Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 8, Number 18, DeMotte, Jasper County, 31 March 1938 — WHO’S NEWS THIS WEEK [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WHO’S NEWS THIS WEEK

By LEMUEL F. PARTON

VEW YORK.—Among his companions in barnstorming, Glenn L. Martin was known as “The Dude,” although his carefully tai-

lored flying suits were always black, , including their elaborate braid trimmings.

His somewhat mortuary get-up and behavior gave an impression of great conservatism, and it is not surprising that he got backing from the bankers when other aviators failed. A few months ago, he said his Glenn L. Martin company, of Baltimore, making planes, had a backlog of $15,500,000. He told the house naval affairs committee there should be a 100 per cent increase in air armaments, that foreign nations are spending ten times as much as the United States. He would build a 250,000-pound bomber, carrying 30 men and a 4.000pound bomb load 11,000 miles. In 1912, this writer saw him put an inflated inner tube around his neck, strap a compass on his leg and take off to sea, at Avalon bay, Los Angeles, in a flying laundry w’agon on w’hich he had rigged a single wooden pontoon. He was bound for Catalina island, 20 miles away. It looked like suicide. He not only made it, but picked up again at Catalina and finished

the round trip, blanking Bleriot, whose flight over the British channel was a one-way

excursion. He had made the plane in an abandoned church. The flight got him world attention. Then he staged a plane coyote hunt, dropped a ball into a catcher’s mitt and a bouquet into the arms of a beauty contest queen. This air extravaganza did not last long. In 1913, he built and sold two model TT war planes to the army, and has been build* ing fighting craft ever since, with the exception of trans-Pa-cific Clippers. He grew up in Mackburg, lowa, built a pusher plane in his backyard and flew it in 1908. He is fifty-two. • • •. A WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN, . ’ ’ in his seersucker suit and his rumpled hat, frequently looked as if he had been sleeping under a

bridge, especially in the midst of a hard campaign. His son, William Jennings Bryan,

Jr., is fussy about his dress, severely and fastidiously groomed, with a jaunty little moustache and a nice collection of malacca sticks, sports clothes, and varied haberdashery. He is in the news now as he becomes collector of customs at the port of Los Angeles, his first recognition by the California Democracy, in whose vineyard he' has labored for years. When his father laid down his staff and scrip at Dayton, Tenn., he picked from the legacy only two things—free silver and antievolution. He is quite unmoved by oratory, speaking with calm, I legalistic precision, with no gift 'for the resounding or oracular. He has made spirited forays against this or that, notably Upton

Sinclair's “Epic” heresy of 1934, but with no such impassioned fervor as that which in-

spired his father. But, when occasion offers, he puts in a word for silver, or against evolution. After the Dayton trial and his father’s death, he made a knightly vow that his lance always should be leveled against this ignoble theory of man s origin. But nobody seems to be bringing that up now. The argument is shifting to where man is going. He attended the University of Nebraska three years, studied law at Georgetown university, went to Arizona on account of his wife’s health, and practiced first in Arizona and then in Los Angeles. He is fifty years old. C Consolidated News Features. WNU Service.

As arfin Had Get-Up of Mortician

Round Trip Sea Flight It Success

Bryan, Jr., Fastidious About Dress

Will Speak Good Word for Silver