Grover Bell was killed in a plane crash the following year, and Lawrence vowed to quit aviation for good; however, he went to work for the Glenn L. Martin Company after friends convinced him to return to the industry.

[2] He left Martin in 1928 to join Consolidated Aircraft in Buffalo, New York, eventually becoming vice president and general manager.

On a government-sponsored "spy tour" to Germany with 44 other industrialists in 1938, he saw the Focke-Wulf Fw 61 helicopter, and used the layout of a German aircraft factory for his Niagara Falls plant.

For his role in the X-1's first supersonic flight, he shared the 1947 Collier Trophy with pilot Chuck Yeager and John Stack, a research scientist with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (now NASA).

Bell was initiated to the York Rite of Freemasonry;[4][5][6] he was subsequently elevated to the highest degree of Grand Master.