Character Development: Mary Groce (Honor)

Chaplain Lt. Col Floyd White, USAR/USAF (Ret) hosted the first Character Development Chapel Speaker Series of 2025 on Friday, focusing on the character trait of honor. Ms. Mary Groce was the guest speaker. Ms. Groce is an author, speaker and illustrator who was the 2019 A. Verville Fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. She told the story of her grandmother’s birth brother, Emory Conrad Malick, who was an African American pioneer pilot in the early 1900s.

In 2004, Mary uncovered records and photographs indicating that her grandmother’s birth brother, Emory Conrad Malick, was an African American pioneer pilot in the early 1900’s. Mary’s grandmother, Annie, had been adopted by a white couple in 1888 when she was just two years old. Since uncovering this piece of her family history, Mary has spent years researching Emory’s story, presenting lectures about him, and writing his biography.

Emory Conrad Malick (1881 – 1958) was the first licensed African American aviator, earning his F.A.I. license on March 20, 1912, while attending the Curtiss School of Aviation on North Island in San Diego, California. Malick moved to the Philadelphia area in 1910, and started the Flying Dutchman Air Service, with a local farmer, Ernie Buehl, who was a pilot and airplane mechanic for his native Germany during World War I. Buehl went on to become the only pilot instructor who would teach black pilots, including Major Bertram A. Levy, an original Tuskegee Airman, and “Chief” Charles Alfred Anderson, the Chief Flight Instructor for the Tuskegee Airmen. 

Malick was the first licensed African American pilot (1912), the first aviator to fly over Northumberland and Snyder Counties in central Pennsylvania (1911), and the first African American pilot to earn a federal airline transport license (1927). In addition to co-owning Flying Dutchman Air Service, Malick was a licensed airplane mechanic, a pilot for the Aero Service Corporation, an aerial photographer, and built and flew his own gliders. In 1928, Malick was grounded from flying after sustaining a severe eye injury in his second crash of the year, with both crashes thought to be the work of sabotage.

In spite of Emory’s forced early retirement, and in spite of the fact that he was largely ignored and shunned by his peers, and unfortunately by their family as well, he had already made history. Mary is honored to be sharing the history of her great uncle, Emory Conrad Malick, Pioneer of Flight, and the Father, or Grandfather, of Black Aviation!

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Valley Forge Military Academy & College’s mission is to develop individuals to be fully prepared for the responsibilities and challenges of being citizen leaders. We strive to develop the whole person within an integrated academic and military environment. Valley Forge Military Academy & College produces highly focused graduates who are strong in mind, body and soul.

Since our founding in 1928 by Lt. Gen. Milton Baker, our philosophy is built upon Five Cornerstones: Academic Excellence, Character Development, Personal Motivation, Physical Development, and Leadership. We expound on one of these foundational Cornerstones through the monthly Character Development Chapel Speaker Series. Each month, the VFMAC community focuses on a specific character trait which is shared with our Corps of Cadets through communications, teachings, and activities.

Through the speaker series, Cadets have the opportunity to learn from industry experts, build campus culture and institutional strength, and challenge their own insights by asking thought-provoking questions.