This letter, one of hundreds of documents used in River of January, marks Chum’s first discharge from the Navy in 1933. This letter speaks highly of the young man who five months later would prevail in the “Darkness Derby,” continental air race.
Gail Chumbley is the author of the memoir, River of January. Available on Amazon and Kindle.
Thursday, May 12th River of January meets the Boise Public Library.
Join Gail for a lively, multimedia look at the archive that became the memoir,
The program begins at 7pm in the third floor’s Marion Bingham Room.
“This history could be lost” had she not known the story. Janet Juroch~The Idaho World
My secret weapon.
Gail Chumbley is the author of River of January, a memoir. Also available on Kindle
Happy 134th Birthday to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who, rather than exploit uncertainty in a time of crisis, reassured Depression-era Americans.
Read River of January by Gail Chumbley, a memoir. Also on Kindle
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Order River of January, a historical memoir as a perfect present, today.
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So it’s only four minutes of fame. I’ll take it.
GC
Howard Hughes
“Night is a great time to fly—very peaceful. And things here are pretty quiet. Yeah, you got yourself a pilot.”
Refueling in Raleigh and again in Savannah, the young man managed to land the new model at the West Palm airstrip on time, taxiing to the numbered hangar about 7:30 AM the next morning.
“Who are you?” asked the tall, thin, dark-haired client. “Where’d that plane come from? You couldn’t be here all the way from New York?!”
Too groggy to argue Chum replied, “Howard Ailor sent me down with your plane. Flew here overnight.”
“Not possible” the client insisted. “That’s not the plane I ordered. This one has to be used.”
“Sir, I was asked to fly this Waco down from Roosevelt Field. It’s new, not used, and it’s yours.”
“I’m calling my head mechanic over—he’ll know if it’s new or not,” the tall man challenged. “What’s your name young man?”
“Chumbley, sir. Mont Chumbley.”
“You must be one hell of a pilot, Chumbley, if you’re not trying to put one over on me. I’ve never known any flyer that could have made that trip from New York. My name’s Hughes. Howard Hughes, but I guess you knew that. I just don’t believe you got here overnight. What time did you leave last night?”
“About ten, sir. Only stopped to refuel and eat. Can I get a lift to the train station? I need to get back to New York,” the sleepy pilot requested.
As though he wasn’t listening Hughes replied, “I don’t believe this. Ailor is pulling something here. It’s impossible that you flew here that fast.”
“Sir—Mr. Hughes, I don’t mean to be rude, but I have a business to run at Roosevelt Field. I need to get home. I’m not making any money here. Your issue is with Mr. Ailor. I delivered the plane, and now I need a lift to the train station.”
Hughes began walking toward his hangar as if Chum hadn’t spoken. He heard Hughes shout, “Get Rusty out here to look this Waco over, and get Ailor on the phone in New York.”
For the next two days Hughes and Ailor wrangled back and forth, via telephone, between Florida and New York. Chum impatiently hung around the hangar waiting for some kind of resolution.
“This engine’s used. I won’t buy the plane,” Hughes finally informed the young pilot. “But Chumbley, you sure know your way around a propeller. I’m going to keep you instead.”
Gail Chumbley is the author of River of January
“Night Flight,” an MGM drama premiered October 6, 1933 at New York’s Capitol Theater.
Star Helen Hayes presented Chum his hard-won first place trophy as a part of the evening’s program.
Read River of January.
Buy River of January by Gail Chumbley, also available on Amazon.
The room was hot, and humid, but the old man would not turn on the air. He said that it cost too much money. The fact that this was Miami and July made no difference,that ancient swamp cooler remained silent in the living room window. To emphasize his granite determination to deny Florida Power and Light an extra penny, Chum dressed each morning in long pants, a belt, and a long sleeve shirt, cuffs buttoned. Mont Chumbley did not project the South Beach image favored by the city’s Chamber of Commerce.
However his strict rules of economy were cast aside the summer I flew down to record his story. And I do mean record, as in tape recorded interviews which lasted, in all, five days. And when I needed quiet the most (for quality purposes,) he decided to switch on that neglected, thundering swamp cooler, providing a Phil Specter-esque ‘wall of sound’ which muffled his fascinating story.
We were both nervous. I hadn’t been married to his son long, and my husband hadn’t come along on this trip. It was just the two of us: new father-in-law talking with new daughter-in-law. But I couldn’t let the awkwardness get in the way, I had traveled three time zones to get the story, and we had to soldier on despite our mutual jitters.
I hit record on the tape player, and immediately he began anxiously whacking a nearby phone book with a pencil. We now had a beat to the swamp cooler’s roar. And he did that for my comfort. How courteous.
I tried to play back the sessions right away to transcribe the contents. It’s safe to say that deciphering his voice from the background clatter grew to be a problem. Imagine the musical “Stomp,” with people trying to converse over crashing trashcan lids.
After a couple of days of this fidgeting he settled down, and to be completely honest, I did too. Chum even forgot to turn on the air once or twice. And his story in aviation began to unfold, carrying us away from noisy appliances; to days before there were such things as air conditioners–to the skies of another era.
Wow.
One story that made it into the book tells of his hair raising landing on the infield of a Maryland horse track. Later I had to hit the replay button a half dozen times to get the name right, listening hard to his phonetic pronunciation, buried beneath screeching layers of white noise. Shaped by his Virginia drawl, I deciphered, Har-Day-Graw.
I typed HardayGraw into a search engine. “Do you mean Havre de Grace?” quickly popped up . Hmm. Well, I guess I do. Maybe.
Lo and behold, Havre de Grace was a horse racing track between Washington DC and Philadelphia, tucked into the Maryland countryside. The web site indicated that this track evolved as a joint venture, owned partly by the town of the same name, and partly by the mob.
Partly by the Mob? Are you serious? And everybody knew? I had to look a little deeper.
Apparently in an agreement with the Governor of Maryland, and a former congressman, in a partnership with mobster, Arnold Rothstein, Havre de Grace came to life. And this was no small time nag fest, either. Among the thoroughbreds who graced, Havre de Grace were legends, Man ‘o War, his son, War Admiral, and the indomitable, Seabiscuit, You can’t make this stuff up.
That week in hot, sticky Miami has grown into one of the most pivotal of my life. I felt like Wendy clasping Peter’s hand for her flight to Neverland. But in my case Chum piloted the yoke to “Yesteryearland.”
This Havre de Grace anecdote, with Arnold Rothstein, and a hair raising unauthorized landing from the sky, merged with many, many other episodic rivulets that flowed into this fascinating river of narrative. This “River of January.”
Gail Chumbley is the author of the memoir, River of January
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Gail Chumbley 