Columbus, Ohio, then by air to Oklahoma, by train to New Mexico, and by air again to Burbank, California, all in forty-eight hours. The passenger terminals were âbuilt right alongside the railroads. Apparently those in authority never thought passengers would ever be flown at night because these facilities were of permanent construction.â In New York, in early July 1929, Earhart christened the inaugural plane
The City of New York
while the movie star Mary Pickford, across the continent, christened the plane flying in the other direction
The City of Los Angeles
. They still did not dare fly passengers over mountains or at night. Landing-field lights did not exist. Innumerable technical challenges needed to be met, and Gene Vidal was in St. Louis to help meet them. Nina was with him, eager to participate in the glamour and excitement. Earhart and Charles Lindbergh, who also worked for TAT, were either close by or crossing the continent, always in touch with St.Louis. As all this swirled around him, what Little Gene remembered most vividly was going to his first movie. Talking pictures were a half step ahead of commercial aviation. As he toddled down the aisle with his parents, he heard an actress on the screen asking a question of another character in the movie. Little Gene himself, â in a very loud voice ,â answered.
There were two other soundtracks playing, those of his fatherâs career and his parentsâ marriage. Both, at first, were distantly in the background. There were no questions for him to answer yet, no dialogue in which to participate. He had already begun to sense, and soon to be aware, that his father was a busy actor in the world of airplanes. It meant little more, though, than that Big Gene was an important man, away much of the time, which Little Gene accepted as a given. Actually, it provided opportunities that few children had. Later that year he himself flew the transcontinental TAT rail-air route, the first child ever to fly cross-country, probably because Gene thought it a great publicity idea to demonstrate that commercial aviation was safe and comfortable even for children. Actually, by modern standards it was neither, no matter how deluxe the airline tried to make the passenger accommodations. The three-year-old boy remembered â the lurid flames from the exhaust through the window.â As the plane descended into Los Angeles, one of his eardrums burst and bled.
TAT was soon in financial trouble, partly because of the difficulty of obtaining government mail contracts in a corrupt political environment, partly because, a few months after Little Geneâs visit to St. Louis, the stock market crashed. With losses of over $3 million due to high start-up costs and few passengers, TAT merged with Maddux Airlines. After additional mergers it became TWA. At Christmas 1929 the St. Louis executives, including Gene Vidal, were called to New York headquarters. All were fired. Angry at TAT for publicizing his release in order to placate disappointed stockholders, Gene soon helped convince two wealthy Philadelphia businessmen, the brothers Nicholas and Charles Townshend Ludington, to create a new airline that would fly every hour between Washington, Philadelphia, and New York, an early version of air-shuttle service. It would compete with Eastern Air Transport, a subsidiary of TATâs owners. Success would be a form of revenge. With his friend, the well-known aviator Paul Collins, Gene immediately became a vice president, to be joined the next year by Earhart, the three of them soon to be a pioneering triumvirate in setting uproutes throughout the Northeast. They themselves had little or no money to invest. But they had expertise, brains, and vision.
Whether or not the boy heard his parentsâ raised voices behind their bedroom door, he soon became aware of differences not only in their personalities but in their fighting modes. Apparently they fought from the beginning.
The City of New York
while the movie star Mary Pickford, across the continent, christened the plane flying in the other direction
The City of Los Angeles
. They still did not dare fly passengers over mountains or at night. Landing-field lights did not exist. Innumerable technical challenges needed to be met, and Gene Vidal was in St. Louis to help meet them. Nina was with him, eager to participate in the glamour and excitement. Earhart and Charles Lindbergh, who also worked for TAT, were either close by or crossing the continent, always in touch with St.Louis. As all this swirled around him, what Little Gene remembered most vividly was going to his first movie. Talking pictures were a half step ahead of commercial aviation. As he toddled down the aisle with his parents, he heard an actress on the screen asking a question of another character in the movie. Little Gene himself, â in a very loud voice ,â answered.
There were two other soundtracks playing, those of his fatherâs career and his parentsâ marriage. Both, at first, were distantly in the background. There were no questions for him to answer yet, no dialogue in which to participate. He had already begun to sense, and soon to be aware, that his father was a busy actor in the world of airplanes. It meant little more, though, than that Big Gene was an important man, away much of the time, which Little Gene accepted as a given. Actually, it provided opportunities that few children had. Later that year he himself flew the transcontinental TAT rail-air route, the first child ever to fly cross-country, probably because Gene thought it a great publicity idea to demonstrate that commercial aviation was safe and comfortable even for children. Actually, by modern standards it was neither, no matter how deluxe the airline tried to make the passenger accommodations. The three-year-old boy remembered â the lurid flames from the exhaust through the window.â As the plane descended into Los Angeles, one of his eardrums burst and bled.
TAT was soon in financial trouble, partly because of the difficulty of obtaining government mail contracts in a corrupt political environment, partly because, a few months after Little Geneâs visit to St. Louis, the stock market crashed. With losses of over $3 million due to high start-up costs and few passengers, TAT merged with Maddux Airlines. After additional mergers it became TWA. At Christmas 1929 the St. Louis executives, including Gene Vidal, were called to New York headquarters. All were fired. Angry at TAT for publicizing his release in order to placate disappointed stockholders, Gene soon helped convince two wealthy Philadelphia businessmen, the brothers Nicholas and Charles Townshend Ludington, to create a new airline that would fly every hour between Washington, Philadelphia, and New York, an early version of air-shuttle service. It would compete with Eastern Air Transport, a subsidiary of TATâs owners. Success would be a form of revenge. With his friend, the well-known aviator Paul Collins, Gene immediately became a vice president, to be joined the next year by Earhart, the three of them soon to be a pioneering triumvirate in setting uproutes throughout the Northeast. They themselves had little or no money to invest. But they had expertise, brains, and vision.
Whether or not the boy heard his parentsâ raised voices behind their bedroom door, he soon became aware of differences not only in their personalities but in their fighting modes. Apparently they fought from the beginning.
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