Edmund Potter, wearing his Boy Scout uniform as a sign of respect, lays a wreath at the tomb of Lafayette Escadrille pilot James McConnell, who a statue in front of UVA’s Clemons Library honors. (Photo contributed by Corentin Molusson)
James McConnell is long gone, but far from forgotten.
McConnell, whom “The Aviator” sculpture in front of the University of Virginia’s Clemons Library honors, flew with France’s Lafayette Escadrille in World War I, and was the last American volunteer killed in the conflict before the U.S. became officially involved. A former student in UVA’s School of Law and College of Arts & Sciences, he is buried in the Lafayette Escadrille Memorial in Paris.
Recently, Edmund Potter of Waynesboro, a UVA architectural history graduate, laid a wreath at McConnell’s tomb, one alumnus to another.
“I’m pretty sure that no one’s visited McConnell in quite a while, much less someone with a connection with the University,” Potter said. “I had some time in Paris, and I wanted to give back. I think it’s important. I hope that somewhere McConnell is aware that we still care. But it’s also important for others coming there to know that he isn’t forgotten by the people he represented.”
“This is a park, so there are people around and it is a lot happier place than your traditional military cemetery,” Potter said. “There are people who sunbathe, who play soccer in front of the memorial. But most of them do not necessarily completely understand the importance of the memorial and why it’s there.”
Potter, a scoutmaster in the Virginia Headwaters Council of the Scouts BSA, wore his Scout uniform while laying the wreath at the urging of his Eagle Scout daughter. “‘You’re going to a military cemetery,’ she told me, ‘and you need to be respectful,’” he said.
Aviator James McConnell has been a presence in Scout Master Edmund Potter’s life since Potter was a young boy. (Photo contributed by Edmund Potter)
McConnell has long been a presence in Potter’s life. Both of Potter’s parents received their master’s and doctoral degrees at UVA, and he would see “The Aviator” in front of Clemons Library when he came to Grounds with his parents.
“When I was 11, my mom gave me the book ‘Falcons of France,’ by Charles Nordhoff and James Hall, a fictionalized version of what it was like to be in the Lafayette Flying Corps,” Potter said. “And my mom said, ‘That statue you’ve been looking at, the winged figure, this is about that story.’ I developed an interest in World War I aviation.”
Potter teaches history at Piedmont Virginia Community College and is curator for the 29th Division Museum in Verona, devoted to artifacts and archival materials related to the U.S. Army National Guard and the citizen-soldiers who have defended the commonwealth since 1741. He periodically leads D-Day tours to France to examine the battle sites and to visit the American cemetery in Normandy.
The American pilots who died fighting for France are remembered at a memorial in Paris. James McConnell’s grave bears the sign of the Seven Society, which mystified the memorial’s caretakers until Potter explained its significance. (Photo contributed by Edmund Potter)
Potter found McConnell’s grave in Paris in 2018 as part of a World War I tour organized by the museum. The site, which the families of the pilots who flew in the Escadrille originally created, was placed in a French national park and then turned over to the American Battle Monuments Commission in 2017.
McConnell was shot down on March 19, 1917, in a dogfight over France. McConnell had gone to France in 1914 to join the fight against Germany, three years before the U.S. became a combatant. He volunteered to drive an ambulance and received the French Croix de Guerre for rescuing a wounded French soldier under fire. Later, McConnell, seeking a more active role in the combat, was one of 38 pilots who formed the Lafayette Escadrille, an all-American air squadron flying Nieuport biplanes against the German forces.
He was wounded once and narrowly escaped death several times before his final battle. While recovering from a back injury incurred during a landing mishap, he wrote a book, “Flying for France,” about his exploits. He was killed a few days after his 30th birthday.
He enrolled at the University of Virginia in 1908, spending two years in the College of Arts & Sciences and a year in the Law School. He founded an “aero club” and engaged in numerous collegiate pranks. He was elected “King of the Hot-Foot Society” – later in France, he would paint a red foot on the fabric of one of his airplanes – and was a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity and the Seven Society.
If you’ve ever studied at Clemons Library, you walked past The Aviator. The statue memorializes James Rogers McConnell, a UVA alum who served as a fighter pilot in the French flying corps during World War I.
Think “Top Gun,” but if Maverick flew a plane made out of wood and fabric. McConnell was killed during a dogfight with three German planes on March 19, 1917, and was the last American pilot to die before the US entered the war in April 1917.
This has been an installment of UVA Obscura.
McConnell left law school before graduating and returned to his hometown of Carthage, North Carolina, where he worked as the land agent of the Seaboard Air Line Railway and secretary of the Carthage Board of Trade. He wrote promotional pamphlets for the Sandhills area of North Carolina before joining the war effort.
