Walter Hugo Helmerich was a flyer, a young man who had embraced the excitement and thrills of aviation aerobatics during World War I. William Thomas Payne had been a Ph.D. candidate in microbiology at Amherst and worked on isolating the influenza virus to help end the 1918 flu epidemic. But the young men became good friends, despite their differences, and each brought his own strengths and skills to the new company.
Born in Chicago in 1895, Helmerich attended the University of Chicago for a time, but grew impatient with academic life. He left school with a friend in 1914 to work in New Orleans and Beaumont, Texas. Eventually, he returned to Chicago to work for his father, and later, Western Electric Company.
When the United States entered the war in Europe in 1917, the young Helmerich enlisted in the Army Signal Corps, which at the time was building up a new force — the air corps.

 In Love With the Flying Jenny
Helmerich soon found himself in flight training at Kelly Field, near San Antonio, learning to fly the Curtis JN-4, the famed "Flying Jenny."
Because of his outstanding abilities and mechanical skills, he was chosen to be an instructor at Kelly and later at Post Field in Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
The excitement of flying the Jenny and other early aircraft soon led him to aerobatics, and he began performing in air shows as the leader of the Kelly Field aerobatics team. In 1918, Helmerich was seriously injured in a crash at Oklahoma City, but he continued to fly and became a respected test pilot.
Helmerich's marriage in 1919 to Cadijah Colcord turned him irrevocably toward the petroleum industry, which was to become his lifelong career.
Cadijah was the daughter of Charles F. Colcord, a wealthy Oklahoma oil pioneer. He had been one of the pioneering developers of the Glenn Pool field and had risen to statewide prominence. Colcord and a group of friends were reportedly responsible for raiding the original capitol at Guthrie and moving the state seal to Oklahoma City.
Colcord had not welcomed the budding romance. In fact, he had declared his daughter off limits to the high-flying Helmerich. Undeterred, the young couple eloped and were married in Lawton.
Shortly after the wedding, Cadijah's parents forced her to join them in California for three months — and there tried to talk her out of the marriage. But she returned to Oklahoma in time for a scheduled series of auto and aircraft races near Enid. In the end, her parents relented and accepted the marriage. It appears they had little choice.Meanwhile, Walt Helmerich had purchased three planes and formed an aviation barnstorming stunt group with two friends. Tragically, just before their first performance at the Great Salt Plains west of Enid, both friends were killed during a final test flight. This accident, together with the concerns of his wife and her family for his safety, led the young flyer to pursue a less dangerous livelihood.
Cadijah's brother, Ray Colcord, offered Helmerich a position in his small oil refinery. Reluctantly, he accepted. His first assignment was to oversee the drilling of a well in Ossawatomie, Kansas, and he became almost as fascinated with the excitement of wildcat drilling as he had been with stunt flying.