August 3, 1944
Dear Edward Henry
If any one is in this war, I would say it is you.
There would be a score of fliers who might go over-seas, to one flying instructor who could put them in readiness to go; and if some of your boys are now majors, the glory is to no small degree yours.
What you say about the Frenchmen interests and depresses me. How do you account for such a state of mind among them? We have a Frenchman at the University who is a fine and likeable fellow, but when I hear him belittling the efforts of the British and American armies in France I get somewhat annoyed. I conclude we can expect no gratitude from the French. The reason we are fighting this war is our own interest and the liberation of France is only incidental to winning it. The wreck of France is part of the process. The French will be happy to have the Germans driven out; but I doubt they will love us for doing it. May be some sort of thing like that is in the minds of your young Frenchmen. Be that as it may, I hope you give them a good jolt and toughen them up into good fliers as you will. As for me, I am afraid my attitude toward the French in general has always been like that of the old Bishop of London in the XVth century - "When met we there peacocks in battle that they went not weeping away? The French eat salads - we English eat beef - God is English!" How's that for a frank confession of prejudice?"
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Fast Eddie was also known as Bud, Buddy, Glenn, Ed and Edward, depending on the period in his life and the people he was with.
His mother had begun both the "Glenn" and the "Buddy," though his given name was Edward. His middle name being Glenn, she used it to distinguish him from his father, who bore the same name. But since she dotingly called him her "Buddy," the name stuck, at least until the Sisters of St. Joseph began to fill out his report cards with "Glenn" - who did quite well in Reading, Art, Religion and History, but shamefully poorly in Arithmetic.
He became officially "Bud" when he entered high school, in 1932, where he excelled in swimming and became a football star. Bud probably sounded more manly, and probably lent an air of devilishness to his reputation as the one who got the girls. He started out as Bud in college, and those who knew him well continued to call him that well into middle age, but he was formally Ed, Eddie and Edward as he married, entered the Army Air Corps and began to teach flying.
But the curious thing about Eddie was - at one time or another, be it day to day, occupation to avocation, mood to mood, he was one or the other of those names as the occasion demanded. For purposes of this story, he's Eddie. Fast Eddie.
He was a baby of the first world war, born in November of 1918, just days before the Armistice. He was an imp and a charmer, with his auburn locks and his light blue eyes. Somehow, perhaps luck, perhaps survival, perhaps just because it was that way, he developed a sense of humor that saw him from his youth to his old age able to laugh and tease his way out of most difficulties.
Fast Eddie, then "Glenn," even charmed the Sisters of St. Joseph, not a notably giggly bunch, and found an alternate name for each of them - so Sister William Anne was "Billy Anne," and Sister Josephina was "Sister Joe." He called them his chosen nick-names to their faces, which amazed even them so much they'd have to laugh and blush and then run to the church to say penance for being just girls again.
To say that Fast Eddie was audacious was probably an understatement. He would take a dare or do the outrageous and made lifelong friends who admired his swashbuckling. He stood outside the house of a girl he was sweet on calling "Viola! Viola, come to the window!" even when her parents pulled aside the curtains to find out who the scamp was and race out to the porch to chase him away. He was back the next night.
He swam across the Niagara River - granted, downstream of the falls - as a test of his endurance.
He started smoking at 13, and cut his one cigarette a day allowance in half, one half for the morning and one for the night, when he was in training for high school football - and quit his pack-a-day habit cold turkey on a single day, in his 40s, when he learned his good friend had developed throat cancer, likely from smoking. One day, after he visited his friend in the hospital, he went home, dumped his beloved Pall Malls in the trash, and never picked one up again.
Maybe if Fast Eddie hadn't been as cute and clever, he would have been a better scholar, and his whole story would have taken a different turn. Maybe his problem was he was too clever by half - and had far too many talents. He was a skilled artist who could sketch and whittle and carve and create - and he never lacked for some idea, however silly it might have seemed. When his daughters were young, he fashioned Japanese geta for them out of scrap two-by-fours the girls wheedled from builders working on a house around the corner. They wore them with tabi they had been gifted for Christmas one year, which got him curious about Japanese footwear.
He created tiny stools and ox yokes and hay bundles and added them to the Christmas creches he built - again out of scraps of this and that, working for hours at his basement workbench. The creches were perfect down to the smallest detail - a sandy floor made of papier mâché layered over wood, and the sand brushed onto the wet mâché. Another layer of straw kept everything in place. Sometimes the walls were made of small stones representing rock walls; others had wooden "timbers" making up the walls with slanted roofs of thin wood. Bitty ladders stood in corners, and a few scattered rocks hid small clumps of brush. The manger might be a small wooden crib, or a corner stall separated out to hold the baby Jesus. But every little detail was considered - right down to an electric plug, cleverly hidden in the construction, so that a blue light could illuminate the holy scene. It was easy to get lost in the details of them, and each one had a unique style, sometimes with humorous touches you had to look carefully to find.
He made them as gifts for friends, and for his daughters' teachers at school. And one night, he tossed his best creation down the cellar stairs following a fight with his wife.
Fast Eddie liked a Rob Roy or an Old Fashioned, and his wife, Faith, was a woman of decided opinions and organization - and sometimes the two didn't meld. While normally they were a happy enough couple - he spent most of the week on the road, and she ruled her domain with expert care, a firm set of rules, and nobody to question her decisions. When he would return home at the end of a long week of motels and sales calls and lonely dinners in a diner, he wanted nothing more than to relax, play in his basement, entertain some friends and enjoy a drink. But there were chores to do, children to take care of, a wife to chat with and a small boy with a serious mental deficit who needed his attention.
But all of this is out of order, doesn't lead to the point, and is perhaps just the way Eddie would have told his own story - except that in fact, he was an extremely orderly person. His wife used to say even his feet were "neat." And so they were: his socks were held up by garters so that when a man crossed his legs at a business meeting, not a wrinkle would show. His shoes were polished, with almost religious attention, every single evening without fail. His hair was parted to hair by hair perfection, and when he cooked - which was as often on the weekends as his wife would allow - the bits and pieces of the dish were chopped with perfect symmetry and careful attention.
His basement workshop was a thing of wonder for the messy to marvel at: jars, the tops nailed to the overhead floor beams, contained carefully sorted nails, screws, bolts, washers - each labeled in his perfect and artistic hand, and returned to its correct space (probably in alphabetical order) when put away. His tools were neatly ordered, scraps of wood sorted and saved. He never met a wood-working project he couldn't handle, or a mechanical fix he couldn't make. But then there was a time when the back yard needed plowing - and, no money to be had, and little interest in shoveling, Eddie strapped an old wooden door to the rear bumper of the family car, and held it from his seat atop the trunk, shouting orders at his wife, who backed the car around the three-car-drive, moving the huge piles of Buffalo snow to the edges of the paved yard.
That same paved back yard served as a sample of his Tom Sawyeresque talent for invention. When newly tarred, the men who laid the stuff told him that sand had to be swept into the new pavement to cure it and dry it. Eddie wasn't feeling in the mood. Equipped with two broad shop brooms and a handful of small kitchen brooms, he got a round rubber ball, drew a line of sand down the middle of the drive, and convinced the neighborhood children that a great game was to be played using the brooms to "sweep" the ball toward the goal of the opposite end of the drive against your opposing team, whose object was to sweep it the other way. And just like that, the "fence" had a new coat of whitewash - so to speak - and the children thought it was the best game ever invented.
Fast Eddie had a talent for tall tales, as well. His younger daughter was the boy he didn't get to enjoy - at least, while she was young and a decided tomboy who refused to wear dresses (except when she insisted upon wearing nothing but dresses in her mermaid period), and they bonded over tossing a ball back and forth, building things, and his ongoing stories-while-he-shaved. Each morning when he was at home, he made a small ceremony of shaving - meticulously, as he did most things. His implements laid out just so, his razor blade changed, his shaving cream applied with precision.
And as he shaved - up, down, across, under the nose, beneath the chin - his eyes would sparkle and he'd tell his small girl stories.
One of them was the story of the floating island. In this story, a group of kids lived in a town by the ocean, and had access to a small fishing dinghy. They liked to row out to a miniature island just off the coast, where they would dig for treasure. But what fascinated them the most was that though they were rowing against the waves getting to their treasure island, it took much longer to get back in to shore each evening that it had taken to get out to their island in the mornings. One day, in their diggings, they found not only the treasure, but the secret of the island. It wasn't an island at all, but a sunken ship - now filled with sand and dirt, some stones and bird's nests and a few hardy bushes completing the island disguise. And deep in their excavations, the children found hidden rooms, some trinkets, and a story to delight other children with.
But her unqualified favorite story was his Tale of the Old West, in which he was a cowboy who rode a beautiful paint stallion name Ol' Smokey, and she was his pint-sized sidekick who rode a small pony named Small Smoke. When they were adopted by a friendly Native tribe, he was named Son of the Ol' West, and she was named Big Chief Rain in the Face, for her noted talent of being able to cry - copiously - almost on demand.
For all his charm, and his games and jokes and love of a laugh, Fast Eddie bore a number of miseries deep in his heart - and never spoke of them, though some of his best friends, who liked to share a drink or two, knew about them.
Was it easy for any of his generation, born at the tail end of one war, to enjoy a few magical years of childhood and then be plunged into a depression just as you realized you were an individual? To live poor and uncertain - and in Eddie's case, without a dad - and only your wits and hopes to sustain you?
Eddie was blessed with bright blue eyes, chiseled Irish good looks, and athletic talent, along with a decided way with women. He could charm the birds from the trees, as the saying went, and learned early how to talk a girl into whatever it was he wanted.
His dead father's family boasted a Vice Provost at a noted university, and his skill on the football field vetted him as a possible recruit for his Uncle's school. Eddie saw the future in 1935 as he prepared to graduate high school and hoped for a scholarship to college. In fact, two were forthcoming at schools that looked at his tall, lean build, speed, and love of football as a promise for their running back slot. A college scholarship in the Depression Years was no small accomplishment, and Fast Eddie was thrilled. But he wanted his Uncle's school - and held out for a scholarship there.
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1935
University of Pennsylvania
Wharton School of Finance and Commerce
Dear Buddy,
I received your letter this morning and was delighted to hear from you. You are an astonishingly good writer, much better than your Uncle.
We have a new coach this year as well as a new Director of Athletics. However, I will look into the situation immediately, and if it is possible to find what you want, it will be sent promptly. I am glad you enjoy football, although I can imagine your mother isn't so well pleased?? It is always better to wear your head-gear when scrimmaging. No one's head is as hard as an opponent's foot. Are you a "back" or a "lineman?" When you write to me, let me know what you are thinking regarding college. You must go, and if I am alive and out of the alms house, I will help you.
Give my love to your mother, Jeanne, Uncle Milt and Aunt Mary and Glenna. Don't neglect your studies.
Sincerely,
Uncle "Jim"
I will write to you soon about the equipment.
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But Eddie, as noted, was not good at math. It was difficult to understand his failure to comprehend something so orderly, logical, and predictable. But Eddie's talents were simply not to be categorized. They happened as they did, and while he spent hours perfecting how to draw a nose or carve a wooden cow; to build a shed, shelf, or sled; to organize his tools, work papers, and personal effects, he simply couldn't demand that his brain spend any time on math.
His bad grades in math required that he spend a gap year before trying for a much needed scholarship, if he was to get into the school of his choice - naturally, the best football option of the schools in which he was interested.
But it was now 1936. The United States, and the world, were recovering from the Great Depression, and Europe wasn't looking very stable. Hitler was Fuhrer in Germany, there had been a build-up of the German air force, and Japan has renounced its treaties with both the United States and the UK. Even happy-go-lucky Eddie was looking into the crystal ball of world politics, and couldn't see a good future for a young guy who hadn't yet been accepted to college, and who needed a scholarship if he were.
But while, as noted, Fast Eddie wasn't the best in math, he did know how to read the odds - and he began to think through a strategy. He'd spend a gap year in military school, if he could get accepted, meanwhile working with his Uncle Arnold - but in family tradition and for no reason anyone could discern, was known as Jim - on a scholarship.
His gap year in progress, Eddie was hoping that, his grades in math somewhat improved, he could qualify for the Buffalo Alumni scholarship to his coveted university. His Uncle shared with him the bad news that "they have neglected to name their nominee," and meanwhile, Fast Eddie had been offered a football scholarship to Syracuse University, which his uncle urged him to take. "I'm praying for the first but if they should choose someone other than you, you are safe with the other scholarship."
With a safety admission to his home-town University of Buffalo, and a scholarship to another, Fast Eddie found it hard to believe, in his cocksure way, that between his Uncle, and his own charm and talent, his chosen university wouldn't eventually understand what a prize they had. But it was not to be. However, as his Uncle assured him, as he began his Freshman year at UB, "...keep your chin up. I am sure everything will come out all right in the long run."
And when Eddie debuted on the football field at Buffalo, anything that might have been lacking in his grades or college prep was soon eclipsed by his speed and devotion to his sport - along with his All American Boy good looks.
While stringing along a number of young ladies, he met and was captured by his eventual wife-to-be, Faith, who hailed from an entrepreneurial family in a small town, and who herself had known more than a little heartache. Her handsome young father had died suddenly when she, the middle daughter of three, was only 10, leaving behind a widow and his parents to raise the girls, and try to comfort them in the loss of their Father.
Faith was smart, an actress, and a beauty, and had her share of beaux, so Eddie's typical love-'em-and-leave-'em style didn't phase her. Each time they had a spat, or she found him in the Canteen with another girl, she'd simply crook her little finger and another young man would come eagerly running to escort her to a dance, or a film, or out for an evening at Coleman's.
But by 1939, in addition to being a football star, Eddie had started flying lessons. It wasn't love of the wild blue yonder, but one of the smarter things he did in his life: if the world was going to go to war, and it certainly seemed as though it might, he reckoned he might have a better view of it from up high. He was regularly training through the Lockport Aeronautical Corporation, intent on getting his pilot's license and becoming a member of the Civil Service Pilot School, with hopes that if he were drafted, he might qualify for the Army Air Corps. And not any too soon - a simple note in Faith's diary on September 3, 1939, though a couple of days late, made it clear: "War is declared in Europe."
But one lingering sadness must have haunted the pair as they eventually realized they were meant for one another, and began making plans for an uncertain future: the girl who tried to kill herself over the loss of Eddie. He never understood that a girl could take it all so seriously - and serious indeed, she was. Her cap was set, and Eddie was her target. Betty G, in spite of making very public shows of her affection, showing up at evening spots and in the library when Eddie and Faith were studying together, finally realized it wasn't going to be, and she attempted suicide.
Before Faith finally graduated in 1941, the War Department, Office of the Chief of the Air Corps in Washington had contacted Fast Eddie for the draft.
And here, his second "father" stepped in.
Attorney Patrick Keeler, Eddie's best friend's father and an influential man, took a personal interest in the young man's fate. His letters flew, as high up as they needed to go - a Congressman in 1941 read:
"I know that you will believe me when I say that I think as much of this boy as I do of my own sons. His father was a Captain, and lost his life in the first World War overseas with the A.E.F. This boy was born two days before his father's death. He is the only child of a widowed mother and in very straightened circumstances.
"He is a graduate of Bennet High School, Buffalo, and has just graduated from the University of Buffalo, after working his way through. He had a splendid record at the university in athletics and on the football team and won several scholarships, but was unable to take advantage of these because of lack of funds.
"During his last years in the University of Buffalo, he took up and completed a government course in aviation. Some few weeks ago, he successfully passed the almost impossible examination for Flying Cadets in the United States Service, and is now awaiting appointment thereto. This, as you know, will pay him a substantial salary, and opens the way to a commission in the United States Army Flying Corps. This is his ambition, and it will be a matter of but a few weeks until he will get this appointment."
In other words, please give the kid a deferment from the draft so that he can become a flight instructor.
And in the quixotic way fate had of handing favors to Fast Eddie, he got the deferment. He was sent to Gunter Field in Lakeland, Florida, where he was to report for five weeks training, with a minimum of "civilian clothing."
Fast Eddie was saved on the very brink. But not from Faith - her graduation announcement in the local paper shared that she would be traveling to Lakeland following her graduation ceremony with Fast Eddie's mother, and his request for a furlough - granted - covered the time the two women would be visiting. Now an instructor, though eventually with the Army Air Corps, Eddie and Faith were married in December of the following year, and he began to hopscotch around air bases - Tuscaloosa, Lackland, Arizona, and wherever he was needed, especially for the training of young French cadets.
The rest, as they say, is history. Actually, it's letters - letter, after letter, after letter. From Paris, Gunter Field, Turner Field, Jacksonville, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, Canada, Alaska...
"Cher monsieur,"
"Monsieur Henry,"
"Hi Pop -"
"Hi Sport," "Dear Ed," "Dear Mr. Henry," "My dear Edward Henry," "Dear Mr. Lucky,"
"Je suis vraiment honoré de vous dire que vous m'avez appris à voler avec succès."
"This goddam BT is like a four story house with wings. The biggest trouble seems t be the cockpit procedure, but you know me, I don't have much trouble with the mechanical parts of flying, just the flying itself."
"Being in this place is a like a dream or a nightmare."
"Hi there, any chance you still remember this lazy pupil, yours?"
"I was eliminated the other day. At the present time I am waiting to receive orders transferring me to Meadville for reclassification. What I'll do from here, I don't quite know. This this has really gotten me down. I guess I can easily say that this has been the biggest disappointment of my life."
"Some of the lads you may one day be teaching are now passing beneath my window, marching in close order and singing, "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy." As they got by and their song fades, another column comes up. Their song is "Wait Til the Sun Shines Nellie;" while a third song from yet another column sounds like "Mademoiselle From Armentières."
They flew; the fought; they were hit; they lived, loved, returned home. They died.
And for all his efforts to evade the war, Fast Eddie did end up fighting it. With every airman that returned to France, or moved from his flight school into the air over Europe or the far east, Eddie was there.
For that reason, Eddie was willing to hold his friends up when they needed it.
Uncle George was a flyer in the Air Corps,
1918: born
1935: graduates HS
1935-36 - gap year spent at military school
1936: enters college (tries for scholarship at U Penn but does not get it; did get scholarship at SU which he turns down; ends up going to Buffalo)
1939: war is declared
1939? enters pilot training program (to get Civil Service pilot school/flight instructor program in Army Air Corps)
1941: drafted, gets deferment with aid of Keeler, he enters 41-I group in FLA (Gunter Field)
1942: goes to Lackland, FLA, eventually Tuscaloosa (married in 1942 or 1943? - Faith graduates in 1941?)
