AIR MAIL. INAUGURATION OF SERVICE, POLO FIELD. MAJ. R.H....

He was born on March 6, 1887, to Lillian Waite and David Fleet in Montesano, Washington. The Fleets were a prosperous family; David Fleet was city engineer and county auditor for Montesano, and owned large tracts of land in the Washington Territory. He also served as the city clerk. Reuben grew up in Grays Harbor, Washington. The Panic of 1893 wiped out the land holdings of the Fleets and the family lived in much diminished conditions from the time Reuben was six until he was thirteen. At 15, Fleet attended Culver Military Academy where his uncle, Alexander Fleet, was superintendent. He spent his fourth and final year at the academy as the editor-in-chief of the cadet newspaper, the C.M.A. Vedette. Culver provided the equivalent of an associate degree, and after his graduation Fleet intended to continue his education at Stanford University. Deciding against going to Stanford immediately, in 1907 Fleet returned home, where he took the state teachers examination and began teaching all grades from first through eighth. After a number of months, Fleet set himself up as a realtor and resigned from teaching. It was also during this time that Fleet joined the Washington National Guard, as captain. In 1908, with a loan from Montesano State Bank for $1500, Fleet began investing in local real estate, which would eventually culminate in Fleet owning large tracts of timberland which he would subdivide and parcel out, often for railroad right-of-way or logging, for substantial profit. In March 1911, Fleet, a captain of a National Guard company, was ordered with his men to quell a civil disturbance organized by the Industrial Workers of the World, a militant labor organization. Later, from April through May Fleet and three other officers were assigned to San Diego, California, to keep track of the agitators who had moved south from Washington and Oregon, heading to Mexico. So impressed was Fleet with San Diego and its climate that he told himself that he would arrange to have his business in San Diego if he could. The promise was kept 24 years later when he relocated the Consolidated plant to San Diego from Buffalo, New York Reuben Fleet was in charge of the airmail service when the famous 24-cent Inverted Jenny postage stamp was printed in error. In 2013 the United States Postal Service commemorated this issue by printing 2,182,000 Souvenir sheets. Each had six of the stamps (repriced at $2) surrounded by period images. Dressed as a World War One-era aviator, Fleet appears in the lower left quadrant of the sheet.