[TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN]
I am an American citizen. I was born in Warren, O., U. S. A., on April 25, 1904. I am the youngest of the three remaining children of a family of seven. My paternal grandfather came to this country from Ireland. He was a basket weaver by trade and a Protestant by religion. My father was a bricklayer by trade. He died when I was five. My mother, whose people hailed largely from Pennsylvania, scrubbed floors, took in washings, sewed, baked, made handiwork and sold it, worked in restaurants, and so managed, with the help of charity, relatives, and my older sister when she got old enough to help, to send me to grammar school and through two years of high school. Then she died.
I was sixteen. My sister was unable to carry me further. I went to work in the boot-and-shoe department of the Goodrich Rubber Factory at Akron, O.
I worked there a year and found conditions and my prospects intolerable. I applied for permission to work a part shift at night. It was granted. This reduced my income but allowed me to go to school in the daytime.
For three years I worked at night in the factory and went to school by day. I completed my high schooling and a year of college (Akron, O.) in this manner.
Then I applied for entrance to the United States Army Air Service Primary Flying School, was examined, found qualified, and admitted. One hundred and four others were admitted to this same class. Charles A. Lindbergh was one of them. Our status, as well as that of the other 104, was that of an enlisted man with a flying cadet rating.
A year later, in March, 1925, I was one of eighteen who graduated from the Army Advanced Flying School, Kelly Field, San Antonio, Tex. The rest of the 104 had been disqualified during the course, only the eighteen most apt being kept. Of these eighteen who graduated, four had been chosen to specialize in pursuit flying. Lindbergh and myself were two of these four. Upon graduating from the Advanced Flying School, I was discharged from the army, and commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Army Reserve Flying Service (now Air Corps).
I went back to Akron after getting my commission as a reserve flyer and discovered that there was no market for my newly acquired ability. I tried to get a job as mail pilot with N. A. T. in Cleveland but was told I didn’t have enough experience. I tried to get a job with Martin Airplane Company in Cleveland and couldn’t. I was almost broke. I decided to return to the rubber factories and go back to school the next fall. I got a job with the Goodyear Company, in the factory.
But I couldn’t take it any more. I quit the job in two months and took my one bag and my eighty dollars and went to Columbus, O., where there was a reserve flying field. I flew a couple of weeks there, sleeping in a deserted clubhouse and eating at the gas station across the street. I was earning no money, of course, the ship being available to me for practice only. So I applied for a two weeks’ tour of active duty at Wright Field and got it. I was paid for that. While there I applied for a six months’ tour of active duty at Selfridge Field, and also got that. I was paid an officer’s (second lieutenant) salary on this duty.