The Airline Boss who Ditched in the Pacific
The Airline Boss who ditched in the Pacific His father died when he was 12. The day after the funeral he went down to a glass company and talked them into a job, saying he was 14. That was the end of his schooling. He worked 12 hours a night, six nights a week, and turned his weekly $3.50 pay-check completely to his mother. Then he got a better job ($6 a week) in a foundry. Then at $10 a week at a shoe factory, and finally at a garage. He took correspondence courses in engineering and then began winning automobile races in 1910. Four years later he pushed a Blinzen Benz to the unbelievable world record of 134 miles per hour. When World War I started he was the driver of General Pershing. He then got into aviation, and when World War I ended, he was America’s highest scoring Ace with 26 victories. In the 1930s he was a leader in the air-transport industry as the Chairman of Eastern Airlines, one of the leading airlines in the world- Edward Vernon Rickenbacker. The Atl...