Category: Politics
Elwood’s Airport Restaurant. The world’s only fly-in / drive-in.
Original publish date March 24, 2022. https://weeklyview.net/2022/03/24/elwoods-airport-restaurant-the-worlds-only-fly-in-drive-in/
A couple of weeks ago, my wife Rhonda and I drove about 40 miles north of Irvington to Elwood to visit the world’s first (and only) fly-in drive-in restaurant. Resting just northeast of the intersection of Indiana 37 and 13, the Airport Restaurant is located at 10130 State Road 37 on what was once the Elwood Airport. The planes are long gone, and diners no longer rub elbows with pilots, but the Airport Restaurant is still the place where all the locals eat.
The airport was founded just after World War II by Elwood residents Don and Georgia Orbaugh. It featured two grass runways, measuring 2,243 feet and 2,076 feet. The sod landing strips accommodated single-engine planes and their specialty was known as the $100 hamburger. The restaurant did not charge $100 for burgers, but for pilots, that’s what they became. “By the time you get in your airplane, fill it up with gas, and fly a 100 miles, it’s a $100 hamburger,” the old pilot’s joke went. Don and Georgia Orbaugh owned and operated the airport for 56 years before it passed to daughters Ann Brewer and Donna Ewing.
In 1952, “Sullivan’s Airport Restaurant” gained statewide attention when it opened an ice cream shack staffed by pretty young carhops. By 1953, a dining room was added to the shack, and young girls wearing tiny green uniforms with boxy marching band hats served curbside customers in their cars and pilots in their planes. Truth be told, the airport was really a “touch-and-go” facility where pilots practiced their landings and takeoffs. Most pilots only flew into the airport to visit the restaurant and ogle the carhops. By the end of the 50s, the novelty was over. There are a few photos (and at least one postcard) surviving of the Airport Restaurant during its heyday. The photos show the young waitresses in their carhop uniforms and the postcard pictures one of them standing on the wing of an airplane serving food to the pilots inside the cockpit.
Al Swineforth, the current owner of the Airport Restaurant, has a long history in the restaurant business. “I moved to Elwood in 1970. I was a General Manager for Darden Foods in Anderson for 22 years when I retired,” he stated. For those who don’t know, Darden’s family of restaurants features some of the most recognizable and successful brands in full-service dining — Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, and Cheddar’s to name a few — serving more than 320 million guests annually in over 1,800 restaurants located across North America. Al smiled wryly, then said, “The day I retired, I was driving north on 13 when I stopped at 37 and saw the old Wheeler’s truck stop. I stayed retired for a total of four hours.”
Anyone who has ever driven through northern Hamilton County on State Road 37 knows the old “Wheelers” building. The truck stop opened in 1940 as “Scotty’s Inn.” This was back when SR 37 was the main route between Fort Wayne and Indy, so Scotty’s became a well-known stop for truckers, local farmers, and travelers alike. It featured gas pumps, a restaurant on the main floor, and “tourist rooms” upstairs. Swineforth reopened the restaurant after it sat derelict for many years following a devastating kitchen fire in the 1970s.
Swineforth recalled that the place was a mess when he took it over. “Oh the stories that building could tell,” he said. “Those rooms upstairs were rented to truckers by the hour,” he whispered with a wink. “You know, Elvis Presley came through there once back in the 1950s.” Swineforth ran his restaurant from 1993 to 1999 before the ancient infrastructure finally forced him to shut it down. The building remained vacant for nearly two decades before it reopened in 2018 as Mercantile 37.
After Swineforth closed his restaurant at the old Wheelers, he landed in Elwood. “I rent the building from the Orbaugh daughters. I own the name and everything within these walls, but the 74-acre airport property remains in the Orbaugh family,” Al noted. “Every Governor since Otis Bowen has stopped in here. Well, except Evan Bayh, he was never here. Mike Pence came in here all the time before he became Vice-President.” Al said, “He used to hold meetings right over there at that corner table.” Swineforth recalls one Governor’s visit in particular. “Frank O’Bannon came in here once for a meet-and-greet. We were running planes then and there were a couple of pilots in here. The Governor’s bodyguards went out and pulled the car up to leave and while they were gone the Governor said that he’d really like to take a plane ride. Pilot John Ward told him his plane was right outside and the Governor took off out the back door and was circling the runways within minutes.” Al closed by saying, “When those bodyguards came back in to get him, you should have seen the looks on their faces when I pointed to the sky and told them ‘there he goes.’ You couldn’t get away with that nowadays.”
The airport closed for good on September 1, 2008. The former runways were leased to a local farmer, who has since planted them in crops. Statistics from the previous year showed that the airport had 2,604 general aviation aircraft operations, an average of 217 per month. When I asked him how it affected his business, Al replied, “I lost $100,000 overnight.” That wasn’t the only calamity Swineforth had to weather. Like most restaurants, the COVID-19 pandemic nearly devastated the Airport Restaurant. “We never closed during COVID,” he stated. “Oh we shuttered the dining room but we were open for curbside and delivery.” It might surprise some to learn that Swineforth thinks the pandemic actually helped his business. “The community really came through for us. I think they appreciated that we never closed. Our business picked up after we reopened.”
I visited the Airport Restaurant on a weekday and was immediately greeted by owner Al Swineforth. Al insisted that we have lunch before we sat down to chat, his treat. We were seated in the dining room right next to the fireplace. Our waitress Holly Fettig greeted us warmly and informed us that she had worked there since she was 18 years old. “My mom worked here for a few years before I started,” Holly said. “I’ve been here for over 25 years now.” I question that statement because she looks like she would still get carded in any bar she found herself in today.
The menu is full of so many different dishes that it is hard to zero in on any one particular selection. The restaurant fare runs the gamut from Hoosier staples like grilled tenderloins, onion rings, fried green tomatoes, and double-decker hamburgers to steak, chicken and noodles, or fish dinners. Holly informed us that they are “famous for our elk burgers.” Rhonda had broccoli cheddar soup and a grilled ham & cheese sandwich and I opted for a giant hamburger, fries, and chili. Next time, I’m trying that elk burger. We were not disappointed. The restaurant serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner with homemade pies also available.
After lunch, we sat down with Al and Holly and explained the reason for our visit. Turns out that the restaurant has a family connection. My mother-in-law, Kathy Hudson, worked at the restaurant in 1968 at a time when it was being managed by my wife’s great-grandfather, Virgil Edgar Musick. Rhonda’s dad, Ron Musick, has told us for years about his grandfather and his restaurant and recalled helping with the bookkeeping when he was in high school. “The restaurant was called Musick’s Airport Restaurant back then. Granddad was a musician. He played slide guitar in a band along with running the restaurant.” Ronnie said, “Seemed like he was playing on the radio every weekend on WOWO up in Fort Wayne. He backed up some pretty big-name musicians in his day.”
Kathy told us that she was working as a waitress there when Bobby Kennedy’s campaign flew into Elwood in May of 1968. “I don’t remember Bobby being there, but his advance guys were there, all dressed up in suits and dark sunglasses. They asked me if I wanted to go for an airplane ride and I told them, ‘Well, only if my husband can come along.’ The advance men told her, ‘Sure, he can sit on the wing.’ Did I mention that Kathy, former homecoming queen at Anderson Highland High School back in 1964, is quite the looker? The fireplace table was important because Rhonda’s only memory of the restaurant centers around a photo of her and grandmother Nina Pace standing in front of it. Rhonda told Al, “But I remember it as red brick, not white.” Al explained, “Yes it was red but we painted it white when we remodeled the place several years ago.”
The planes don’t come here anymore and the runways were plowed over years ago. However, evidence of the airport survives in the many pictures of planes, parked on the grassy runways, taken back in the 1960s and 70s that now line the walls of the restaurant. My father-in-law, Keith Hudson, remembered tooling around Elwood back when it was a working airport. “We used to cut through here by driving up the runway back then. I still eat there from time to time.” When I mentioned Hud’s name to Al, he said, “Oh yeah, I know Keith from Bernie’s bar in Frankton.” Turns out that before he ran the Airport Restaurant, Virgil Musick ran the 128-club in Frankton. Seems like Al Swineforth knows everyone in Madison County. And as for those shortcuts through a working airport runway, don’t worry Hud, I think the statute of limitations has run on that by now.
Charlotte Corday
Original publish date July 18, 2024. https://weeklyview.net/2024/07/18/charlotte-corday/
This 24-hour news cycle world can be exhausting. As I write this article, we stand at 120 days and counting until our next Presidential election. We are constantly reminded that this will be the most important election in the history of our country and that the end of Democracy is on the line. Since I spend most of my time buried in history of one sort or another, a phrase from the ancients runs on a loop in my head; “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” My idiomatic paraphrase is a Biblical verse: Ecclesiastes 1:9, “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”
This is the story of Charlotte Corday. It is complicated, shocking, and gory, and does not end well. Her act is immortalized in one of the most famous images from the French Revolution: The Death of Marat, a 1793 painting by Jacques-Louis David. The painting depicts Jean-Paul Marat lying dead in his bathtub after his assassination by Corday on July 13, 1793. It is considered a masterpiece of the highest order and the first modernist work to express just how bad politics can be. The original painting is at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium with a replica on display at the Louvre.
Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday d’Armont (July 27, 1768 – 17 July 1793) was born to an aristocratic family in Normandy, France. Corday held Marat responsible for the September Massacres of 1792, a series of executions of prisoners in Paris during the French Revolution. Over 1600 people, most of whom were non-violent political prisoners, were dragged from their cells and killed by guillotine at the hands of the “Committee of Surveillance of the Commune” led by the Montagnards, who advocated a more radical approach to the revolution. As The French Revolution radicalized further and headed towards terror, Corday began to sympathize with the Girondins. The Girondins supported democratic reforms and a strong legislative branch at the expense of much weaker executive and judiciary branches. She regarded the Girondins as a movement that would ultimately save France and that the Revolution was in jeopardy due to the radical course taken by Marat and the Montagnards.
On July 13, 1793, Corday traveled to Paris to assassinate Marat. He was not hard to find. Marat was suffering from a debilitating skin disease that left him nearly constantly confined to a bathtub to ease his suffering. Marat had always been a sickly man whom contemporaries described as “short in stature, deformed in person, and hideous in face.” The nature of his skin disease has been debated for centuries, some claimed it was syphilis, though most experts have identified it as “Dermatitis herpetiformis” a chronic, intensely itchy, blistering skin manifestation commonly known as celiac disease, a rash affecting about 10 percent of the population. Marat’s condition, which he had been suffering from for three years, was exacerbated by extreme weight loss, emaciation, and diminished strength. Marat stewed in a soup of various minerals and medicines with a bandana soaked in vinegar wrapped around his head. Marat sat upon a linen sheet for modesty, with the dry corners covering his back and bare shoulders, a board straddled the tub from rim to rim which served as a writing desk.
Corday is described on her passport as “five feet and one inch…curly auburn hair, eyes gray, forehead high, mouth medium size, chin dimpled, and an oval face”. Based solely on her appearance, Corday was the unlikeliest of assassins. On July 9, 1793, Corday arrived in Paris and took a room at the Hôtel de Providence. She bought a kitchen knife with a 6-inch blade. During the next few days, she wrote a detailed manifesto explaining her motives for assassinating Marat. At noon on July 13, she arrived at Marat’s home claiming to know about a planned Girondist uprising but was turned away. She returned that evening and was admitted. Their interview lasted fifteen minutes. From his bathtub, Marat wrote down the names of the Girondins as Corday crept ever closer to him. As he busily wrote out the list, Marat said, “Their heads will fall within a fortnight.”
Now within striking distance, Corday pulled the knife from her corset and plunged it deep into his chest, just under his right clavicle, opening the brachiocephalic artery, close to the heart. Marat, still clutching the list of names, slumped into the tub as he called out his last words: “Aidez-moi, ma chère amie!” (“Help me, my dear friend!”). The wound was fatal. In response to Marat’s cries, his wife Simonne Evrard, and two others rushed into the room and seized Corday. Two neighbors, a military surgeon and a dentist, attempted to revive Marat to no avail. Officials arrived to interrogate Corday and to calm a hysterical crowd who appeared ready to lynch her.
Corday’s manifesto claimed: “I have avenged many innocent victims, I have prevented many other disasters. The people, one day disillusioned, will rejoice in being delivered from a tyrant…I rejoice in my fate, the cause is good…I alone conceived the plan and executed it. Crime is shame, not the scaffold!” Corday credited her single-blow knifing of Marat not to skill or practice but to luck. Arrested on the spot, she was tried and convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal and sentenced to death by guillotine on the Place de la Révolution. On July 17, 1793, four days after Marat was killed, Corday was led to the guillotine via the tumbril, an open cart used to transport its load of condemned prisoners to the guillotine amid the shouts and jeers of bystanders. Corday stood calmly facing the crowd, suddenly, the heavens opened the thousands of curious on-lookers were drenched by a sudden summer rainfall. Corday never flinched.
Corday strode confidently to the guillotine, curtseyed to the crowd, leaned against the Bascule, and was lowered face down horizontally, her head placed into the Lunette. The Declic (handle) was pulled by the hooded executioner, releasing the heavy Mouton (weight) and blade from the crossbar. A silent swish swept the crowd as Corday’s head tumbled into the basket below. The Bascule, a sort of table, was hinged to make it easier to push the headless body into a larger side basket immediately after the execution. Moments after Corday’s decapitation, a carpenter named Legros leaped from the crowd and lifted her head from the basket. He turned towards the crowd and slapped it on the cheek. Horrified witnesses reported an expression of “unequivocal indignation” on her face when her cheek was slapped and that “Charlotte Corday’s severed head blushed under the executioner’s slap.” Ever since, the incident has fueled the suggestion that victims of the guillotine retain consciousness for a short while after decapitation. For that offense, Legros the carpenter was imprisoned for three months. To make matters worse, believing that there had to be a man sharing her bed who masterminded the assassination plan, officials had her body autopsied after her death to determine if she was a virgin. To their dismay, their non-scientific examination revealed that she was a virgin. Her body was buried in the Madeleine Cemetery, alongside the decapitated corpses of of King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette, and three thousand other guillotine victims. Legend claims that Corday’s skull was saved and passed from Parisian to Parisian (friend and foe alike) for generations after her execution.
Corday’s crime did not have the expected outcome and Marat’s assassination did not stop the reign of Terror. Instead, Marat became a martyr. Although the killing of Marat was considered vile, there is no doubt that the murder changed the political role and position of women during the French Revolution. Corday’s action aided in restructuring the private versus public role of women in society at the time. The idea of women as second-class citizens was challenged, and Corday was considered a hero. As the revolution progressed, the Girondins became progressively more opposed to the radical, violent views of the Montagnards espoused by Marat, Robespierre, and others.
However, Corday’s critics quickly elevated Marat to the level of the immortals. His heart was embalmed separately and placed in an urn on an altar erected to his memory. His remains were transferred to the Panthéon where his near messianic role in the Revolution was gaslighted in a eulogy delivered by the Marquis de Sade, who compared Marat to Jesus Christ and idealized him as a man who loved only the people of France. Marat was transformed into a quasi-saint, his bust often replacing crucifixes in the churches of Paris. After the ousting of Maximilien Robespierre a year later, Marat’s reputation plummeted. His busts were knocked off their pedestals, carried away, and dragged through the streets by local children to the chants of ‘Marat, voilà ton Panthéon!’ (Marat, here is your Panthéon) before being dumped into the sewers. The few remaining statues of Marat were melted down during the Nazi occupation of Paris in World War II. Strangely, he continued to be held in high regard in the Soviet Union with many citizens, streets, and even a battleship sharing the name Marat.
Europeans remain split on the legacy of Corday. Some place her alongside Joan of Arc, the patron saint of France, who died 350 years prior, and others dismiss her as an idealistic radical. Corday lives on in popular memory through numerous works of art, poetry, plays, and literature including works by Percy Bysshe Shelley and Oscar Wilde, and her story is referenced variously in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Les Misérables. Marat’s wife peddled his bathtub to the highest bidder but not very successfully. Reportedly, interested parties included Madame Tussaud’s wax museum and P.T. Barnum, but it ultimately landed in the Musée Grévin, a Paris wax museum, where it remains today. The tub is in the shape of an old-fashioned high-buttoned shoe with a copper lining. However, the most tangible reminder of Marat’s death is Jacques-Louis David’s painting. David was not only the painter but also the man who organized Marat’s funeral. Marat’s disorder accelerated decomposition, making any realistic depiction of the scene impossible. The result was that David’s work beautified the skin that in reality had been discolored and scabbed from his chronic skin disease. The resulting painting was widely criticized as glorifying Marat’s death.
As for Corday’s reputation, history recalls her as the “Angel of Assassination” and lauds her as an early pioneer in the annals of women’s rights. After the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the April 29, 1865, Harper’s Weekly mentioned Corday in a series of articles analyzing the assassination as the “one assassin whom history mentions with toleration and even applause”, but goes on to conclude that her assassination of Marat was a mistake in that she became Marat’s last victim rather than vindicating his thousands of victims. Proving that violence in the interest of “small d” democracy is, was, and always will be, futile and unacceptable.
John Glenn & Ted Williams: The Flying Leathernecks.
Original Publish Date March 3, 2022. https://weeklyview.net/2022/03/03/john-glenn-ted-williams-the-flying-leathernecks/
On February 16, 1953, a wounded fighter jet approached the airfield at Suwon, Korea. The plane’s radio was inoperable, its hydraulic system gone, and it was trailing smoke and bleeding fluids. Its streaming 30-foot ribbon of fire all indicated serious danger. The pilot brought his hobbled midnight-blue F9F Grumman “Panther” jet in for a dangerous wheels-up belly landing, skidding the length of the tarmac in a cloud of sparks and debris. An already tense situation became worse as the nose promptly burst into flames below the cockpit. The trapped aviator blew off the canopy, struggled out of the plane, and limped away as fire and rescue crews quickly blanketed the burning aircraft with foam. The plane was a total loss but the pilot survived.
Later, the airmen at Suwon learned they had just witnessed the dramatic escape of the most famous flying leatherneck in Korea; Captain Theodore S. Williams, better known as Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox. Williams was arguably the best baseball hitter of all time. “Teddy Ballgame” was a six-time American League batting champ, two-time AL MVP, and the last man to hit .400 for a season. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966 five years after hitting a homerun in his last at bat.
His stats as an airman were equally impressive. Ted flew 39 combat missions in Korea and his planes were hit by enemy fire three times. On this mission, as with many, Williams was flying as wingman for his squadron’s operations officer, John H. Glenn, Jr.: Ohio’s Mercury astronaut, former senator, and 1984 presidential candidate. Glenn and Williams were both Marine pilots during World War II but did not know each other well. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Glenn dropped out of Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio, and enlisted in the Marines. Williams joined the Marines at the end of the 1942 season after leading the league with a .356 batting average.
The two met and became friends in Korea. Glenn flew 63 combat missions in Korea and was nicknamed “Old Magnet Ass” because of the number of flak hits he took on low-level close air support missions. He returned to base with over 250 holes in his plane twice. But on that Feb. 16th mission, Williams’ plane was the one that took the heavy hits. When Glenn saw that his wingman’s plane was on fire, he flew to Williams’ wingtip and pointed up. The duo went up into thinner air and the fire went out.
Other pilots gestured for Williams to bail out but the slugger wouldn’t do it. Ted was 6-foot-4 and thought his knees might “catch the hatch” during ejection and that would be the end of his baseball career. Instead, Williams flew back to the base, zeroed in on the runway, and skidded to a stop. The hall of famer leaped from the cockpit and ran from the plane just as the aircraft caught fire again.
While much is known about Ted Williams the ballplayer, little is known about Williams the Marine pilot. In January 1942, Williams was drafted into the military, being put into Class 1-A (Available; fit for general military service). A friend suggested that Ted appeal his classification to the governor’s Selective Service board, since Williams was the sole support of his mother, arguing that he should be reclassified to Class 3-A (Men with dependents, not engaged in work essential to national defense). The “Splendid Splinter” was reclassified to 3-A ten days later.
Afterward, the public reaction was extremely negative. Quaker Oats stopped sponsoring Williams, and Williams, who previously had eaten Quaker products “all the time”, never ate Quaker products again. Williams took more flak by signing a new contract with the BoSox for $30,000 in 1942. That season, Williams won the Triple Crown, with a .356 batting average, 36 home runs, and 137 RBIs. On May 21, Williams hit his 100th career home run, and the next day he was sworn into the US Navy Reserves. Williams grew up in San Diego (a “Navy town”) and aviator Charles Lindbergh was one of his childhood heroes. Williams later noted that he first became interested in flying after seeing the Navy’s majestic lighter-than-air ship “Shenandoah” as a kid.
Naval aviation cadet T. S. Williams was sent to Amherst College in Massachusetts for a 90-day stint in preflight training, described as “Officer candidate school with a crash course in advanced science.” The school is where prospective pilots were whipped into shape, learned how to be military officers, and studied basic theories of how airplanes operated. Those cadets who did not wash out were then moved to Chapel Hill, N.C., for three months of preflight training. While the academic load was more strenuous, here the pilots actually got to fly airplanes. Ground-school training included subjects like engines, ordnance, aircraft characteristics, aerodynamics, and navigation.
Here the cadets flew small two-seat, single-engine, high-wing Piper NE-1 “Grasshopper” trainers to acquire the skills to fly an airplane. Next, Ted Williams was sent to the “Naval Air Station Bunker Hill” in Kokomo (Now Grissom Air Force Base) for basic flight training. There he learned more theory but also spent time flying Vultee SNV and North American SNJ trainers over the skies of Central Indiana. Upon graduation, Williams opted for the Marine Corps and moved south to Pensacola, Florida for advanced flight training as a fighter pilot.
Williams learned about tactics and weapons as he practiced advanced navigation, aerial combat maneuvering, and formation flying. His athletic ability, steady hand, and excellent eyesight made him a very good pilot. In fact, he was good enough to set the Marine gunnery record at Jacksonville. Williams once again was having an outstanding “rookie” season. Williams played on the baseball team (along with his Red Sox teammate Johnny Pesky) while in pre-flight training with the Civilian Pilot Training Course. While on the baseball team, Williams was sent back to Fenway Park on July 12, 1943, to play on an All-Star team managed by Babe Ruth. Upon meeting Williams the newspapers reported that Babe Ruth said, “Hiya, kid. You remind me a lot of myself. I love to hit. You’re one of the most natural ballplayers I’ve ever seen. And if my record is broken, I hope you’re the one to do it”. Williams later said he was “flabbergasted” by the incident, as “after all, it was Babe Ruth”. In the game, Williams hit a 425-foot home run to help give the A.L. All-Stars to a 9–8 win.
Williams went on active duty in 1943 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps as a Naval Aviator on May 2, 1944. In mid-1944, Marine aviation in the Pacific was on the wane. Japanese fighters had all but disappeared from the skies, and the days of dogfighting fighters crisscrossing the skies over the “Solomons Slot” were gone. With fighter pilots no longer in high demand, the most promising student aviators were made flight instructors, and that is what happened to Ted Williams.
When, in the summer of 1945, Ted finally received orders for the combat zone, he was in San Francisco. On September 2, 1945, when the war ended, Second Lieutenant Theodore S. Williams USMC was in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii playing baseball in the eight-team Navy League alongside Joe DiMaggio, Joe Gordon, and Stan Musial. The Service World Series games featuring Army versus the Navy attracted crowds of 40,000. The players said it was even better than the actual World Series between the Detroit Tigers and Chicago Cubs that year.
Williams was discharged by the Marine Corps on January 28, 1946, in time to begin preparations for the upcoming baseball season. For the 1946 season, Williams hit .342 with 38 home runs and 123 RBIs. He ran away as the MVP winner and helped the Red Sox win the pennant. That season, Williams hit the only inside-the-park home run in his Major League career and topped that with the longest home run in Fenway Park history, at 502 feet (the landing zone marked by a single red seat in the Fenway bleachers).
The name Theodore S. Williams was swapped from the list of inactive reserves to active duty on January 9, 1952. As the Korean War heated up the Marines desperately needed pilots and the 33-year-old married father was one of the best. Williams returned to active duty six games into the 1952 season. After hitting a 2-run home run in his last at-bat to beat the Detroit Tigers 5-3, Williams traded his uniform for a flight suit.
Although initially bitter at being called up (he’d only been in a plane once since World War II ended), Williams realized that going to Korea was the right thing to do. Still, Williams believed his call-up had more to do with the publicity it would generate for the Marines than the true need for his services. Right before he left for Korea, the Red Sox held a “Ted Williams Day” at Fenway Park. Williams was given a Cadillac and a memory book signed by 400,000 fans. The governor of Massachusetts and the mayor of Boston were there and at the end of the ceremony, the fans in the stands held hands and sang “Auld Lang Syne” to their hero.
Williams reported to Willow Grove (Pa.) Naval Air Station for flight-refresher training and then headed to Cherry Point, N.C., for ground school before transitioning into jets. From there, Williams traveled to Pohang on Korea’s eastern coast in early 1953. Captain Williams flew 39 combat missions, sustaining heavy enemy on many occasions, and he was awarded three Air Medals before being sent home with a severe ear infection and recurring viruses in June. Williams was formally discharged from active duty on July 28, 1953, the day after a cease-fire in Korea went into effect.
Williams’ squadron commander at his North Carolina training station said of him, “He was a spoiled-brat… He had too much money and had too many people rooting for him.” Unlike Williams, Major John H. Glenn, Jr. remained in the Marines after World War II. In Korea, it would have been easy for Glenn, the operations officer in Williams’ squadron in charge of assigning pilots to their daily missions, to adopt the same attitude toward Williams but he never did.
In the early 1950s, Glenn was a hotshot Marine pilot no one outside the military had ever heard of. In the early 1950s, Williams was one of the most famous big-league players on the planet. In his 1999 memoir, Glenn described Williams as anything but a prima donna. “I had just joined the squadron and was sitting in the pilots’ ready room one day when he walked in and came over and introduced himself,” Glenn writes of their first meeting. “I had been a baseball fan since I was a boy, and meeting Ted was a thrill.”
Glenn described Williams as a pilot, “He was just great. The same skills that made him the best baseball hitter ever — the eye, the coordination, the discipline — are what he used to make himself an excellent combat pilot.” As for their shared sky duty in Korea, Glenn describes, “We would be over one of their supply roads. Then we would drop down and follow the road back toward the front, hoping to catch their troops and trucks in the open . . . We leapfrogged, with one of us flying at treetop level and the other at 1,000 or 1,500 feet above and behind in order to see farther down the road and relay advice to the `shooter’ on targets ahead. We would switch positions every 10 minutes.”
Williams later described Glenn as “Absolutely fearless. The best I ever saw. It was an honor to fly with him.” In his memoir, Glenn emphasizes his fondness for Williams and recalls how the famously zipper-thin Williams developed an appetite for the fudge Glenn’s sister-in-law would send through the mail. “Ted and I flew together a lot,” Glenn recalled, “Ted flew about half his missions as my wingman. He was a fine pilot, and I liked to fly with him.”
Williams’ two major career disruptions for military service eventually cost the slugger nearly four years of playing time at the very peak of his career. Most articles about Williams focus on his sports achievements, hardly mentioning his military service. The only question usually asked is, “Where would Ted Williams be in the record book had he not lost four prime baseball seasons serving his country?” It may be more accurate to ask, “Where would the United States be without men like Ted Williams?” Ted’s baseball achievements take a backseat to his performance as a “Flying Leatherneck.” Williams was a baseball star for nineteen years and a proud Marine for five. In the words of Senator John Glenn, “Ted may have batted .400 for the Red Sox, but he hit a thousand as a U.S. Marine.”
The Mumler Abraham Lincoln Ghost Photo.
Original publish date: October 22, 2020. https://weeklyview.net/2020/10/22/the-mumler-abraham-lincoln-ghost-photo/
https://www.digitalindy.org/digital/collection/twv/id/3900/rec/104
Last Saturday before the Irvington ghost tours, one of our volunteers, Alex McFarland, initiated a conversation that seemed to be a perfect topic for the evening: the Abraham Lincoln ghost photo. Known officially as the “Mumler photos”, these were a series of posed studio photographs, not unlike any old-time photo, usually in Carte de Visite (or CDV) form, that can be found at any antique show, shop, or mall today. The difference is, that Mumler’s photos had the visual image of a ghost in them. The most famous of the Mumler photos features widowed First Lady Mary Lincoln with her deceased husband, President Abraham Lincoln.
William H. Mumler
William H. Mumler (1832-1884) was a well-known Boston photographer who claimed to be a “medium for taking spirit photographs.” Mumler was part of the growing phenomenon of spiritual manifestations introduced in 1848 by the Fox sisters of Hydesville, N.Y. The three sisters held séances at their home (near Newark, N.J.), that featured spirit rappings and table tippings in response to their queries. Their amazing “abilities” caused a sensation that spread across the country. With its long history of highly-intelligent, intellectually curious populace, Boston became an epicenter for the movement attracting spiritualists, mediums, and psychics from all over to the mysterious world of the “higher plane.”
In 1871, the camera was still in its infancy. The technology had graduated from metal to glass to paper photos readily available and affordable to the general public like never before. The country was still mourning from Civil War losses, in some cases having lost entire male lines of families and large portions of towns and communities. The loss of loved ones was still fresh and many turned to any means necessary to see and talk to their loved ones one last time. Mumler’s promise of contact in the form of visual evidence drew flocks of true believers to his studio at 170 West Springfield Street in this city historians called the “Cradle of Liberty.”
In February of 1872, seven years after Lincoln’s assassination, a still grieving Mary Lincoln arrived at William Mumler’s Boston Studio to have her picture made. Dressed in mourning, she gave the photographer a false name (‘Mrs. Lindall”) and kept her face concealed behind a black veil. In 1875, Mumler recalled in his autobiography, “I requested her to be seated, went into my darkroom, and coated a plate. When I came out I found her seated with her veil still over her face. I asked if she intended to have her picture taken with her veil. She replied, ‘When you are ready, I will remove it.’” The widow Lincoln was used to dealing with charlatans and knew how to prevent their tricks.
The reason she landed at Mumler’s studio was because her dead husband had appeared to her at a séance earlier in Boston. The medium told her she should visit Mumler’s studio because the photographer could capture the shadows of the dead on photographic negatives. Mumler always claimed that he did not recognize his subject until after he developed the negative. And then only after he recognized the image of the martyred President did he realize it was Mary Todd Lincoln. His visitor just may have been the most vulnerable woman in America, shattered by death and loss for the past two decades.
Mary never recovered from her husband’s assassination six years before and the loss of three of her four sons, all dead before their 18th birthdays. Even before her husband’s death, Mary Lincoln had embraced spiritualism, the belief that the spirits of the dead can be contacted through mediums. Reputedly going so far as hosting seances in the White House and visiting mediums in Georgetown and D.C., sometimes accompanied by the President himself. So her visit to the studio, today located near historic Frederick Douglass Square in Boston, was unsurprising and predictable. It should also come as no surprise that the photo, the greatest presidential ghost photo ever known, is a fake.
Mary’s visit to William Mumler’s studio (one of five Boston studio locations he occupied during the 1860s-70s and 80s) stands out as one of the grand hoaxes of the Spiritualist period. The distraught first lady must have been satisfied, even consoled by the image, but to our practiced modern eyes, this photograph of Mary Lincoln remains a touching, if sadly preposterous, fake. Nonetheless, it was Mumler’s most famous portrait. Mumler’s Lincoln image is his most reproduced photograph, and it is believed to be the last photo ever taken of Mary before she died in 1882.
The story of Mumler’s spirit photography began as an accident and turned into a joke. In 1861 the 29-year-old jewelry engraver was living in Boston and experimenting with the new art of photography as a hobby. In his autobiography, The Personal Experiences of William H. Mumler in Spirit Photography, Mumler claimed his discovery was made while developing a self-portrait. While the plate was soaking in the tray of toxic chemicals, he noticed the mysterious form of a young girl slowly materialize on the negative. Amused and mystified, Mumler printed this curiosity and showed it around to friends, claiming that it was the ghost of a dead cousin. Mumler, a man of “a jovial disposition, always ready for a joke,” decided to show the photo to his spiritualist friends, pretending that his picture was a genuine impression from beyond the grave.
The Boston psychics fell for the gag and soon Mumler’s ghost photos were circulating around the city. It became an instant sensation and once Mumler’s photo was published in The Banner of Light and other spiritualist newspapers, he became an instant celebrity. The “spirit cousin” was nothing more than the transfer residue of an earlier negative made with the same plate, but it was declared a miracle and Mumler the jeweler became heralded as the “oracle of the camera”. Mumler soon left his job as a jewelry engraver and opened his own photography business full-time.
Here’s the scam. On arrival, the subject of the photo was greeted by William’s wife Hannah, she would chat up the client who would invariably reveal who the spirits were that they wished to appear in their sitting. Hannah had some clairvoyant abilities of her own and she often offered her own intuitions about the spirits surrounding her husband’s clients, resulting in the client’s unwittingly revealing more precise information. All while William Mumler was eavesdropping from the adjoining room. Part of his con included a “vacuum tube” that glowed as an electrical current was run through it which he claimed was a special force he then channeled into the camera. It was P.T. Barnum-style showmanship pure and simple.
For this special ability, Mumler’s fees were extravagant. At the height of his fame, Mumler charged $10 for a dozen photographs, roughly five times the average rate. Worse, there was no guarantee that any spirits would appear. If Mumler or his wife sensed a particular vulnerability in their subject, the spirits would not appear in the photos. Clients were encouraged to make repeated trips to Mumler’s studio before they were blessed with a true spirit photograph. If the high fee was ever questioned, “The spirits,” Mumler answered, “did not like the throng.”
Boston’s other photographers were not impressed by Mumler’s ghost photos. James Black, one of Boston’s premiere photographers famous for his aerial views of the city taken from the perspective of a hot air balloon, was convinced that Mumler was cheating. He set out to catch him at it. Black bet Mumler $50 that he could discover his secret. Black examined Mumler’s camera, plate and processing system, and even went into the darkroom with him. In his autobiography, Mumler described Black’s reaction when a ghostlike image emerged on the negative right before the doubter’s eyes as, “Mr. B., watching with wonderstricken eyes…exclaimed, ‘My God! Is it possible?’”
P.T. Barnum.
Of the incident, Mumler later recalled, “Another form became apparent, growing plainer and plainer each moment, until a man appeared, leaning his arm upon Mr. Black’s shoulder.” The man later eulogized as “an authority in the science and chemistry of his profession” then watched “with wonder-stricken eyes” as the two forms took on a clarity unsettling in its intimacy. Despite the best efforts of countless investigators, no one was able to determine exactly how Mumler created his apparitions. With the photographic elite unable to debunk Mumler’s ghost photos, hoards of desperate souls flocked to Mumler’s studio-including a grieving Mary Lincoln and the master of all hoaxes, P.T. Barnum himself.
Soon Mumler’s pictures became the subject of great speculation among his peers from all over the country. In 1863 noted Boston scientist, physician, and avid photographer Oliver Wendell Holmes not only gave step-by-step instructions on how to obtain a double exposure in an essay for the Atlantic Monthly, but he also contemplated the popularity of Mumler’s pictures. “Mrs. Brown, for instance, has lost her infant, and wishes to have its spirit-portrait taken,” Holmes wrote. “It is enough for the poor mother, whose eyes are blinded with tears, that she sees a print of drapery like an infant’s dress, and a rounded something, like a foggy dumpling, which will stand for a face…An appropriate background for these pictures is a view of the asylum for feeble-minded persons…and possibly, if the penitentiary could be introduced, the hint would be salutary”
Further confounding the experts was the fact that the apparitions seen in a Mumler photograph had human features, lifelike gestures, and filmy interactive forms. They are translucent spirits, not hard-edged ghosts. That was the secret of a Mumler ghost photo. To mediums, psychics, and spiritualists, Mumler’s photos depicted what they believed: that the afterlife was a paradise, simply the next step in human existence, albeit on a higher plain. All questions of process and motives aside, Mumler’s subjects were satisfied with the results. Distraught parents saw visions of children gone for years. Grieving widows saw their husbands one more time and widowers looked into the eyes of deceased wives once again.
Eventually, Mumler was a victim of his own vanity and the third deadly sin of avarice: aka Greed. The more people that showed up, the more Mumler had to perform. Some prominent Boston spiritualists, once avid supporters of Mumler’s ability, began to examine the ghost photos more closely only to discover that some of the “spirits” in the images were still quite alive. The ragman, the butcher, the schoolteacher, the cop. These were normal people walking the streets of Boston, all past subjects of Mumler’s “straight” photo studio sessions utilized by Mumler in the photographs of strangers. Eventually, Mumler’s business in Boston fell off.
He died on May 16, 1884 holding patents on a number of innovative photographic techniques, including Mumler’s Process, which allowed publishers to directly reproduce photographic illustrations in newspapers, periodicals, magazines, and books. Mumler’s skill as a photographer was only rivaled by his talent as a con artist, but he never really experienced any accumulated wealth from his labors. Mumler maintained to the end that he was “only a humble instrument” for the revelation of a “beautiful truth.” To further confuse matters, Mumler destroyed all of his negatives shortly before he died. William Mumler’s photographs may be products of pure hoaxing, but the question of whether technology is capable of catching spirits on film remains with us to this day. Search the web on any given day and you will see photos of every type captured by cameras of every description. Security cameras, ring doorbells, digital images, and cellphones continue to capture photos of mysterious orbs, mists, apparitions, shadows, dancing lights, and unexplainable phenomenon of every description. The allure of capturing a ghost on film, especially that which is invisible to the naked eye, may have begun with William Mumler but it continues to this day.
