Clem Sohn, a Michigan man, was the original Batman.
Born and raised in Fowler, a tiny town north of Lansing in Clinton County, he was a worldwide sensation and one of the most famous daredevils of the 1930s. He would travel up to 20,000 feet in an airplane and then jump out wearing a homemade wingsuit.
As crowds of 200,000 or more watched from the ground, he would soar in circles for more than a mile. Sohn had a bag of flour attached to the suit that would slowly release the powder as he soared, which made it easier for the crowds to see him.
At the last second—maybe 1,000 or feet or so from the ground—Sohn would pull his parachute cord and float down.
Some in the media called him “Birdman.” Others called him “Batman.”
Almost a decade before the first DC Comics strip debuted a superhero with that name, and more than 30 years before Adam West portrayed the character on TV, Clem Sohn of Fowler was indeed the original Batman.
He lived his life in spectacular fashion. And sadly, he also died in spectacular fashion.
Sohn did things on his terms, and as Michiganders go, he was one of the most courageous and bold free spirits our state has ever known.
The story of Batman begins in Fowler on Dec. 7, 1910. Sohn was born just seven years after Orville and Wilbur Wright took their first flight. Everyone was fascinated with flight in the early days, and Clem was flat-out obsessed with it.
Sohn grew up on a farm in Fowler and moved to Lansing as a teenager, graduating from Lansing Eastern High School. In 1929, he started working for a Lansing pilot named Art Davis, doing various chores around the hangar. He just wanted to be around airplanes.
In 1930, right before his 20th birthday, he made his first parachute jump, hopping out of an airplane over Miami. He was hooked and soon started doing it professionally. People would pay money just to watch him parachute to the ground.
That gave Sohn an idea. What if he upped it a few notches and started flying around like a bird—or a bat—before he pulled the cord?
“After a couple years of professional parachute jumping, I began to experiment as I fell through the air,” he said. “I found that by moving my arms and legs, I could control my headlong dive to the ground. That gave me the idea of flying with a pair of wings.”
So he spent some time in the shop and made himself a pair of wings out of metal tubing and zephyr cloth. He experimented with the design, adding a web-like tail between his legs to help stabilize him as he flew.
Thus was born Michigan’s “Batman.”
The 24-year-old Sohn made his first winged flight on Feb. 27, 1935, over Daytona Beach, Florida. The United Press reported, “Man really flew under his own power here late today. Sohn, a parachute jumper, donned home-made wings and webbing of his own invention and jumped at an altitude of 12,000 feet to cavort about in the air.”
Once word got out, every promoter in America and Europe wanted to hire the daredevil from Fowler. Aeronautic daredevils were becoming a huge thing across the globe, and nobody was a bigger draw than Sohn.
He did a jump over Miami in December 1935, and the Miami Herald reporter gushed over what he saw: “Death defying! That properly is the term. No lesser description could do justice to the exhibition given yesterday at Municipal Airport by Clem Sohn.”
Sohn became an even bigger sensation in Europe, where promoters were paying him upwards of $10,000 per jump (about $230,000 in today’s dollars). Fowler’s Batman was quickly becoming rich and famous.
He was getting paid well to do it, but Sohn probably would have soared with his wings for free. “The actual flight is like being in another world,” he said. “There is no sound but the rushing of the wind past my face and the distant drone of an airplane engine.”
There were posters and magazine spreads, and a toy manufacturer in Europe produced the “Welcome Bird-Man Glider,” which is a highly collectible toy today—if you can even find one.
The crowds were enormous every time he jumped—200,000 or more. He was a celebrity at every stop and signed autographs, “Clem J. Sohn, Human Bat.”
But life wasn’t always easy for the Human Bat. He was badly injured in June of 1936 during a jump over Gatwick Airport in London. His primary parachute tangled in his wings, and his secondary chute didn’t open until he was only 200 feet off the ground. He slammed into the runway and broke his shoulder.
That only sidelined him for a few weeks, though, and later in 1936, Sohn was soaring once again.
It all came to an end on April 25, 1937, in Vincennes, France. As a crowd of about 100,000 people watched—and as the newsreel cameras rolled—Sohn plunged to his death. His primary chute failed to open, and when he frantically tugged on his emergency chute, that one didn’t open, either. He was only 26 years old.
The official word was that when he traveled from England to France before the jump, he failed to repack his parachute, and that caused the malfunction.
Sohn’s body was brought back to Michigan for the funeral, which took place at the St. Casimir Catholic Church in Lansing. An overflow crowd of several hundred people filled the church for the service. A pilot friend from Lansing named Bob O’Dell flew over the church and spelled out the word “SOHN” in smoke.
Sohn was buried in his hometown at the Most Holy Trinity Cemetery in Fowler. It’s close to the farm where he grew up and dreamed of soaring with the birds.
When Sohn was at the height of his fame in 1936, he told the Daily Express in London that he hoped that someday, everybody would be able to do what he was doing. “Someday, I think that everyone may have wings and be able to soar from the house tops,” he said.
We aren’t there yet, but Sohn gave us all hope.
It’s also a wonderful thing that Clem Sohn’s legacy lives on in his hometown, 90 years after he made his first winged jump. In 2024, a memorial to Sohn was dedicated at the Fowler Depot, a beautifully restored building that lies along the Fred Meijer Trail.
It reminds every biker and hiker who comes through Fowler that this little town was once home to a brave and daring soul who wasn’t limited by the bounds of Earth.
Buddy Moorehouse teaches documentary filmmaking at Hillsdale College.
