TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/030590/0305170.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 7.6 KB | 155 lines

                                                                                AMERICAN SCENE, Page 9

Silver Hill, Maryland

A Flight Down Memory Lane


Paul Garber is the soul of aviation history

By HUGH SIDEY


    The flaked and faded word Caroline painted in aqua script
across the bulbous nose of an old Convair fuselage looms up
unexpectedly and stuns you. There sits one of the most
evocative remnants of Camelot, silent in the pale winter sun,
assaulted by the sounds of pizza parlors and service stations.
The suburbanites of Silver Hill rush by this tiny corner of
Maryland uncomprehending. Thirty years ago, the world knew. Two
engines would belch smoke and roar a message of adventure, as
John Kennedy staked out his New Frontier across the nation.

    Countless times you bounded up those stairs, flopped in a
seat, while the Caroline rolled down a distant runway, headed
for another city, another rally. Kennedy reigned in his swivel
chair at the center of the cabin, barking at his campaign
organizers, laughing at the pratfalls of the traveling press,
sucking on Callard & Bowser butterscotch squares for his
strained larynx, and showering the floor with the devoured
pages of the day's newspapers. All the while a comely stewardess
rubbed Frances Fox tonic into his luxurious shock of hair, a
zealously tended political asset.

    The Caroline is only one of 40,000 items of aircraft
memorabilia, from whole planes to burp bags, collected at the
Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration, and Storage Facility
workshop of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in
Washington. For most Americans, a big chunk of their history
is concentrated in the metal sheds on those 25 acres, where 22
technicians slowly, meticulously regenerate the epic of flight.

    A black Stinson Reliant of fabric and spruce rests on the
floor, seemingly poised for takeoff. You took your first flight
in one of those graceful monoplanes in 1935. The last of the
barnstormers out of Omaha had dropped in on a harvested alfalfa
field. For $l.50 you rumbled through the stubble and jolted off
into the air, choked with awe and fear. Above the old town, you
could see the high school and your home and beyond them the
vast, quilted cropland. Your world and the way you looked at
it changed forever. The pilot, casual in his open, checked
shirt, let you hold the wheel for a few seconds, and just then
you were a god.

    There is one of Roscoe Turner's sleek racers in the shop.
Turner was a hero to Depression-ridden boys. He flew in pink
jodhpurs, gleaming calvary boots, brass-button tunic, and
sported a needle-pointed waxed mustache. He carried a bottle
of Carbona cleaner with him to hold grease spots on his rakish
costume to a minimum. You got to see him at Sioux City, Iowa,
on a scorched tarmac in the drought years, and the thrill
lasted the whole dismal summer. Turner brought along his pet
lion cub Gilmore, which draped its paws over the side of the
cockpit as Turner cut the switch and saluted. In a back room at
the Garber Facility, Gilmore, long ago a grown lion, proudly
presides, beautifully stuffed and stored.

    One of the bins in the shop is cluttered with wing sections,
striped fabric, fuselage stringers and bulkheads. No plane is
immediately discernible in this jumble of disparate parts. You
stare for a few seconds, and then the puzzle begins to come
together -- a Hawker Hurricane. You drift back 49 years, and
you can hear again the urgent voice of Edward R. Murrow coming
over the old cathedral radio, describing the dogfights above
him in the Battle of Britain. Hurricanes, though less glamorous
than the legendary Spitfires, took more punishment and could
be patched up and sent back into battle quicker. "I'm an
Anglophile," shrugs Dave Peterson, 39, who is directing the
Hurricane's restoration. Peterson's British-born mother watched
the great air battle and passed on her stories. "Hurricanes
were the underdogs," says Peterson. "They stopped the Germans.
I like that."

    The Enola Gay, shorn of its wings, its long fuselage in two
parts, commands center stage in this singular historical drama.
There is something spiritual and awesome about walking up to
the silver flank with the stencil that was put on a few days
after the B-29's famous mission: FIRST ATOMIC BOMB, HIROSHIMA
-- AUG. 6, 1945.

    William Stevenson has worked up in the bomb bay, and he says
softly, "It's eerie. There are not many artifacts about which
you can say, `That altered the world.' This one did." You know
what Stevenson is talking about when you climb into the plane's
greenhouse nose, and you try to imagine how the nuclear
fireball must have etched the day with its hideous brightness.

    There are two plywood circles showing where gun turrets were
taken out to save weight when hauling the 9,600-lb. Little Boy
atom bomb. Back in the bomb bay work is going on to reconstruct
the single hook used to suspend and release the bomb. A normal
double hook for bombs was abandoned by the mission planners,
who feared, if one malfunctioned, the armed bomb might dangle
in the rack like hell on a tether. You remember the day 44
years ago on a college campus when the news came of the Enola
Gay's successful drop and the public dawning of the nuclear
age, how you sat up most of the summer night talking and
wondering.

    The Garber Facility is named for a diminutive 90-year-old
man who still goes to work every day as historian emeritus of
the Smithsonian Institution and has done more than any other
person to preserve the record of the nation's great venture
into flight. Paul E. Garber was born just as the Wright
brothers began to inquire about flying machines. When Garber
was five, his uncle gave him a kite, and his fascination with
the sky was fixed for a long lifetime.

    At nine, Garber read in the evening Star about an airplane
demonstration. He mooched 50 cents from his father and hopped
the Washington trolley to Arlington National Cemetery. When he
stepped down, he heard a strange sound, looked up and saw
Orville Wright steer his Military Flyer above him with Lieut.
Frank Lahm, one of the first military pilots, at his side.
Garber ran up the hill to Fort Myer, where President William
Howard Taft was witnessing the birth of American air power.
Years later, Garber, by then a friend of the Wright brothers,
acquired both their original plane and the Military Flyer for
the Smithsonian.

    Garber learned to fly one of the legendary Curtiss Jennys
just after World War I. But he got so wrapped up in the
evolution of the planes and preserving them that he never
pursued a flying career. In all likelihood, he is the only man
alive who has lived the entire span of aviation history at the
very center, friend of most of the pioneers, keeper of flight's
most complete diary.

    Garber put the bite on Jimmy Doolittle, Amelia Earhart,
Wiley Post and Howard Hughes for famous planes they flew to
records in what is often called the golden years of aviation,
when new planes were designed and built every few weeks. When
Garber's friend Charles Lindbergh took off for Paris in 1927,
Garber heard the news on a homemade radio in his Chevy. He
stopped at roadside and scribbled a cable asking for the plane.
"Lindbergh hasn't gotten there yet," stammered the
Smithsonian's Assistant Secretary Charles Greely Abbot when
asked to send the wire. "He's a great aviator in a very good
plane," responded Garber. "I think he will make it." Lindbergh
did. So did Garber's plea. The Spirit of St. Louis is one of
the most popular exhibits in all of aviation history.