Journey: The Travels, Tragedies and Triumphs

By Charles V. McAvoy

This story describes many incidents in the life of Charles McAvoyhis upbringing in small-town America,his experiences in World War II and the Korean War, his love of flying, and his rise in the ranks of one of the largest and most successful enterprises in American corporate history and the triumphs and tragedies within his family. It is the story of one life that epitomizes what is now being referred to as "The Greatest Generation."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 9, 2004
• ISBN: 9781465329424

Charles V. McAvoy

Tom Brokaw, in his best selling book The Greatest Generation, said “They came of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War and went on to build modern America -- men and women whose everyday lives of duty, honor, achievement, and courage gave us the world we have today.” Journey is the story of Charles McAvoy, whose life has embodied that description.

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Copyright © 2003 by Charles V. McAvoy.

Library of Congress Number: 2003092248

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

EVERYTHING HAS ITS TIME

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 47

CHAPTER 48

CHAPTER 49

CHAPTER 50

CHAPTER 51

CHAPTER 52

CHAPTER 53

CHAPTER 54

CHAPTER 55

CHAPTER 56

CHAPTER 57

CHAPTER 58

CHAPTER 59

CHAPTER 60

CHAPTER 61

CHAPTER 62

CHAPTER 63

CHAPTER 64

CHAPTER 65

CHAPTER 66

CHAPTER 67

CHAPTER 68

CHAPTER 69

CHAPTER 70

CHAPTER 71

CHAPTER 72

CHAPTER 73

CHAPTER 74

CHAPTER 75

CHAPTER 76

CHAPTER 77

CHAPTER 78

CHAPTER 79

CHAPTER 80

CHAPTER 81

EPILOG

NOTES

Dedication

To Mom and to the rest of my family . . .

past, present and future

Image327.JPG

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

FIRST I MUST thank my friend of almost 60 years, my mentor and senior editor, Lew M. Williams, Publisher Emeritus of the Ketchikan Daily News, whose encouragement, suggestions, constructive criticism and friendship have buoyed me throughout this 4 year effort. Next I bow to my editors, Susan Moxley and Irene Elmer, and proofreader, Mu’afrida Bell, whose professional skills, patience and wisdom helped bring this labor of love to fruition. I thank my family, particularly my patient and loving wife, Gerry, and my son Chuck, who got as big a thrill from all of this as I did. To my friends Bob Hoffmann, Dave Matteson, Andy Anderson and the many others who have supported my endeavors goes my eternal gratitude. And a special thanks goes to Jan and Glen Dahl, who were the first to hear this book, as I read each part and chapter to them as it was completed.

EVERYTHING HAS ITS TIME

For everything there is a season,

and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to reap;

a time to kill, and a time to heal;

a time to break down, and a time to build up;

a time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

a time to seek, and a time to lose;

a time to keep, and a time to throw away;

a time to tear, and a time to sew;

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

a time to love, and a time to hate;

a time for war, and a time for peace.

—Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

PROLOGUE

You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.

—Frank Sinatra

THE POET LAURIS Edmond said, To write your autobiography is to go down to the dark steamy kitchen of the soul, to lift the lids of cooking pots and to smell and examine the contents, one by one.

My autobiography isn’t that profound. It is the story of a unique generation whose accomplishments have had a profound impact on the history of our great country and the world. It recalls the memories of a small-town childhood and adolescence; the exhilaration, fears and self-discovery during the world’s most devastating war; the raising of a family whose own adult accomplishments are worthy of merit; a career that covers a period of one of the greatest technological and managerial accomplishments in the history of our country; and a fascination with and love of flying that spans aviation history, starting just two decades after Orville and Wilbur Wright’s first flight.

Most important of all, it is the memories of the family, friends and people who shaped my life, some positively, some negatively. Last, but not least, it is the story of a spiritual journey and of how a Christian faith provided the unfailing Rock of Ages that I clung to for unflagging support and spiritual sustenance in the darkest and most tragic days of my life, and still cling to even in the good life that God has now given me.

As I start my story, I feel a little like the mosquito in a nudist camp, who said upon arriving, Gosh, I know what to do, I just don’t know where to start. So I’ll start by lifting the lid of the cooking pot and see what bubbles forth.

PART ONE

Birth Through Puberty

(1925-1943)

CHAPTER 1

Romance at the Movies

Love plays a stringed instrument: the heart.

—Anonymous

THE CARDINAL WAS buried to the Wang, Wang Blues one night at the New Isis Theater in Sparks, Nevada. It was the era of silent movies. Sound, or talkies, was 5 years away for Hollywood and 7 years away for Sparks.

Theaters hired musicians to play the piano or organ during silent shows. Each newsreel, cartoon or main feature included sheet music of songs appropriate to various scenes. A cue sheet told the musician what tunes to play as scenes were projected on the screen. Thus, those old silent movies had live music.

Helen Bernice Hecox was hired as a pianist at the New Isis, the only movie theater in Sparks. Her musical talent and propensity for perfection served her well, because the job demanded full-time attention and concentration. Even Helen, for all her desire to be perfect, blew it occasionally.

During a scene of the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, she played a jazz song, Wang, Wang Blues. When the newsreel changed to the funeral of a Catholic cardinal, the cue sheet instructed her to change to a somber Wagnerian funeral dirge. Helen was so into New Orleans jazz, or so distracted by the thought of the theater’s handsome new projectionist, that she missed the cue. The cardinal went to his grave with jazz.

Helen Bernice Hecox, my mother, was born in San Luis Obispo, California, on June 27, 1903, the daughter of May and Edwin Forrest Hecox. Her father was promoted to locomotive engineer with the Southern Pacific Railroad the day she was born. The family lived for a while in San Jose, California, and Mina, Nevada, and eventually moved to Sparks, Nevada, around 1908.

Helen graduated from Sparks High School in 1921. She had been a star on the girls’ basketball team and an honor student. She had a beautiful soprano voice and was a talented pianist, having taken lessons from age 6. She began using her musical talents as a teenager, mostly in local churches. Because she needed a paying job, she became a telephone operator for a short time; but the pay was very low and she couldn’t use her musical skills.

Albert Vinton McAvoy was 6 foot 2 and weighed 200 pounds. He had thick, black, curly hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. By any standard he was a handsome, talented man.

Nannie (Nancy) Beale Edwards, Albert’s mother, met his father, Frank McAvoy, in Reno. They married in San Francisco on June 20, 1900, and settled in Floriston, California. The family moved to Reno in the early 1900s. Frank established an electrical contracting business and set up a retail electrical equipment store on Sierra Street, across from what is now the Flamingo Hilton Hotel. The business was known as the Reno Electrical Works.

When Nancy became pregnant with Albert, she wanted to have her child at her family home in Sewickley. Thus, Albert was born on September 9, 1901, in Pennsylvania, not Nevada. Albert, known as Mac to all but his mother and dad, trained as an electrician under his father’s tutelage. He did some electrical work in several of the vaudeville houses in Reno and eventually became a stage manager.

With motion pictures fast replacing vaudeville in the theaters, Mac trained as a projectionist. Reno theaters were unionized under the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), which is still today one of the strongest labor unions in the United States. Mac couldn’t get into the union then and so, at age 20, he applied for a job in the nonunion New Isis Theater in Sparks. He was hired. There he met Helen Hecox, the theater’s pianist. A romance started immediately. On November 1, 1921, Helen Bernice Hecox married Albert Vinton McAvoy.

A good catch for Helen? We’ll see.

CHAPTER 2

The Kid

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older, they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

—Oscar Wilde

I SHOULD HAVE been born in Sparks, where my parents met and were married, and where I was conceived. But jobs were hard to come by in Nevada. The nonunion projectionist job in Sparks wasn’t paying enough, so my dad got a job in Fresno, California, as a sales manager with the Pacific Aluminum Company, selling aluminum pots and pans. I was born on January 27, 1925, in a hospital a few blocks from where I was to take Air Force basic training 18 years later.

Selling pots and pans didn’t hold much interest for my dad. He had been trained as an electrician and a motion picture projectionist. Soon after I was born, we moved to Oakland, where my mother’s sister and her husband lived. We stayed in Oakland a few months and then briefly moved to Elko, Nevada, where my dad worked for his father as an electrician. We then moved back to Sparks. Dad got a job as stage manager at the Majestic Theater in Reno four miles away. Vaudeville was still in vogue, and my dad had a talent for building stage sets and scenery.

He also had a talent for getting injured, not because he was inept, but because of the thing that eventually killed him—booze.

He fell off a stage scaffolding on one occasion, breaking an arm; got hit in the head by a baby spotlight that fell from a ceiling; fell off a screen he was attempting to tight rope; and almost killed himself in a film fire in the motion picture booth of the Granada Theater in Reno—these were just a few of his adventures.

Within 8 months of my birth, the consequences of my dad’s drinking finally became intolerable. Mom filed for divorce. It was granted on October 1, 1925. Mom and I moved in with Grandma and Grandpa Hecox. The stigma of divorce in those days was incredible. The neighbors were clucking, church members were shaking their heads, and Mom was feeling pressure from all sides.

The real pressure came from my dad. He was shattered by the divorce and pleaded with Mom to take him back. He promised he would stay sober, keep away from the saloons, change his ways and become a good husband and father. Mom succumbed to his persuasion and charm. They remarried in January the next year, much to the chagrin of Grandpa Hecox.

Years later Mom confessed that she knew it was a mistake to take Dad back, but she was passionately in love and her love was blind. That decision caused her 12 more years of anguish.

Sparks was a railroad town. It was established by the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) as a division point in 1904. My maternal grandparents moved to Sparks around 1908. Grandpa Hecox was a locomotive engineer for SP. The romance of railroading was in his blood. Some of my earliest and most profound memories are of the times he took me to the roundhouse where the steam locomotives were maintained. The piercing hiss and overwhelming billowing of steam venting from the locomotive cylinders, the unique smell of bunker oil and the cacophony of sounds awed a 4-year-old. They are sights, smells and sounds that I can conjure up to this day as I write about them.

My earliest memories are of our house at 325 12th Street. The house had a small porch in the front, and I remember sitting on the porch watching Dad attach guides with silk thread to a bamboo fly fishing rod he was making. He was disabled, due to deep ulcers that had formed on his legs from alcohol poisoning. I also remember, for the first time, feeling a growing sense of insecurity envelop me—an insecurity that was soon to dominate my life.

That house was only two doors from the Emmanuel First Baptist Church of Sparks, located at 12th and D Streets. My grandmother, while not a charter member of that church, was one of its earliest pioneers. When SP decided to move the division point from Wadsworth, Nevada, to Sparks, it moved the church on railroad flat cars. The first preacher I remember was Ernest Sloan, who pastored that church for many years. He had three children: Earl, with whom I used to play cars and shoot marbles in the dirt driveway between the parsonage and the church; Nitabelle, who was the middle child; and Lavita, the oldest. We went to Sparks High School together and maintained family contact for many years. Little did I know the profound impact that little church and its people would have on me.

Across the street from our house lived the Foote family. Emery Foote had been my mother’s first boyfriend in high school, and his brother Harry started his family in this home. Harry became a successful businessman in Reno, repairing and selling business machines, and was a faithful member of our church. He did have one failing, however—a propensity to fudge on his income tax. That shortcoming cost him 3 years in the federal penitentiary on McNeil Island. Our congregation forgave him, his business prospered after his release, and it is, to this day, a respected establishment in Reno.

The Foote family was very musical, as were their closest friends, the Sweats. Harold Sweat was an insurance broker in Reno. The two families formed a string trio and played in churches throughout the Reno-Sparks area. They were much appreciated and in demand. unfortunately, some of the good church folk nicknamed them the Sweaty-Foote trio. The moniker stuck with them for many years.

One of my most memorable experiences with Harry occurred when he had a 500-gallon fuel oil tank installed in his backyard. The hole for the tank was about 10 feet deep. I visited them after dinner one dark evening, overlooked the hole, and promptly fell in, bloodying and scraping my nose. Hearing my screech, Harry rushed to my aid. He got me out of the hole, comforted me, and cleaned me up. However, before sending me home he nicknamed me Tanglefoot, a moniker that stayed with me, in Harry’s mind and his family’s, for the rest of his life.

After my parents’ divorce and remarriage in 1926, it wasn’t too long before my dad’s old habits returned. Drinking again became a serious problem. By 1930, his physical condition deteriorated to the point that both arms were paralyzed from a form of alcohol poisoning. Even though the marriage was still on shaky ground, my mom became his whole life support system: feeding him, bathing him, dressing him and tending to his hygienic needs. obviously he could no longer drink alcohol, so in time the paralysis abated and he could function again.

However, he got ulcers on his legs that became huge. Blood poisoning was a constant threat. Doctors in Reno could not diagnose or effectively treat the condition. They sent him to Stanford Hospital in California. Stanford couldn’t help and recommended Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland, as the only medical facility that might help him.

Baltimore was within a day’s drive from Sewickley, Pennsylvania, my father’s birthplace, where his mother and his sisters, Grace and Minnie, lived. He and my mom decided to drive the 3,000 miles from Sparks to Sewickley. Although I was only 5 at the time, I still remember several incidents during the trip.

our car was a 1925 Nash coupe with a rumble seat and a cutout, which I’ll describe in a moment. We left Sparks around the middle of June 1930. My mom did most of the driving because of my dad’s legs. our first bad incident came the second day as we crossed the Great Salt Lake basin. There was a paved road across the lake; but Dad decided we could make better time going across the Bonneville Salt Flats. So, with Dad driving, we went off-road. He pushed the Nash to its limits and blew a tire.

Stopping the car safely, he jacked it up to change the tire. About halfway up, the car slipped off the jack, sending the wheel hub into the hardpan salt and eliminating any clearance under the axle to reinstall the jack. For the next 2 hours, Dad chipped away at the salt with a screwdriver and hammer. The temperature on those salt flats reached over 100 degrees. The hotness of Dad’s language much higher.

The interstate highway system didn’t exist in those days. You followed whatever roads were on the map. Some were paved—most were not. The day following the Salt Lake incident found us approaching the Great Divide, on a dirt road. This is where the cutout on the Nash came into play.

The car had a muffler. The muffler diminished engine power, which was needed to climb the mountain. Solution? The cutout—a foot-operated lever that disengaged the muffler from the manifold and tailpipe when it was stepped on. That increased power considerably. The down side was that with cutout engaged, the noise from the tailpipe was deafening. I thought it was neat. We blasted over the Great Divide, noise be damned!

The next problem occurred in St. Joseph, Missouri, when the rear axle went out on the Nash. We had to stay in St. Jo for a couple of days for repairs. The humidity from the Mississippi River and the heat was horrendous. So we spent most of the time in the air-conditioned local theaters.

After 2 weeks on the road, we finally arrived in Sewickley. Grandma Mac, as I called her, was a formidable woman, tall, with large, almost manly features and hair tied severely in a bun. Although she was warm and friendly, I was scared to death of her because of her size and demeanor.

Her large, wood-framed house was at 615 Harbaugh Street. The local department of motor vehicles gave driver tests there. One of our favorite pastimes was to sit on Grandma Mac’s front porch and watch the new drivers take tests. Several ended up on Grandma’s sidewalk or on a neighbor’s lawn. Watching the parallel parking demonstrations was especially entertaining.

Grandma Mac came from a Quaker family. Her mother, Martha A. Beale, was born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. Her father, William Thomas Edwards, was born in Clarion County, Pennsylvania. He was a Confederate soldier during the Civil War.

After graduating from the Training School for Nurses at Western Pennsylvania Hospital on June 2, 1898, Grandma Mac joined the Army and served during the Spanish-American War. She moved West after the war, settling in Reno, Nevada, where she met and married my grandfather.

While living in Reno, Grandma Mac became interested in the Paiute and Washoe Indian tribes and worked with them at their reservations near Reno. She collected Indian artifacts. The only piece that remains is a beaded ceremonial collar that I keep as a memento.

I vividly remember one incident in Sewickley because I still bear a scar on the inside of my right leg as a reminder. Grandma Mac had a red wagon with a hand brake on the right side. Pulling the brake caused a wooden lever to pivot and rub against the wheel. The wagon was old, and the brake lever had worn to a sharp edge. I pushed the wagon with my right leg on the outside and my left leg in the wagon bed. Somehow, when I gave a big push, I cut the inside of my knee on the brake, inflicting a deep, bloody gash.

Much to my consternation, Grandma Mac took charge. I would have much preferred my mother. Grandma took gauze and held it against the wound until it stopped bleeding. She then poured peroxide on it, followed by an ample application of iodine, which burned like fire and produced one heck of an outburst on my part. This incident did not engender within me any great familial love for my grandmother, which was in short supply even before the accident.

I remember very little about our trips to Johns Hopkins Hospital, other than that the hospital was overwhelming. The corridors seemed miles long. A subtle, sickening smell of ether permeated the walls. My dad stayed at the clinic for diagnosis and treatment; my mom and I returned to Sewickley. He was there about 6 weeks and was diagnosed with acute alcohol poisoning. The clinic dried him out and prescribed medication for treating the infection. The ulcers started to heal.

Because I was to start kindergarten in September, we headed back home. I remember nothing about the return other than stopping one night in a little village in the Appalachians of West Virginia and going to a barn dance. My recollection of that dance includes hearing a form of the battle of the banjos. The participants could have been the inspiration for the movie Deliverance.

I was enrolled in kindergarten at the Robert H. Mitchell School. The school, the biggest in Sparks, was a large, three-story, shingle-clad structure. Our class was in the basement. About all I remember is that I met my first girlfriend there. Her name was Connie Sherwood. Her mother, Gennie, was a close friend of my mother’s. They belonged to our church. Connie and I were Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus in a Christmas play. We also participated in our church’s Sunday School Christmas pageant. Connie and I remained good friends for many years afterwards.

CHAPTER 3

Southside School

Life is always difficult in proportion to its intensity and reality.

—Edward Howard Griggs

WE MOVED FROM Sparks to Reno in the summer of 1932, and rented a brick house at 335 Cheney Street. I remember this house particularly well. It was where I got my first electric train, an American Flyer.

I started first grade at the Southside School, located at Liberty and Center Streets, the same school my father had attended. Dad took me to school my first day. His first-grade teacher was Miss Jesse Beck. We walked into the same classroom that had been my dad’s. Amazingly, Miss Beck was still teaching first grade in the same room.

My dad walked up to her, with me in hand, and said, Miss Beck, do you remember me? She responded, I remember your first name was Albert; but I can’t remember your last. I do remember you sitting at this desk—pointing to a desk in the second row. That desk was assigned to me. I became the second generation of McAvoys to attend first grade at the same school, sitting at the same desk, in the same classroom and with the same teacher.

Southside School, for the first year or two, was nothing but trauma for me. All my wimpiness, insecurities and fears came to the surface. I dreaded going to school.

This is a good place to reflect on the insecurities, fears, low self-esteem and lack of confidence that plagued my childhood. These maladies persisted during much of my early life. They caused me, as a teenager, to yearn for some source of love, support, guidance and emotional sustenance that I sorely needed and wasn’t getting at home. Until age 11 I was an only child. My mother, although she was a sensitive and loving person, was incapable of demonstrating her love. I remember only a few times when she kissed me. To this day I cannot remember her ever hugging me until I left home during World War II. As early as age 3 or 4, I longed for my mom or dad to tuck me in bed with a kiss and a hug. I don’t remember it ever happening.

My mom’s parents were the same—never outwardly demonstrating any affection for one another, their children or others. This inability to express love, which was manifest through two generations, was to have a devastating effect on a third: my sister, my brother and me.

It seemed as though, even as a small child, all I ever wanted to do was to please my mother and dad so that I’d gain their attention and earn their love. My mom was fastidious. Her housekeeping, grooming, work habits and personal demeanor were all driven by one thought—What will the neighbors think? To be fair, at this time in our country’s history, this was the obsession of most residents of Sparks, Nevada, and of people all over small-town America.

My mother dressed me immaculately and expected me to stay that way. I was scared to death to get dirty because I knew it would make her unhappy. I remember one winter, when I was about 4, she dressed me so I could go out to play in the snow. After making some snow angels, I reached up to break some icicles off the eaves. In doing so, I slipped on some dirty ice and smeared soot all over my clean snowsuit. Rushing into the house, I cried and begged for mercy and forgiveness.

In retrospect, this compulsion to gain parental acceptance by trying to please had a positive side. I applied it not only to my parents, but to any other authoritarian figure in my life—teachers, policemen, military superiors, bosses and virtually anyone in a position of authority and influence. So I spent a lot of my life trying to gain acceptance by pleasing others. The result, although it exacted an emotional toll, was remarkably effective—as we shall see.

I frequently got physically ill in the morning before school. My mom often let me stay home because the illness seemed so real. When I heard the school bell ring, I’d have a miraculous recovery. Mom would then load me in the car and take me to school. This was okay because most of my fear came from some of the tough kids in the neighborhood. These kids not only jeered at the puny, unatheletic McAvoy kid, but more often than not, ambushed me and punched me, particularly after school as I walked home. Consequently, I stayed late after school, washed blackboards, cleaned erasers or did other chores for the teachers. Then I followed a long, circuitous route from school to home, bypassing the neighborhoods where my tormentors lived. I’d get home unmolested but late in the afternoon.

The unanticipated, but positive, result of all this elusiveness was that the teachers I helped thought I was great to stay voluntarily and assist them after school. I received high marks for Good Citizenship, which bolstered my usual straight-A academic performance. It was also at this time that I realized that good academic performance was a way of compensating for my lack of physical dexterity.

During our stay on Cheney Street, my interest in airplanes was whetted. We took a trip to Oakland to visit my mother’s sister, Ramona Totten, her husband, Arthur, and my cousin Marjorie. They lived on Hyde Street in the Fruitvale District, a short ride to the Oakland Airport. Arthur Totten, like my dad, was a motion picture projectionist.

One afternoon we drove to the airport to watch the planes. My dad noticed they were giving airplane rides around San Francisco Bay for $5. He decided that he, Mom, and I should take a ride. I remember the airplane well. It was a five-seat Fairchild 24. We were airborne about 30 minutes. I sat next to the pilot. I was so enthralled that I knew, someday, I would learn to fly. It would be 12 years before I would take my next plane ride. (I took off six times in a plane without ever landing in one. More of that later.)

Uncle Arthur inspired me to become a pilot. During World War I, Arthur had volunteered for what was then known as the Flying Service. It was a branch of the Signal Corps. He flew Spads with the Lafayette Escadrille, an American squadron that flew with the French flying forces. There were only 2,000 American pilots during WW I. The average life span of those courageous airmen was 3 months. They were flying the most rudimentary of aircraft. They nicknamed their planes Flying Coffins. There were as many casualties from mechanical and structural failure as from enemy action. If a pilot was lucky and skilled enough to down five enemy aircraft, he was proclaimed an Ace. Arthur joked that he was an Ace in reverse, having survived being shot down five times by German pilots.

on the last occasion, he was hit in the chest by enemy machine-gun fire. One slug ripped through his left lung. He managed to crash land his Spad, was rescued by British Army troops, and was hospitalized in France before returning home. He suffered respiratory problems from that wound for the rest of his life. He regaled me with many stories of his flying exploits, as well as those of his fellow airmen. I was spellbound!

I became a good reader early in my schooling. I particularly enjoyed aviation pulp magazines. Each month I earned enough money to buy the latest copy of ACES, a magazine devoted to both true and fictional stories about World War I fighter pilots. It was in the pages of ACES that I learned about Spads, SE 5s, Sopwith Camels, Fokker D-8s, Albatrosses, Nieuports, Eddie Rickenbacker, Manfred von Richthofen (the Red Baron), Raol Luffeberry, Glen Curtice, Max Immelman, Victor Chapman (the first American pilot to be killed in aerial combat), propeller synchronized Lewis machine guns and countless other details about the personalities of the pilot heroes, the aircraft they flew, the equipment they used, maneuvers they invented and how they lived and died. I couldn’t wait for each issue of the magazine and devoured its contents in just a day or two, fantasizing about flying and having adventures.

On one occasion I built an airplane out of an old plywood box that had originally contained a stand-up radio console. I cut a hole in the top for the cockpit, mounted a piece of Plexiglas for a windscreen, and set an old, rusted-out automobile muffler on the front of the box. The muffler was a perfect replica of a machine gun. Wearing a Lindy helmet, like the one Charles Lindbergh wore on his historic flight to Paris, and a pair of goggles, I’m sure I must have looked like Snoopy in the Peanuts cartoon. I, too, could fly this machine and shout Curse you Red Baron! for shooting holes in the side of my airplane.

Because of my dad’s drinking, there had been a strained relationship between him and Grandpa Hecox. Despite this, the two families visited often. One winter, my grandparents asked us to watch their house in Sparks for a week while they traveled to Chicago. My grandfather was to receive an award from Southern Pacific for being the most efficient locomotive engineer of the year. The nation was in the middle of the depression, and my grandfather had operated his engines with the least fuel usage of any engineer in the Salt Lake Division.

Prior to the trip, Grandma Hecox had put up four dozen jars of jam and preserves. Grandpa had brewed and bottled several gallons of home brew. The green beer and the jam and preserves were stored on shelves in the basement close to the furnace. Three days after they left, my mother received a frantic phone call from a next door neighbor who had heard a series of muffled explosions in the house. She asked us to please hurry over and investigate. Dad, Mom and I drove the four miles to Sparks in record time. Mom found no damage upstairs. Dad found the source of the explosions when he went down to the basement. The green beer had become warm from being too close to the furnace and was working too fast. Each bottle had exploded like a hand grenade. The basement floor was 2 inches deep in broken glass, green beer, jam and preserves. It took half a day to clean up the mess.

It was about the same time that I unknowingly became camouflage for my granddad’s sexual exploits. Let me explain.

Grandpa Hecox had a reputation amongst his fellow railroaders as being fast with the ladies. He was known to have several women in and around Carlin, the eastern terminus of his run, with whom he kept company during his layovers. He also had at least one lady friend in Reno.

on several occasions, always on a Saturday morning, Grandpa would stop by our house, visit for a while and then invite me to go for a ride with him while he did some shopping. I looked forward to these occasions. The only problem was, we never went shopping. Instead we drove to the north side of Reno, drove down an alley and parked behind a small bungalow at the end of a driveway. Grandpa said he was going to visit a sick friend for a few minutes and told me to stay in the car and play driving. When I begged to go with him, he refused, saying that I would be bored. I obediently played in the car.

Grandpa would be gone 45 minutes to an hour and would smell of bourbon when he returned. He seemed very happy on these occasions and brought me home with thanks for accompanying him. A few years later I learned that the bungalow he visited belonged to one of his paramours, a Mrs. Porteous. That affair went on for several years. I was used as a decoy to deflect any suspicion about his illicit activities.

During our stay on Cheney Street, my mom took professional voice lessons. Her mentor was a Mr. Whittle, an Austrian-born professional voice instructor. He was a masterful teacher. He spoke broken English, was very charming and had a crush on Mom. This kept his hourly teaching rates low. But, since he was at least twice my mom’s age, his romantic interest went unreciprocated.

With this training and her natural vocal talents, Mom became one of the leading sopranos in Reno. She was the first sponsored soloist on Reno’s only radio station, KOH. The money was paltry, but the recognition valuable. She was the lead soloist for the Ross-Burke Funeral Home for 12 years. The remuneration there was better.

We lived in the Cheney Street house 3 years and then moved west of Virginia Street to 703 Forest Street, on the corner of Forest and St. Lawrence. The house was a large, wood-framed structure heated by a potbellied stove in the living room and a wood burner in the kitchen. It stood diagonally across Forest Street from an old abandoned structure where soap had been manufactured. The soap company had been owned and operated by August Frohlich, who lived next door in a large, impressive, two-story house at 652 Forest Street.

August Frohlich was a Nevada pioneer, a prominent businessman and political figure in Reno and in the state of Nevada. He was serving as justice of the peace of Washoe County, following 12 years as speaker of the house of the Nevada State Legislature. My mother knew him because they sang together in a quartet affiliated with Eastern Star and the Shriners organization. The quartet frequently sang at Masonic Lodge functions around Reno.

Because so many marriages were performed in Reno, justice of the peace was the most lucrative political office in the county. On weekends Judge Frohlich performed marriages in his home. Some couples failed to bring a witness, a legal requirement. Judge Frohlich would then call my mother to act as the witness to the marriage ceremony. She was paid $5 for this service, a day’s wages for many working people in the 1930s. The occasional $5 was a welcome subsidy in a home where the money earned by my father mostly went for booze.

I liked August Frohlich because he showed a lot of interest in me, particularly in my school grades. Whenever report cards came out, he always asked me about my grades. When I had straight A’s, which was often, he’d reach in his pocket and give me a silver dollar. That was a fortune to a grammar school kid. Little did I know at that time what an important role he would eventually play in my life.

I have a flood of memories of the years we lived at 703 Forest Street. Lots of friends—like Walter Larson, my best buddy; Betty Stoddard, best girlfriend; Wilma Cassinelli, another girlfriend; Ramo Robustelli; Jack Pelligeri; Ward Henderson; Loraine Hamlyn, whose folks owned the candy store across the street from the school; and Stewart Trabert, whom I particularly remember because he was the only person who was more wimpy than I. Walt Larson and I even talked Stewart into eating rabbit turds as candy until he told his mom about it.

We played marbles, mumble peg, hide-and-seek, kick-the-can and roller skate hockey under the street lights at night. We used crushed evaporated milk cans as pucks and two-by-fours or old Christmas tree branches as hockey sticks. As I got older, spin the bottle became popular. In the winter, the police cordoned off St. Lawrence Street from Forest to South Virginia so we could sled down the St. Lawrence hill safely. Two to 3 feet of snow accumulation was the norm for Reno winters during the 1930s.

Walt Larson and I dug a fort in the ground about 5 foot wide and 5 foot deep in the center of a vacant lot next to our house. We covered the top with limbs, sticks, dirt and leaves to hide it. It was truly neat and we spent hours playing and hiding out there.

One night Wilma Cassinelli’s dad returned home from a fishing trip and still had his hip boots on. Walt and I badgered him about not catching any fish. He got angry and chased us. It was getting dark, so we led him into the vacant lot and jumped over the fragile roof of our hideout. Mr. Cassinelli stepped on the roof and fell to the bottom of our fort, spraining his ankle and cracking a rib. Hearing his outcry, my dad came to the rescue. Walt and I were forced to work until almost midnight filling in the hole that had taken us months to dig.

If you noticed the surnames of my friends, it would appear our neighborhood was Little Italy. It was. Eighty percent of my friends’ parents were first-generation Italian immigrants. In fact, most of these kids’ parents spoke little, if any, English. But they were warm, generous, hard-working people whom I dearly loved.

one of the thrills for us kids was sneaking into the old soap works. It was spooky and had weird smells from all the chemicals used in soap manufacturing. It was definitely haunted by the ghost of a man who was killed in the plant. Anecdotal evidence indicated that he died a ghastly death—he was pulled into a huge geared machine and mangled. Was this a true story? Indeed it was, confirmed by August Frohlich. We kids knew the location of the machine that killed him and often stared at it in frightened awe.

One afternoon I was playing several blocks up St. Lawrence Street at Humboldt Street, outside Betty Stoddard’s house. As we looked east, we saw dense black smoke billowing out of the roof of the soap factory. Betty and I immediately ran toward the fire, screaming at her mother to call in the alarm. My mother had also seen the smoke and called the fire department. The conflagration was spectacular! All of the tallow and volatile chemicals that had saturated the wooden building burned with fierce intensity. The Reno Fire Department decided that it couldn’t save the building. Instead, firemen concentrated their efforts on saving the adjacent homes and structures, among which was August Frohlich’s home. Several years later, a dry cleaning establishment was built on the vacated lot. It is there today.

I was 10 years old when I got my first BB gun, which my dad taught me to shoot. I became very proficient with that gun, a portent of the future, when I became an expert marksman with every weapon used by the infantry during World War II. The neighbors got upset when the local sparrow population started to decline. Parental complaints ultimately curtailed my neighborhood hunting activities.

Walt Larson had a 20-year-old uncle, Don Larson. Don, a sophomore at the university of Nevada, was a neat guy. He liked Walt and me and frequently engaged in sporting activities with us. We played football, baseball, roller-skate hockey, badminton and handball with Don. He always helped us and encouraged us to do our best. We loved him and were always delighted when he visited. One Saturday morning, he invited Walt and me to go on a hike up Peavine Mountain to hunt rabbits. We were both thrilled and excited.

Walt got permission from his dad to go. I wasn’t sure I could do the same. My dad was at work, and I knew my mom’s thinking about guns. I decided not to mention guns, only the hike.

Peavine is northwest of Reno. It’s where the N for the University of Nevada is painted each year by the freshman class.

We drove to the trailhead, parked Don’s car, and started up the mountain. Don had a .22 Remington pump rifle. Walt’s dad let him take an old single-shot, wooden handled, .22 long-rifle pistol. It was a relic. I had no weapon. Don traded shots with me using his rifle.

We walked about a mile up the mountain, shooting at rabbits and squirrels. Walt spotted a rabbit and climbed on a large, smooth rock to get a better shot. When he got to the top, he cocked the old pistol. As he started to raise the gun to sight on the rabbit, his foot slipped. The pistol went off and Walt fell off the rock. He screamed bloody murder that he was shot. As I rushed over to him, blood was spurting from the instep of his right tennis shoe. Don, who had first-aid training, immediately tied a tourniquet around Walt’s ankle and removed his shoe and stocking. The blood stopped flowing, but not Walt’s screaming. He thought he was going to die. Don, while distraught, kept calm. He finally got Walt to shut up long enough to tell him he wasn’t going to die and that we were going to get him to the hospital as soon as possible.

We hoisted Walt up on one leg to a standing position long enough to get him piggyback on Don. We started down the mountain. I carried the guns. Don carried Walt, who was no lightweight. Although we were going downhill, it was still over a mile back to the car. Don struggled, but never rested. He fretted about Walt’s parents’ reaction. I worried about mine, too, because I hadn’t mentioned a thing about taking guns on the hike.

Walt hollered, moaned and cried all the way back to the car. When we got there, he finally quieted down. It was a short trip to St. Mary’s Hospital. We took Walt into the emergency room, where a doctor examined his foot and took X-rays. The bullet had entered the top of his foot and exited through his sole. Miraculously, there was no bone damage.

After 3 weeks on crutches, Walt was fine. His parents didn’t blame Don for the incident. Unfortunately, we never saw much of him after that. I got a royal chewing out from both parents for not being forthright about taking guns on the hike. Walt’s was the first gunshot wound I ever saw. It wasn’t the last.

My father was responsive to my fascination with airplanes. He bought me balsa wood models and taught me how to build them. I particularly remember a WW I Spad he built for me while he was at work. He was a talented craftsman. The model was meticulous in detail, particularly the paint job. He often took me to the Reno airport to watch the one or two commercial flights arriving each day. The planes were Boeing 247s, the first twin engine, all-metal, low-wing commercial aircraft. It preceded the Douglas DC-3.

I was fascinated by the engine-start procedure. A mechanic turned a crank on the side of each engine, activating an inertial disk under the cowling. When the disk was up to speed, the mechanic shouted, Contact to the pilot, who threw a switch that engaged the inertial starter to the engine crankshaft. With a most distinctive whine, the propeller started to turn. After several rotations the engine fired, with huge plumes of blue smoke belching out of the exhaust stacks, finally clearing as the engine settled into a deep, guttural roar. I still get goose bumps thinking about it.

Dad frequently took me to Blanch Field, which was about two miles south of our neighborhood, out Plumas Street. This is now the location of the Country Club Golf Course. I saw Charles Lindbergh and his Spirit of St. Louis at Blanch Field. I also saw my first autogiro aircraft, my first airshow and my first parachute jump there—memories that burned airplanes and flying into my brain.

Dad also taught me to fish. Frequently after school during the season, I fished the Truckee River, from the Arlington Street bridge to Idlewild Park. I usually came home with several trout.

Even at that age, I had some organizational abilities and started a club with three buddies. No girls allowed. The club’s purpose was to fight off any other gang that might start up in the neighborhood. None did. I collected 25 cents dues a month and bought a blow gun for the club’s protection. As president of the group, I was the only one with authority to use the blow gun. One of the guys complained to his mom, who also found out about the dues collection. A short conversation with my mother ended in immediate confiscation of the blow gun, a return of the club dues and the demise of the organization.

When I turned 11, my dad decided I was old enough to learn how to drive. We had a 1935 Dodge four-door sedan with a standard three-speed shift (automatic transmissions were still 5 years in the future). We’d go out on some of the country roads, where he coached me on the use of the clutch, gearshift, brake and accelerator. I caught on pretty fast.

one of the proudest moments of my young life was the evening Betty Stoddard came to dinner. When it was time for her to go home, my dad said, Why don’t you drive Betty home in the car? I couldn’t believe my ears. My dad telling me to drive my girlfriend home in the family car? Unbelievable!

I backed out of the driveway with the utmost care, drove the several blocks to Betty’s house on Humboldt Street, let her out, drove carefully back home, into the driveway where my dad was waiting, and parked the car in the garage. Mission accomplished, no accidents, a proud dad, and one very proud kid with a much-impressed girlfriend. I was never sure how impressed Betty’s folks were about an 11-year-old driving their daughter home. It was never mentioned.

There are other memorable family moments, too. There was no television in those days, so my mom, dad and I often played Parcheesi or several games of cribbage after dinner. Dad made a special three-man cribbage board out of an old mahogany table leaf. It was a marvel of craftsmanship. I was good at the games and very competitive.

We also listened to the radio every evening. Before dinner each weekday night, I wouldn’t miss the 15-minute program—Jimmy Allen, Saga of the Airways—the story of a young pilot and his adventures in the air. Another flying favorite was Roscoe Turner and His Lion, Gilmore.

Roscoe Turner was, along with Lindbergh, my all-time favorite hero. He had won the 1935 Bendix Air Races in Cleveland, Ohio, and was pictured in every paper in the country. He owned a lion named Gilmore that flew in the back cockpit of his airplane. The radio show was sponsored by Texaco. The tag line of the advertising was Roar with Gilmore. If you bought Texaco gas, you received cardboard dollars according to your purchase. With a certain number of Texaco dollars, you received a pair of bronze Roscoe Turner wings; accumulate so many more for silver wings, even more for gold wings. With my dad, granddad, and numerous friends and relatives buying Texaco gasoline, in 2 years I was wearing my coveted Roscoe Turner gold wings, even on my pajamas. I should have saved those wings. They would be worth a fortune as a collectors’ item today.

Other radio shows I remember were Amos ‘n Andy, Burns and Allen, The Jack Benny Show, The Eddie Cantor Show, The Green Hornet, Little Orphan Annie, and shows featuring Red Skelton and Fred Allen.

My mother was singing at the Ross-Burke Funeral Home and several churches in Reno. The funeral home also asked her to fill in on the pipe organ. Being the consummate perfectionist, she put in many hours of practice. We had no organ at home, so Mom got permission to practice at the funeral parlor. She’d go down in the evening when no services were scheduled.

My dad was working in the theater in the evenings, so I had to accompany my mother. It was not unusual for the sessions to take place close to a deceased person laid out in a coffin, awaiting a morning funeral service. It was a little eerie at first, but I eventually got used to seeing a stiff close by.

One evening, as Mom was practicing and I was seated next to her on the organ bench, the corpse in a coffin near us seemed to raise up slightly and belch. Mom stopped playing and turned white. I wet my pants. Yelling for the funeral parlor attendant, Mom and I left the room in one lunge. When we told the attendant what had happened, he almost went into hysterics. He explained that involuntary muscle contractions and emissions of gas from a corpse were not unusual immediately after embalming. Nothing to be frightened over. Easy for him to say! I trust that advances in the science of embalming prevent such reactions now.

Not all the memories of 703 Forest Street are happy. My parents’ marriage was in serious trouble. My dad was working as a projectionist at the Granada Theater in Reno. It was a good union job and he made excellent money, considering it was depression times. But as my mother often put it, Mac needed to be a big shot. He not only had to bolster his ego with booze, but he also wanted to be accepted by everyone, particularly the habitues of the Alpine Bar, his favorite Reno hangout. He was the big spender, buying drinks for everyone and bragging that there was more where that came from. Consequently there was never enough money at home to pay the bills.

One evening during the winter of 1935, when my mom was cooking dinner, all the lights and power went off in the house. This was followed by a loud knock at the front door. Opening the door, my dad was met by two large Washoe County deputy sheriffs, who immediately put him in handcuffs, placed him in the back of their car and carted him off to jail with no explanation. Seeing my dad handcuffed and hauled away in a police car didn’t do much for my confidence. It exacerbated all those insecurities and fears that one or both of my parents would one day abandon me.

We later found out that my dad, a trained electrician, had wired part of our home services around the Sierra Pacific Power Company’s electric meter. In effect, he stole power for several months. But the company eventually figured out where the electricity drain was going and swore out a warrant for his arrest. We were without power for 3 days. Grandpa Hecox bailed out my dad, paid his fine, paid off the power company, and got electricity restored.

Along with the alcoholism, lack of money was a continuous threat and the focal point of many verbal battles between Mom and Dad. I remember a particularly acrimonious encounter one Easter morning. I had been invited to church services by one of my buddies. Mom wouldn’t let me go. Why? Because the only shoes I owned were an old, beat-up pair of Keds that I wore to school. In my mom’s eye, this was not appropriate for Easter Sunday. What would the neighbors think?

Mom would often rummage around the cushions and springs of our living room sofa, trying to find enough small change to pay for a movie. Dad often passed out on this sofa, so her success was phenomenal.

Several other things compounded the difficulties at home. My dad suffered lung injuries from a projection room film fire at the Granada. I’m not sure