This incident serves to show that Norman’s precocity was mitigated by a well-developed sense of humor as well as a playful mischievousness. There was a merry twinkle in his eyes, denoting that he was not always to be taken too seriously in his search for knowledge.
A marked trait of Norman’s early youth was his dashing intrepidity. He began hunting when he was but seven and he never showed a sign of fear. I can see him now in my mind’s eye mounted on his spirited chestnut thoroughbred riding as straight and true as any of the older hunting men. An accident that happened to him and his brother Frederick before they went to school at Groton illustrates the fearlessness of both of them in their childhood. It was a morning appointed for a meet and the rain was falling in torrents, making the riding cross-country more than ordinarily dangerous, so that I deemed it prudent to tell my sons that perhaps it might be better for them not to join us that day. They dearly loved the sport, and I remember how the tears came to the eyes of Norman when he heard my gentle warning, though, as the event proved, he did not take it any too seriously. On my return home that evening I found Norman in the care of a surgeon with a broken thigh, while his brother had a broken collar-bone, the result of fast riding on the slippery turf. Regardless of the dangerous conditions against which they had been warned they had taken not only to hunting but to racing and by accident they had pulled into each other at the finish where both were violently thrown. As they lay stunned on the ground Frederick was the first to gain consciousness and he shortly heard Norman murmuring jokingly, “Fred, I think I’m dead. How do you feel?” Not even this playful disregard of parental counsel operated to check a certain degree of admiration for such an exhibition of calm nerve under painful circumstances. Norman’s interest in hunting and racing witnessed no abatement when he took to aviation, or even after he had experienced some of that stern joy that warriors feel. A post-script to one of his letters from the front in France made the naïve inquiry:
“How did my horse run at the Country Club meeting?”
Another marked feature of Norman’s personality was his gracious and attractive bearing under any and all circumstances. To his quick intelligence and dash he added a courtesy and graciousness of manner that charmed all those with whom he came in contact, whether at home or abroad, at work or at play, in the rough-and-tumble of life or in the drawing room. His savoir faire which seemed his by instinct, gave him a charm that was rare to meet.
Concours Hippique
About all the notable characteristics that marked Norman’s earlier youth remained with him as he grew older, showing a constantly progressive development. This was particularly the case as to his alert mentality and his remarkable capacity for acquiring knowledge easily and quickly. As a student he could hardly be called exceptionally studious in the sense of being closely attached to his text books, but what he lacked in studious habits he more than made up for by the facility with which he grasped any subject that invited his attention. This accomplishment of his was demonstrated in a gratifying way when he was at Groton preparing for college. He was given an opportunity to join his brother for a year of study abroad, but he asked that he might take his entrance examinations for college before going. The next examinations were only a week or two ahead, and Norman still had another year at Groton before his turn would come in regular course. Having obtained the requisite permission of the Groton and Harvard authorities thus to anticipate his work he underwent the examinations at once, though he was then but 15 years old. He passed them all without a condition and without any uneasy apprehension on his part, apparently.
Having achieved this triumph he went abroad, studying for a time in Germany and at Oxford, subsequently entering Harvard in the sophomore year. At college, as at school, he acquitted himself creditably and was graduated with high honors. He subsequently took the degree of Bachelor of Laws at the Harvard Law School in due course.
It was at this time that he became an enthusiastic devotee of aviation, and when an opening came for him to begin the active practice of the law, he preferred to give his attention to the science and practice of aerial navigation with the Wright brothers and with Starling Burgess at Marblehead. Knowing something of the perils of aviation, particularly during the early stages of its development in this country, and apprehending that its fascinations for Norman might prove more or less perilous, as well as tending to distract his attention from the more serious concerns of life, I sought by every means to dissuade him from giving so much of his attention to it, but his ambition to distinguish himself as an aviator made it difficult for him to pay due heed to my serious counsel, and I subsequently found that he had been experimenting for some time with flying machines in high altitudes under an assumed name in order to escape detection and an undesired notoriety.
Recalling these venturesome incidents in Norman’s early career as an amateur aviator, I sometimes think that perhaps fate had reserved him for the cause to which he finally gave his life and that the character of this service was that for which he had shown such a passionate fondness and aptitude, despite all obstacles and discouragements. Worldly success won by the ordinary plodding methods meant little to him. He aspired to hitch his wagon to a star. He cared nothing for the privileges of wealth, even though they might be within his reach, and he envied no man his success in whatever honorable lines he might elect for himself. His ambition was to achieve something worth while and he gave all his energies to the accomplishment of that purpose.