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By John Valenti
She was a groundbreaking aviator who learned to fly after hearing tall tales from a pilot who'd crash-landed on her grandfather's golf course in Warren Township, New Jersey.
Later, she was one of the original women to pilot bombers, transports and fighter planes from factories to military bases in both the United States and England during World War II.
And, not long after that, she was taught to paint frescoes by Diego Rivera, the famed Mexican muralist and husband of artist Frida Kahlo.
In 1934, Manhattan socialite Aline Rhonie undertook a mammoth four-year project inside Hangar F at the old Roosevelt Field airport complex - a 1,400-square-foot mural chronicling the roots of aviation on Long Island from 1908 to 1927.
That piece, which for the past decade has anchored two workshop walls at a branch of the Vaughn College of Aeronautics near LaGuardia Airport in Astoria, Queens, will begin making its way this month to the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Uniondale - a home not far from the historic airfield where it was painted.
Curators plan to have the mural become a featured interactive exhibit in a new museum building they hope to begin constructing soon. No specific date has been announced yet for when the mural will go on display.
"It's one of the only surviving artifacts from Roosevelt Field, the airfield," Cradle of Aviation curator Joshua Stoff said as he stood before the mural last week. "It documents a unique period of Long Island's history and . . . this is literally one of the few things left from that time - one of the only surviving artifacts from what was the most famous airport in America, maybe the world, in the 1920s and '30s."An early aviation pioneerAs editor-in-chief of Metropolitan Airport News, Julia Lauria-Blum said: "This is an amazing documentation of aviation on Long Island visually brought to life in color. It's not just the aircraft, it's the stories of the people behind the aircraft . . . It has personalities, there's humor in it."
It even includes one pilot's sidekick, a cigar-smoking dog.
Born Aug. 16, 1909, in York, Pennsylvania, Aline Rhonie Hofheimer grew up privileged in New Jersey and was one of the earliest attendees...