Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 20 February 1949 — Page 25

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A picture report of Indiana's Civil Air Patrol by Bob Wallace ang Bill Oates, Times Staf! photographers

SOME 700 strong, the Marion County unit of the Civil Air Patrol provides civilians in uniform to meet local disasters and to fly in supplies to stricken areas. As a part of 12 groups in the state the CAP unit, No. 527, meets two hours each Thursday night for classes in navigation, meterology, radio and other allied aeronautical subjects. Senior cadets with pilot licenses

fly a minimum of 150 hours each month. Although the local unit has not been called out for emer, gencies recently, the members point with pride to the CAP work during the blizzard in western Plains states. . »

~ » - ~ - ANOTHER duty of the CAP is location of lost aircraft. During the first six months of 1948, the 48 wings to the national organization found 23 missing planes in 21 states. , The local unit serves as a liaison branch to the 10th Air Force based at Ft. Harrison. The US Air Force furnishes the unit three IL-4 planes which operate from Shoen Field. All flying weather is utilized by the enthusiastic pilots—who some: JEEUEERY times fly: when no one else will, REEL ” ” . » ~ . Although no instruction is given on “CAP planes, cadet and senior CAP members receive thoroygh ground. training at the headquarters at 16th St. and Park Ave, C Now in its eighth year the Civil Air Patrol was organized by the Office of Civilian Defense six days before Pearl Harbor. Col. Frank Lane is commander of the local group }

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“Missing Face on Circle

By VICTOR PETERSON

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IT WAS COLD-—the. damp, penetrating cold of a building long unheated in the dead of winter and long deserted and dark. Outside the building there was life, the bustle of 20th Century moderns who paid little heed to this Victorian structure of the Gay Nineties catering to plush carriage trade. This was the once famous English Hotel, home of the English Opera House. A few short decades ago it had been thé meeting place of the great in politics and the theater. Today it is dead, marked for burial by a wrecking crew, On its site will rise a modern structure for J. C. Penney Co. Sixty-seven years ago William H. English (its builder) was a volcano of energy. Work on the European-styled structure was being rushed. Mr. English, with his running mate, Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, had been defeated in the 1880 election for the American presidency. He threw his energies into the finest type building. —--—Bailt in two sections, the curved-front, fourstory hostelry wiped ouf Buch landmarks as the Second Presbyterian Church, once ‘under the pastorate of the famous Henry Ward Beecher; the red brick birthplace of Fanny Vandergrift, who later became Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson; the Plymouth Congregational Church. ~ ~ ~ WILLIAM E. ENGLISH, son of the hotel owner,. was one of the most ambitious of the stage door Johnnies at the opera-house. Later he became the Captain, a title he brought back with his wounds from the Spanish-American War, Capt. English took over the hotel on the death of his father in 1896. .8hortly after his marriage at 47. he went off to war leaving his beautiful 24-year-old bride behind. Capt. and Mrs. English and daughter Rosa lind lived a busy life in the Hoosier capital city.

Somewhere in this pattern of life, however, was woven a thread of sorrow. The architectural curiosity on the Circle attracted Hoosiers and world travelers alike. Particularly novel were the 31 faces carved in stone just above the second story windows, Today there are only 30 faces. The one removed was 16th from the left. Apparently it was the face of Capt. English’s wife, '

» » IN THE Indiana State Library are several volumes of press clippings, purportedly the private collection of Capt. English. In every instance where there is reference to Mrs, English or her maiden name, it has been scratched out as though by a penknife, From these mutilated passages, however, it is possible to conclude that Mrs. English’s face once was placed where the vacant spot is today,

-Capt. English died in 1926. The daughter died ...

two years earlier. Two years after the death of the Captain, Mrs. English remarried. Early in 1928 she offered a $1000 award to the Indiana newspaperman who did the most to clear the political atmosphere of the state. This was the year The Indianapolis Times received the coveted Fulitzer prize for ‘exposing the Klu Klux Klan in Hoosferland. On the staff was a Frank J. Prince,

” » vy MR. PRINCE won the "English Award” and Mts. English. They were married in the spring Following extended tours, broken by short sojourns in the lavish quarters of the English Hotel, the couple went to California. There, in 1832, Mrs, Helén Orr English Prince died - Then the inexorablp terms of Capt. English’s will went into effect. The world-famous property became bound by legal restrictions which only now haveeheen loosened to make way for progressive Indianapolis,

catacombs, corridors wind in the curved building