HEROES: Durable Man

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The company went broke in 1926, leaving Rickenbacker a quarter of a million dollars in debt. He was 36, married (to Adelaide Frost, ex-wife of the late millionaire racing driver Cliff Durant) and had a son. But he could not bear the thought of going into bankruptcy. He resolved to pay off the huge debt (he eventually did—"It made me feel right"). Then he raised $700,000 more, and bought the Indianapolis Speedway.

At the same time he went to work for General Motors, and became an officer, successively, of a list of its aircraft subsidiaries. Rickenbacker coursed the country as a public speaker. His Speedway press parties, held on the eve of the 500-mile Memorial Day race, were Homeric—whisky flowed until dawn, and Rickenbacker called for order by hammering the table with a baseball bat.

Captain Eddie. His love affair with Eastern Air Lines began in 1935. He was delighted when G.M. chose him to run it —it was one of the sickest limbs of a sick industry, but its territory was dotted with cities, from New York to Miami, and it was almost devoid of competition. When G.M. decided to sell it, three years later, he rounded up $3.5 million in 30 frantic days, and bought it with the triumphant air of a boy getting his first bicycle.

He made it a one-man airline, and he made it pay. Captain Eddie—as he is known around the Eastern system—flew 200,000 miles during his first year as president. He not only poked his nose into every airplane, every ticket office, every hangar and every repair shop, but, in time, left an embodiment of himself in all of them through a series of posters. These bear a picture of him, the words "Captain Eddie Says:"—and various Rickenbacker-ish homilies on the value of thrift, safety and patriotism. Some of his employees refer to the poster picture as Big Brother—but they all respect him.

Remembering the beating he had taken at the hands of the automobile industry, he fought his competitors for every minute advantage. Once when Braniff bid a low $0.00001907378 a mile for airmail subsidy, Rickenbacker got the bid by offering to fly the mail for nothing. He adopted a policy of waiting for other lines to use new aircraft—and risk crashes—before adopting them himself. He insisted on personally checking every expense item over $100, swore that he would never pay a dividend on Eastern's stock (he has 100,000 shares, is the largest stockholder) as long as the line owed the banks a dollar. He adopted a policy of gathering the line's executives together at semiannual meetings and hazing them unmercifully as they reported. Sample: "Now that's a hell of an alibi, if I ever heard one ... By comparison with what we know could be done, we smell to high heaven. Now put this on your Must List . . . memories are awfully short, especially yours . . ."

He capitalized on his own popularity, toiled at making friends for Eastern with every after-dinner speech, newspaper interview and casual handshake. He also collected an array of enemies. Organized labor hated him.—for his wartime criticism and his free-enterpriser's independence —almost as bitterly as it hated Senator Robert A. Taft. Its feathers were not smoothed when Rickenbacker reminded them that he had been a working stiff too, and had been glad to get a dollar a day._