Lloyd R. Jarman was born and raised in Juneau, Alaska in 1916 and loved airplanes from grade school. He took his first plane ride with R.E. “Bob” Ellis of Alaska Washington Airways and soon thereafter went to work for them doing odd jobs around the hangars and being paid in used crankcase oil, which he lugged downtown and sold.

While still a teenager, Lloyd Jarman went to work for Alaska Washington Airways as a full-time flight mechanic, then worked for Alaska Southern Airways, Pacific Alaska Airways, Alaska Air Transport, Marine Airways and occasionally for other smaller airlines. He flew with many well known bush pilots and rescue and mercy missions included him as mechanic, as mechanics often flew with the pilots in the early days of aviation.

Jarman had planned to become a pilot, but crashed a Lockheed-Vega at Pinta Bay, Chichagoff Island in Oct. 1934 and crushed his pelvic bone and could not pass physical for a commercial pilot’s license. Shell Simmons taught him to fly in 1935 and he continued to work as a flight mechanic and also assembled fighter planes in North Africa during WWII. Jarman took a camera wherever he went and photographed aviation history in Southeast Alaska from 1929-1940. He died in Seattle in 1996 at age 79.

[From: Gastineau Channel Memories 1880-1959, Lloyd R. Jarman (piece written by Jim Ruotsala); and Bush Pilots in Southeastern Alaska, by Archie Satterfield, Lloyd Jarman.]