in Central America on April 19, 1921, when his friend, Colonel Ivan Lamb, flew his Bristol fighter biplane into Tegucigalpa from San Pedro Sula, which kindled his interest in the aviation business. The Inauguration of Air Transport in Honduras Sumner B. “Sonny” Morgan had been an aviator for a decade or more by the time he applied for the job as CAA’s pilot. He had worked for Glenn H. Curtiss’ Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company in 1916, and had studied motor design at Columbia University. After completing successful test flights in March and April, and 6
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