This blog is intended to discuss the life and career of Fred J Noonan. I've amassed some materials over the course of ten years and have decided to put these onto the blog for anyone interested. I was going to write a book but I'm too busy and dont want to wait until I retire! I enjoy talking about him and want to share what I have found with those interested and perhaps someone else will write the book he deserves.
There are some questions I am undecided on and hopefully the blog will attract some experts who can help me unravel these.
JF.
Fred J Noonan
Pan American Airways
Ye Little Wood, Coconut Grove.
Gail Patrick
6 comments:
A few months after Fred's disappearance, in November of 1937, his first wife Jo Sullivan Noonan wrote a letter to a Chicago newspaper asking if anyone knew where Fred was born. She said that she was furnishing details for a biography. That biography was never written. Perhaps somewhere in some attic lies a mass of details in the stillborn book, details which could shed so much light on this neglected navigator. He deserves a biography. His career alone, pre -Earhart was outstanding and would rank alongside that of any of the aviation heroes from that time through to modern day astronauts.
Jo died in a care home in Alabama. Although she went by the name Huston to protect her privacy she never relinquished her married name. She was known in the care home as Jo-ann Noonan. She never remarried after Fred divorced her in 1936 in Mexico. Of all the players in his story, and if I could be granted one interview with any of them, it is she. She stood by her husband as his fame grew. She waited by the radio for news that his flights had made it safely through to the landfalls that he had plotted. She waited at home while he discovered the delights of the exotice east. She endured the media hungry for any bit of gossip. She had no children to keep her company while he lived the exciting life of a stimulating profession.
In the end the marriage went the way of many of her aviation contemporaries and Fred eloped to Yuma where he married a beauty parlour operator from Oakland, Mary Beatrice Martinelli. They were married only three months before he disappeared.
Thank you for making your information available! Your first blog is so interesting! Looking forward to reading more about Fred.
Thanks for the post, Newera. The info I put out will not necessarily be in chronological order and will be sort of at my whim..ie some days I might feel like talking about his wife, contemporaries etc and somedays it might be navigation or general aviation. Eventually I'll get round to putting images on too.!
JF.
Forgotten Navigator.
To date there has only been one publication dealing specifically with Fred. This was written by Bowen Weisheit and titled "The Last Flight of Frederick J Noonan." It is an interesting attempt to reconstruct the navigation of the Lae-Howland leg. Only ten years ago barely anything was known about Fred Noonan. It is thanks mainly to Ric Gillespie's group, Tighar that I got started and followed up on their early work. Ten years ago if you looked up Fred Noonan in Encyclopdeia Britannica you would find very little, not even his year of birth. It is almost incredible that so little seemed to be known about him. But as I researched it became obvious why. His parents were both dead by the time he was 17. He had no children. He was a quiet man. The only writings that have come to light are a few navigational reports and some private letters. So it was with some delight that a short monograph written by the sister of an old acquaintance of Fred's, came to light. She called it Forgotten Navigator. Fred had a good friend in Miami, a young woman called Helen Day. Helen had two sisters and it was one of these sisters who wrote the monograph. In it she describes Fred as 'gallant'. He stops on his way home from work one day in his sports car and gives all three sisters a lift home to the leafy Coconut Grove, where he also lived with Josie his wife, as she was then called. The house is still there today in Irvington. A deep friendship with the young Helen, 20 years his junior developed. Some say this was more than platonic but I am undecided on this. He wrote a long letter to her towards the end of the fateful flight but it reads more like that of an uncle to a neice.It is a strange letter; part travelogue. I tend to think that it was part of a deal to capitalize on the Flight. Helen was a clever, popular girl who had many important contacts. For example, her friend was Janet Reno's mother. They helped push the plane out of the hangar and so were one of the last people to speak with him, on the mainland. Whatever the relationship, either business or lovers or both, it must have been special because he instructed her to write to him via a PO box number in Oakland. At this time he was married to his new wife so why the secrecy? What lends weight to the business deal idea is that he also writes a similar type of letter to the actor Gene Pallette of Robin Hood fame. He had also written to the movie actress, Gail Patrick whom he had met at a party in 1936. Patrick and Pallette were both starring in the same film.So he was networking with movie stars. He was seeing to it that the media would get his side of the story for it looks like he was banned from talking to the papers by Earhart's manager/husband George Palmer Putnam. Fred was penniless. He even had to ask his new wife for some money as the trip was costing him more than he bargained for. He had been fired from Pan American for drinking and most probably would have found it difficult, in the small aviation circles, to get hired.
Fred and Hollywood.
It is well known by now that Fred wrote a cryptic letter to Gene Pallette, the movie actor. What is less well known is that he was also writing to Pallette's co-star, Gail Patrick. (real name Margaret Lavelle Fitzpatrick). In fact she received one of the last letters ever written by him. Posted in Java it says something along the lines of "In so much as I started this thing, I will finish it. I am referring of course to my pestering you with first flight covers."(I'll post the content when I can retrieve it.). He met Gail at a party in 1936 in San Francisco.
Seems like Fred wrote mostly to women on the last flight. It may be tempting , given his reputation, to think the worst but I believe this is another instance of schmoozing the media as a way of capitalizing on the flight. The reason I think this is innocent is because his wife, Bea, stayed as a houseguest of Gail Patrick after his disappearance, in order to recover and also to avoid the media which were clamouring to learn anything about Fred Noonan. For example, his wife Jo had to change her name to avoid their attentions.
It could also be that Fred had made connections with Hollywood when he was still with PAA. Some of the Clipper Crew were consulted by Hollywood to help with the making of China Clipper which was aired in 1936. Fred must surely have been one of those. I believe that was his introduction to Hollywood. I also believe that he was approached when they learned that he was making the Flight to maybe either star in a movie of it(he had the looks and think of the connections GP had in that world..)or to at the very least be hired in a consultancy role. But this is only speculation on my part.
Jackie, are you still around?
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