SPEAKER_05 0:14

Welcome to the Pawn Podcast, brought to you by the Ponyon Museum in Garden City, New York. This podcast and our museum are dedicated to celebrating the legacy of the world's most iconic airlock, Pan American World Airways. My name is Tom Betty, and I'm the host of this program. Thank you for joining us. This program is sponsored by the generous support of Mr. Adam Aaron, the CEO of AMC Entertainment Holdings, Incorporated. The Pan Am Museum Foundation is a nonprofit organization. Please visit our website for more information at the Panamuseum.org. Again, our website is the Panamuseum.org. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. If you are using Apple Podcasts, please consider leaving a review. It will help others discover this program. If you're not familiar with Pan Am, welcome. We are honored to have you here, and for you to learn about what we're all about. If you already know of Pan Am, worked for, or flown on the airline, or just love our history, it's good to be with you again. So with that, let's get this episode in the air, so to speak. Welcome aboard your Pan American jet clipper. Lester worked for Pan Am during World War II, beginning in early 1942 until mid-1946. He provides a unique perspective of what it was like to be working for the airline during wartime in support of Allied forces that utilize Pan Am's vast global network and resources, making it a vital lifeline of resupply. But first, a couple updates about this award-winning History and Humanities podcast. We are pleased to inform you that this program was recently awarded with three new awards. The 2023 Gold Muse Creative Award, the 2023 Silver Vega Digital Award, and one of our episodes, Episode 17, about the 1977 Tenerife Airport disaster with Pan Am Flight Attendant Dorothy Kelly won the Gold Award from the 2023 Here Now Palooza of the National Audio Theater Festivals. If you enjoy this program, please consider making a tax-deductible donation. This program, as part of the nonprofit Pan Am Museum, is produced as a 100% volunteer passion project and no one is paid. So if you like what we're doing, consider making a donation of whatever you can afford. There is a link to donate online, or you can even donate through your phone by texting the word with no spaces, Pan Am Podcast, to the number 53-555. Again, to support this program, you can click the link in the episode description or text Pan Am Podcast with no spaces to the number 53-555. Thank you for your consideration. Now on to our interview with Lester Capell. Lester Capell was born on December 8, 1923 in New York. He joined Pan Am in early 1942 and served in World War II, working for the airline as an enlisted U.S. Navy reservist, which was a requirement for all overseas Pan Am personnel during the war. He began his time with Pan Am as one of the airline's esteemed mechanics and worked exclusively in 1942 on the celebrated Boeing B-314 flying boat, and then later expanded his skills during the war to engines of land-based planes. He was stationed for the majority of World War II in Casablanca with the African Orient Division of Pan Am under the Air Transport Command. Lester was at the airport and saw President Franklin D. Roosevelt's plane when he came to Casablanca in January of 1943 to meet with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. After leaving Pan Am after the war, Lester Capell worked in the family printing business for 30 years while also serving as a volunteer firefighter on Long Island, beginning in 1958. In the 1980s, he sold the company and began working for the local library, where he worked for over 30 years up until recently. During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Lester literally did not stop helping his Long Island neighbors until he was dehydrated and had to be taken to the hospital. Lester is revered by family, friends, library patrons, and firefighters alike. He is a great supporter of the Pan Am Museum and has donated items that are proudly on display in our public exhibits. It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the Pan Am podcast, Mr. Capel, and I would also like to thank you for inviting me into your home.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

Thank you, and I will try to remember all I can.

SPEAKER_05 6:09

Let's start by talking about how you got started in aviation on Long Island, New York, just before World War II.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

I was at Roosevelt Aviation School, which is where Roosevelt Field Mall is now. And from there, Pan Am was expanding. This was geez very early, as far as we were concerned, in the whole World War II picture. So that my being at Roosevelt Aviation School, which I went to after high school, this was in 1940, June of 40, I believe. And uh Pan Am was growing exponentially. It was at that time you just couldn't keep track. Pan Am started to go on to seven days, there was always a shift, ready to take over from wherever you were. So out of Roosevelt Aviation School, Pan Am came looking for at that time it was Civil Aeronautics Authority, license mechanics on aircraft and aircraft power plants. And they were anxious to have as many as they could, but with the stipulation that you had to go through the Navy and then reassigned to Pan American. And that's just the way it worked out. After my I think the course at aviation school was about 18 months, something like that, if I remember right. And I finished as a licensed aircraft and aircraft power plant mechanic. Incidentally, I still carry the license in my wallet. I don't know why, but it's I guess it's a mean of identification. I was at Pan Am here at North Beach when uh the Africa Orient Division of Pan Am was, I would call it the military division of Pan Am, which was working out of Miami at the time, was going to move also up to the metropolitan area, to the New York area, and utilize whatever facilities they had here so they could be flying either from Miami or from New York. And as I said, it it expanded just like overnight, like like a mushroom growing out of the ground. We went on to the seven-day a week, twenty-four-hour uh work days and work weeks, and you were assigned to six-hour shifts. There were four six-hour shifts. And on working on that aircraft at the only time that we were familiar with were the boats, the Boeing 314 clippers. We knew nothing about land planes. And this is where we really cracked hard because we had to learn from no experience with working with land planes, only with flying boats, on a quickly basis, quick basis. And they took a group of us and they split it is into three or four different number of people. And you were assigned either to Bermuda, Logans, which was in the Azores, or Casablanca. My lot happened to be Casablanca, so I was assigned in the Africa Orient Division of Pan Am to Casablanca, which was at that time the Air Transport Command, the ATC, which was nicknamed the African Taxi Company, Army of Terrified Civilians. It had a lot of names. So from Casablanca, I was stationed in Casablanca, I would say a year and a half. Again, I could be over a couple of months. And in that interim, VE day had occurred. So the whole operation was able to move out of North Africa up into Europe. And uh a lot of the fellows went to uh the southern part of Europe, uh the Mediterr the ports along the Mediterranean, and we were transitioning over to land planes, the C-54s, which were four-engine Douglases, which is the predecessor of all the DC-4s and what have you, whatever came afterwards. I was at Casablanca about a year and a half. VE Day had occurred, and the everybody was transferred to a place other than Casablanca because Southern Europe was unopened. My lot, and to this day I will never know why, I was assigned to anchor a turkey. Turkey was neutral till three or four days before VE Day. They stayed neutral. And when I made my way under orders from Panama and the Army orders to Cairo and from Cairo north up to Ankara, Turkey. That was my destination. And I wound up in in Ankara, Turkey, and uh they welcomed me like I was a godson. The I I thought they it was the ambassador, it was the army air attaché at the embassy in Ankara that must have thought that Anchor was then going on the map. So I started there and Anchor would then become a stop through southern Europe over to India and eventually over the hump into China. Now for some ungodly reason, and I'm never found out why, Tito, who was then the major domo of Yugoslavia, would not give permission for American aircraft to fly over Yugoslavia. So they had to find a way to go around Yugoslavia, and Turkey was the one way of doing it. That's the way I have I think I wound up in Ankara, Turkey. And my orders were to report to Ankara, Turkey. There was no Pan Am, this was all Air Transport Command. The AO division of Pan Am, which was the military division. I don't know if you're familiar with that term AO, Tom.

SPEAKER_05 14:03

Please tell our listeners a little bit more about uh Pan Am's African Orient Division.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

Yeah, well, originally it was all out of Florida, out of Miami, but then was able to move out of New York also. And that's when it really blew up. It expanded, you couldn't keep up with it. Because at the time you were either flying supplies or personnel if needed be, out of Miami or out of New York, but not in the boats. We had been transitioned to land planes, the C-54s, to fly either Stevensville, Newfoundland, Azores, and Casaplanca, depending on the time of the year. Again, we were split into different groups, and I wound up in the group that went to Casablanca. As an aside, Tom, the story was that at any one instance there were sixteen DC or C 54s in the air, either going or coming from Europe to eventually to Casablanca. It was the biggest air operation or airlift uh in history at the time. And I believe the name of the man who handled it was Smith, and I think he came out of American Airlines. He was the one that was the the big honcho for the AO division. Now, A, the Africa Orient, the the big item, because you could then fly supplies or personnel or emergency equipment all the way to a Karachi in India and eventually over the hump into China. So my stop my particular station was Ankara in Turkey. Only to discover that the airport would not support the weight of a four-engine plane. Here I am stuck here in Ankara, Turkey, with no four-engine airplanes to work on. But there was a twice-a-week flight from Cairo to Poltava, Poltava, I believe he's called, in the Crimea, the other side of the Black Sea. And this had nothing to do with Pan Am. So this was all ATC. ATC is Air Transport Command. And uh it it it functioned very, very well. Now, towards the end of the war in Europe, I was the only Pan Am personnel in Ankara because there was no Pan Am. I was Air Transport Command, but under the A and O division of Pan American. With the knowledge that the runways couldn't handle the C 400 C-54s, it kind of left me in a quandary. Well, what am I doing here? I got no airplanes. But there was a twice a week flight of the air transport command from Cairo through Beirut, Lida, which was then part of Israel, Cyprus, into the southern part of Turkey. And this was the routing that supplies and what have you that got to the Crimea. It was mostly emergency supplies that were needed in an awful hurry, munitions or what have you, and for personnel. Because Turkey, as I said, stayed neutral till four days before VE Day, and as they told us afterwards, that anything that US brought into Turkey was with the understanding had to stay there. In other words, if you brought in 65 Jeeps, they would have to be permanently turned over to Turkey. And Turkey made a very big deal and a good deal out of it. But as I said in the interim, it turned out that the air the runways couldn't handle the four-engine planes, but it did work on the two-engine planes that came out of Cairo on the way to Poltava in the Crimea. But that was strictly air transport command. Pan Am had very little to do with that. It was just that I was there and able to help them out. But I, in my career at Pan Am always had my eye on the side of becoming a flight engineer on board the plane. So, lo and behold, I'm here in Ankara with no Pan Am or any connection to the aircraft, only the planes that were flying out of Cairo, the air transport command planes, that were flying over the Black Sea to southern in the Crimea. But eventually I was to report back to I called it North Beach. That was at LaGuardia, the Marine Air Terminal. And that was the my superior was called line station maintenance. And that was where I had to report to. Which I didn't when I got back. And uh I had to lay over in London because I was a supernumerary until there was room for me to get a flight back to New York. Which I did and came back and uh with three toolboxes and I must have accumulated about three months of leave time and I I I did nothing for for two or three months. I went in and helped my dad has a print shop in the city, my brother, and I would go in and do that until that time ran out, and I was paid off and uh left Pan Am, or Pan Am left me, one of the two, because that was my separation point. I never could make it the time for flight engineering because I was declared temperamentally unfit for flight. That was the ruling. And it probably made sense because I had a quick temper and I would blow up, which you should not do or cannot do as a member of an aircrew. So that's where my end with flight. That was my end of Pan Am, and either they left me or I left them, one of the two.

SPEAKER_05 21:28

Let's go back to December 7th, 1941, and the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the historic around the world flight of Captain Robert Ford in the Boeing 314 flying boat called the Pacific Clipper.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

When Pearl Harbor Day occurred, flying boats were all over the world, and they all carried secret orders not to be opened until time of war. And uh the Of the 314 opened the orders and we would make our way back to uh Lagua North Beach. I keep calling it the same thing. No matter how you did it. So here we got this flying boat that's got four engines that require high test hundred octane gasoline to fly back around the world the ho the hard way, the the long way, to make it back to New York. And somehow, with all the spare parts that we had accumulated and all the crews from all the stations of Pan Am that we picked up, we made our way back to New York. And it seemed to take forever. And the story goes, and it's handed down from many many people, that the first boat that came in, the uh tower, was surprised to hear the message uh Boeing 314 inbound from Auckland, New Zealand. And sure enough, he came back and uh he brought the plane in, and uh this again was the boats, and we were not completely transitioned over to land planes. And um the line was that they asked him uh how he managed and how he felt. He said, Well, I'm a little bit hungry because I haven't eaten in a while, of the skipper that brought the boat in on that trip.

SPEAKER_05 23:47

And really, after the Pearl Harbor attacks that included attacks on Pan Am bases of Wake Island, Midway, and Guam, the American public was still very much in shock for some time. And 34 days later, taking the long way home, this flying boat, which was based on the west coast, lands on the waterfront in front of the Marine Air Terminal in New York, to great delight and fanfare. It was just what the American public needed at the time. Let's take a quick break and listen to Orson Wells' radio program recounting this historic event.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Pacific Clipper Inbound from Auckland, New Zealand, Captain Ford reporting. You arrived, Pan American Marine Terminal, seven minutes.

SPEAKER_02 24:40

Seven minutes later, 14 men stepped from the plane into the fitter zone wearing summer clothes. Yes, sir. 31,500 miles in 34 days, all the way around the globe. Avoid the enemy. So we're wise to hold dinner for December 2nd. A dinner that waited cold on the table for 31,500 miles. 34 days. Never mind, because we're talking about voyages. Man's passage through space and time.

SPEAKER_05 25:22

Sir, tell us about these flying boats. You were there. You worked on them. This was advanced technology at the time. Tell us more about these Boeing 314 flying clippers you worked on.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

It was so far ahead of its time, and we always kidded each other that flying on the clipper on the boat was like taking a transatlantic cruise on the Normandy. And if you went on one of the uh land planes, it was like a Staten Island ferry. So it was one extreme to the other. And Pan Am, I I must hand it to the management or whatever. Uh one trip had brought in a an engineer, a Dutch engineer. Andre Priester. Everything that he ever touched was to the nth degree. He was uh an engineer in training. And all the fuel that went into the either the land planes or the boats at the time was funneled through chamois skin. Why this works the way it does, I don't know. But chamois will pass fuel but no water. So that was the separation. The special funnels were built, so if you were fueling, it would separate the water automatically right out of the fuel that you were fueling either plane. And it it was a very, very wise uh decision because the only plane that was lost, clipper that was ever crashed, was crashed under very unusual circumstances. I think it was the Yankee Clipper, it was O three, that was flying into Lisbon on the Tegas River, and it was a moonlit night with no wind, and the pilot never knew that he was that he was on the water. It looked like a mirror. And that was the only clipper that ever crashed, was the Yankee Clipper O three, and on that plane was a USO tour, and Jane Fruman, I think, was a part of the USO tour, and she wound up in the hospital and eventually marrying the first officer of the Pan Am crew. They were rescued out of the river. And from that day on, whenever the boat was coming in to land on the water, they used to send a uh small uh spedboat, whatever you want to call it, to make waves to to show to tip the pilot that where the actual surface of the water was. It was a hard lesson to learn, but as I said, that was probably the only clipper, the only Boeing 314 boat that was lost on the Atlantic. Here's another a side story, Tom. One of the stops in uh Africa at Pan Am was this was before the war, was called Fisherman's Lake. Is where the boats could land and it was not a uh a passenger stop or what have you, but it was a convenient place to stop for fueling and what have you. And one of the boats, the flying boats, the 314s, hit a submerged object and stove in the bow. And here they got the 314 with a stove-in bow, which is a flying boat, and how the how are they gonna take care of it? Somehow they got a hold of concrete that would sit underwater, and they made a concrete bow and flew that clipper, the 314, back to New York with with what they called a concrete bow. And it was a wonderful piece of engineering that it was all done primitively, that no plans, no blueprints, no nothing. But they were able to get it back to New York, and for weeks were chipping concrete out of the Bowba 314. Tom, there were so many uh uh interesting side stories. Now, I don't even know if half of these ever got publicity, but when we were working on the planes that came in for hangar service, the boats that is, that came in on cradles, uh, you had to put on what they call window dresses. They would go over your shoes to prevent soiling the carpeting on the flying boats. And uh that was to keep the carpeting as clean as possible. They did a a yeoman's job, that's all I can tell you. And what we did uh was n oftentimes not approved mechanically, but I do remember the leading edge of the wings of any planes that would possibly run into icing somewhere in their flight had boots that were tied on to the leading edge of the wing that inflated and deflated with pumps off the engines, and that would crack the ice out, which prevented disturbing the airflow over the wings and losing lift. And I remember we had to change one in Casablanca. It was a land flying, it was a C-54, that we had to change this boot that had sprung a leak. In other words, it wouldn't inflate and deflate. So what we did is we got a hold of hooks because they they fit very closely to the leading edge of the wing because otherwise it would disturb the flow of the wing. And we were able to pull this piece of rubber boot over the wing with the truck and put the screws in to fasten it down. And that was not a proved way of doing it, but it was a way of getting it done.

SPEAKER_05 32:31

You donated an item to the Pan Am Museum I'd like to talk about, uh, that that very much is proudly on display. And when unrolled to its full length, it's about five and a half feet long. Tell us about the short snorter.

SPEAKER_00 32:49

The theory of the short snorter was any country you flew over or were stationed in, you attached to the prior piece of paper money. So every country that I flew over or I was stationed in, I attached it to this short snorter. And uh most people never even heard the expression as of what a short snorter is. But that's the history of the short snorters.

SPEAKER_05 33:17

How does it make you feel that your short snorter is on display at the Panyan Museum representing all of your coworkers during the war?

SPEAKER_00 33:27

Let's put it this way. Uh can I be proud of it's nothing that I did, Tom. It's just uh the sum of all my circumstances, that's all. It's nothing that I had to create or do or build or what have you. It just happened the way all these things tied together.

SPEAKER_05 33:50

But from a historical standpoint, the Allies could never have won the war without the Air Transport Command and Pan Am's vast resupply and support network, and what you were a part of, and all of your Pan Am co-workers were a part of during World War II in service to your country should be acknowledged and appreciated. You were there. What what what is your perspective?

SPEAKER_00 34:15

Uh Tom, that was the feeling at the time that the supply line all the way through uh North Africa. It was one of the things that stopped Rommel from proceeding across North Africa to Cairo and up through the Middle East and all the way up to the hump, was all part of the air transport command. And I found my old uniform up in the attic. I I feel that I feel in uh like it was a big peg board, and I was one of the pegs that fit into the right hole. That i it was not that something of my particular effort more important than anybody else's. It it was just a matter of being at the right place at the right time. And it it's a hell of a thing to say, but if it if I was not involved in that s particular section of war, I would never have traveled the world, would I have because I I've been halfway almost all the way around the world. And I used to have this argument with my brother, who was out of the officer training section at Fort Marmouth, that his overseas duty was Bermuda, mine was on the other side of the world. But uh I I don't feel that I did anything heroic really, because the only thing heroic that I've done is I've lived long enough to report it to somebody. That's the only thing. The supplies supposedly in North Africa that stopped Rommel from his drive across all of North Africa was our ability, meaning the Allies' ability to get supplies to Cairo to get enough to stop his march across North Africa. Uh again, I have to digress because everything else brings back another memory. I came from Casablanca when I was transferred to Ankara from as as we used to say, the armpit of the world. I was transferred to Ankara, and to this day I don't know why or how, I was the only one. I fell into a the fox and the chicken coop. Because all the embassies of all the countries were st had embassy buildings and personnel in Ankara, Turkey. That was the capital of the country, and it was neutral supposedly. So here I am coming from Casablanca, where I I led a monk's life to getting to Casablanca, uh to Ankara, Turkey, where I had my pick of all the women in the world. And it was it was such a uh a revelation to me. I can only remember one particular fact. I celebrated my 21st birthday in Istanbul. That's the only thing I remember. And it was all these crazy circumstances that just came to come together at the one time. Rightfully, wrongfully, I don't know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_05 37:59

We are going to take a six-minute break and listen to an edited excerpt from a 1945 post-war film about Pan Am's contributions during World War II. You can watch this Pan Am film on our YouTube channel, and there is a link in the episode description.

SPEAKER_03 38:18

On that day of infamy, December 7th, 1941, without warning, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and battlefronts suddenly blazed against America around the world. History will record how Pan American with its vital air routes across the seas was with our armed forces the first to feel the Japs blow. Under the stars and stripes and the emblem of Pan American World Airways, the United States headed its command in Pan American, the only worldwide air transport system in existence. This globe-circling network of airlines had been pioneered through 15 years of historic progress. Airlines to serve America's peacetime trade. When war struck, these routes became the lifelines between the arsenal of democracy and battle stations and allies across the Seven Seas. Overnight, this network of air routes, these men and women and the flying clipper ships at their bases from San Juan to Singapore, from the Aleutians to Australia, were converted into lifelines of America's battle for freedom. When it can be told in full, this will be one of the truly great stories of the war. The story of the struggle to keep open those routes around the three Americas, across the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the South Sea, over the South Atlantic into the jungles and deserts of Africa to Egypt and India. Beyond the Arctic Circle in Alaska. It's the story of men working until they dropped in their tracks to keep the ships in the air. To speed our fighting men and their leaders, our statesmen, and supplies to five continents. When hostilities began, 25,000 men and women of Pan American's peacetime family plunged at once into war. The clippers and all of their aides were in the struggle and in it all the way. War had exploded over the entire world. Every Pan American route was now a war route. The Clipper ships and the men who flew them were instantly at our country's service. From our nation's capital, while the explosions of Jap bombs were still echoing, Pan American Airways received its first orders from the Army. The company already had been fighting the commercial battle with the Axis for two years. Now came all out war. The Navy also had urgent work for Pan American to do. Its globe-comforting routes and 25,000 men and women were now a vital part of our country's war machine. Over the wires went an order to all Pan America's divisions. It was the now famous All Facilities order, changing the Clippers of Peace to Clippers at war. The entire 90,000 mile system of Pan American Airways enlisted, a secret weapon of the United Nations, was a chain of 59 airports in 15 different countries, built for America's defense by Pan American in some of the roughest country known to man. They served on the bombers and supply planes, which dashed across the South Atlantic to blast the Nazis out of Africa, minimum to smash the axes out of Europe and the Japs in Asia. Strategic locations were often hidden in unpenetrated jungles. Many engineers said airports could not be built on them. But Pan American experts tackled the job in the snake, insect, and disease-ridden swamps. From the Americans across the South Atlantic to Africa, Pan Americans threw an aerial lifeline that helped block Nazi seizure of the entire dark continent. And across Africa, another chain of air bases: Dakar, Akron on the Gold Coast, Lagos, Madoucree, on the Sahara's Edge, El Ginaina, El Fasher, Kamano, Khartoum to Cairo under the threat of Rommel's guns. To aid the war effort, Pan American made available to the domestic airlines the airports and facilities it had pioneered, its radio and weather stations, and its wealth of ocean flying experience. These domestic carriers, which had never before flown beyond the borders of the United States, now joined with Pan American in plying war supplies with Army aircraft to the battlefronts over Pan American's ocean airways. Careful planning by weight and balance experts figured out ways of utilizing every inch of the Clipper's precious base. Truly amazing the variety of vital cargo carried. Boxes containing secret radar parts. United States war plants completed them. Next day they were in London. The Clippers took off at every hour of the day and night, speeded everything from a nail to a machine gun across the oceans. They took entire radio stations with radio operators ready for action. Serums, medicine, and blood plasma. Emergency equipment for an African base. Perhaps the loving expressions of mothers and sweethearts to their men in Okinawa or Germany. Whatever the story behind each item, we know that somebody fighting somewhere for our way of life needed it badly. Pan American made more than 700 special flights, which secretly carried the world's wartime leaders to the common claves at Casablanca and Cairo and on hundreds of other special missions. Selected crews surveyed new wartime air transport routes over dangerous mountain and desert terrain, over oceans and to uncharted islands. Supplementing the 90,000 miles of Pan American's regular routes were the routes of the secret missions and special survey flights crisscrossing the world. Over these air trails, the Clippers carried Franklin D. Roosevelt, first president of the United States to fly overseas. Winston Churchill, wartime Prime Minister of Great Britain. Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. Madam Chunkanishek. King Peter of Yugoslavia. Marshal, Chief of Staff of our Army, General Dwight Islam, Admiral King, Admiral Limit, General Marnell, General Jimmy Doolittle, Archbishop Francis J. Spellman, Maxim Lipinov, Soviet ambassador, Harry Hopkins, Special Emissary for the President of the United States and many other important passengers. Pan American joined hands with the United States Navy to operate big Navy transport planes. The Navy men turned the ships over to Pan American crews who were veteran airmen of the very routes the Navy was using for vital supplies.

SPEAKER_05 44:43

Welcome back to our interview with Lester Capell, a Pan Am mechanic during World War II from 1942 to 1946. So let's go back to 1946 and talk about Lester's story after Pan Am, especially about this hot-tempered gentleman you were telling me about.

SPEAKER_00 45:15

I had this I I told you about sixty or ninety days of accumulated leave, which they paid me out on. And as I was turned down because at the time the lucky constellations were coming on the line. Beautiful airplane, four-engine land plane. And I was gunning for flight engineering, flight engineer on that plane. So I had I was going to school at uh LaGuardia to learn flight engineer on the constellation. And that's when I got the message that I was temperamentally unfit for flight. So that was the coup de grade.

SPEAKER_05 46:06

Now your son tells me a story that uh goes something like this. Uh let's say it was a very heated argument uh that you had in Casablanca, where you were trying to get into the officers club and they refused to let you enter because they didn't recognize your naval rank at the time with the Air Transport Command in Pan Am. And an officer reported you to Pan Am, and that's how the incident uh got stuck in your record.

SPEAKER_00 46:37

Yeah, I you know, Tom Hindsight's 2020. And I I guess I was short fused, and I flew it a couple of times when I should not have. And that's when that moniker just took it out. It stayed with me temperamentally on for fit flight.

SPEAKER_05 46:57

So you leave Panam in 1946. What happened then?

SPEAKER_00 47:02

And then I helped out my dad and my brother in the printing business that my dad had in the city. And here's a real great quirk of fate. My brother and I used to commute. He lived in Jersey, and I lived out here, not in this house, in another house. And his train fell off a trestle in South Jersey, and he was killed in a train wreck.

SPEAKER_05 47:31

Man, that that sounds so terrible. And your brother, Jerry, was 35? That's when he was killed in the train wreck. How did this event change your family?

SPEAKER_00 47:41

Oh, completely. It just about killed my father. Uh yeah, I I remember the eulogy when my father passed away. The gentleman who gave the eulogy said that Joe Capel didn't die this past week. He died after Jerry died. Yeah. And uh but that uh particular night of the train wreck was a horror story because I remember my dad calling me. We lived in that's no in Long Beach, in the house in Long Beach to come pick 'em up. We have to drive to Jersey to stay with my brother's widow at the time. But uh that took the whole pot of made stew out of it, and it just changed everything. And oddly enough, Tom, my niece and nephew, which would be my brother's son and daughter, I am still in very close touch with. And uh they're a part of my family.

SPEAKER_05 49:08

Did you stay in the printing business with your father?

SPEAKER_00 49:12

He didn't last very long. But yes, I did. And here I am, Tom, I knew nothing about the printing business. And uh an uncle of mine came in to help me, and uh we were able to run the printing business for a while, and then a whole picture changed. It needed specialized equipment, which we weren't geared to even try and get into, and an offer came for another firm to buy us out, and I took it, and that was the end of it. And I worked for them under a work contract for a year, and then I was finished.

SPEAKER_05 49:58

When did you become a volunteer firefighter?

SPEAKER_00 50:01

1958, I think, just after we moved here.

SPEAKER_05 50:06

So you were running a printing business in New York City and commuting, and also a volunteer firefighter at the same time? Yeah, commuting, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:15

Yeah, I was a commuter.

SPEAKER_05 50:18

And your son tells me that you hated to commute.

SPEAKER_00 50:22

Yeah. You know, I when I look back on it, say, how the hell did I did it every day? Uh but I don't know, you know, after a while you you you get like that, I keep thinking of a carrot and the stick. Like that donkey with the stick and the carrot in front of it. That's what I feel. Sometimes that's what I'm doing, the chasing the carrot.

SPEAKER_05 50:45

Your son Jeff tells me that you still volunteer at the library delivering books for the homebound and repairing book bindings. How long have you been doing that?

SPEAKER_00 50:55

Well, I've been at the library, 38 years, something like that.

SPEAKER_05 50:59

Looking back on your long life, tell us some high points.

SPEAKER_00 51:03

Well, the high point was meeting my wife to be at the time, and my the boys, Jeff and his brother. Uh Tom. Gloria, that was my wife's name, was a ward of the Foster Home Bureau. She never knew a mother and father. And at the time, that was before the fancy term au pairs, the uh Jewish welfare board would uh not advertise but let it be known that if somebody needed uh a high school student or something like that to take care of a younger child, they would supply them with uh money for clothing. But it would be the person's responsibility to provide them with food and board in turn for taking care of the child. And uh the couple that Gloria was with, the child that she was taking care of, had a summer bungalow on the west end of Long Beach. And the tennis courts were wet. So this gentleman said, I know somebody who lives in the east end of Long Beach. Let's go visit him. That was my father. So uh they came, it was on a Sunday morning, and uh my mother gets me out of bed. I had had a date that Saturday night and says, You've got to go out and meet this girl. You gotta get up and meet this girl. And lo and behold, you know, I never heard or believed that expression, love at first sight, but that was it. There was never another one. And um we were married, I think, a year or two later. But she had no family, no father or mother. And uh I kept kidding her, she was an heiress. She had a um I don't know what you call it when uh a child is left something in a in a uh a will. Oh uh a legalized uh way of breaking into this huge fortune of well it turned out the huge fortune turned out that it was enough to buy her a wedding dress. And that was it. We were married very shortly afterwards, and uh Jeff and his brother were the products of that marriage. The way fate works things out is so convoluted that you never know what's waiting around the corner for you. Here, this this beautiful young lady that I had known I would never have known, except that the dentist courts were wet, and they came to visit my father. And from that day on there were just no one else.

SPEAKER_05 54:27

Your son Jeff told me a funny story about the last time you visited the Pan Am Museum about one of the vintage Boeing marketing models of the B-314 flying boat. Can you tell us about what happened?

SPEAKER_00 54:40

I remember people that were sitting on a bench listening to me talk, and they have that cutaway of the 314, the cutaway model, and I would say, that's not the way it was. I don't remember that. And these people said, How do you know? I said, I worked on a plane. I don't know how many times I was out on that wing. The the back of the engines in the nacelle, in the part that's the engine comes out of the wing, the had doors that folded out from the nacelle. In theory, that you could stand on that nacelle and reach around to do some work if you had to. But it was never very practical. But they were there, but the back portion of the engine, which would be the accessory section, had a stainless steel clamshell door that when you removed it, if the propeller or the engine were shut off and the props feathered that wooden windmill, you could, in theory, repair a generator or something an accessory in flight. Did you ever have to repair an engine in flight? No, no, I never did that one.

SPEAKER_05 56:09

Never did that one. What advice do you have for young people today?

SPEAKER_00 56:15

If I were wise enough to give advice to anybody, I I wouldn't even know what to tell them to do. We're living in such a crazy world that expect the unexpected. That's the only advice I would have. That things that were normal and run of the mill uh two months ago, three months ago, are uh gone. Everything is is immediate change and convoluted. That's if I didn't have the the opportunity of going to the work at the library, I don't know what the heck I would do. Uh fortunately Jeff here takes care of me. My other son in Vermont, when he comes down, takes care of me. But it's like again the carrot and the stick. You keep your nose to the grindstone. Is that that part of the routine? I don't know. I I really don't know, Tom. Anything you'd like to add to our discussion? It was an experience that I never would have had if it hadn't been through Pan Am. Because I would never have had the opportunity, just at the very beginning, when I had to go into the Navy and re-sign to Pan Am to get the uh my first assignment at Casablanca from then to Ankara without that first meeting. And I don't know that it's much out of the ordinary really, but I don't know that there's anybody of my age that re well I could even um connect with. I do remember Linda Ferrer. I remember the name Boyce, B-O-Y-C-E. He was my replacement when I was at an Ankara. He came in after my time was up. And I said to Linda, does the name Boyce mean anything to you? She said, Yeah. Ken Boyce's daughter, she said she knows of.

SPEAKER_05 58:55

Wow, very small world indeed. Uh, I know her too very well. Patty, uh, who later became a flight, a Pan Am flight attendant with her sisters. The Boyce family is definitely a proud Pan Am family. Uh today, Linda and I serve with Patty on the board of the Pan Am Museum.

SPEAKER_00 59:13

And her father was my replacement. Very small world indeed. Yep. And Tom, my romantic antics, as I said, I became the fox and the hen coop when I got to Ankara after Casablanca. All those girls from the foreign embassies. Tom, here I am, 20-year-old. I've never been away from home, and I'm spinning my wheels like going out with the daughter of the air the French air attaché and the first secretary of the American Embassy. Who the hell am I but a small peapod? And uh one of the young ladies that I became very, very attached to uh was the daughter of the Turkish State Opera, who had been a German refugee, they were not Jewish, out of Berlin. Abert was his name, and I'm going through the newspaper and I see an obituary for Ebert. It was his daughter that I went out with. And uh as I said, here I am, this small peapod, and it was things I was exposed to that I would never have been exposed to in my regular life here. It's a it's a hell of a comment to make that it broadened my world, if that's the right way to put it. I don't know. I really don't know. It sure as hell I grew up in a hurry. The experiences that I went through were not um earth-shattering, they were not that I was in tremendous danger or being afraid of being killed, but I sure as hell grew up in a hurry. Because as I said, I I left here, never been away from home, and uh I was halfway around the world. And my niece, Kathy, oh I'm still very friendly, was born when I was overseas.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:42

Well, sir, again, thank you for inviting me into your home and sharing all your wonderful memories and sharing your stories of working for Pan Am during World War II in service to our country.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:54

Tom, I want to thank you for the time and effort that you've put into this whole interview because you've brought back so many old memories of the old Pan Am. And I uh Thank you very much, sir. Without telling you this, I know it'll now go down in history. And again, a big thank you for it.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:26

Pan Am was a pioneer in air travel and still stands as one of the most iconic and innovative airlines in aviation history. That legacy lives on at the Pan Am Museum in Garden City, New York, where you can explore the rich history of the aircraft and individuals at the heart of the company known as the world's most experienced airline. For more information about the Pan Am Museum, check out our website at www.thepan Amuseum.org. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. As was once a tagline in one of our commercials, we would greatly appreciate your support to help the Pan Am Museum continue making the going great. You can also support the museum by shopping on our online store for all things Pan Am accessories, apparel, jewelry, books, models, and posters. We want to hear from you. If you have a question for us or want to share your story, our email address is podcast at the Pan Ammuseum.org. As flight crews once said to passengers departing for their destinations around the world, thank you for flying, Pan Am.