The Jack Frye blog is doing well
covering many countries now, and I want to thank all of you who are reading
along and for sharing the web address with others. We are continuing to bring
you stories about our favorite airline president with historical facts and figures as well as other accountings that may not have been
previously known.
Have a look at the global map
below that currently represents the blog coverage. Darker color means more
traffic. While reviewing the traffic sources and figures it’s interesting to
note Brazil is a large factor in our viewership. Let me come back to this. Russia
has much traffic but I’m not all that confident it is for being interested in
Jack Frye. I’m sorry, I cannot trust
the Russian arena for authentic searching to learn about Jack. Australia, New
Zealand and surrounding islands have decent coverage but we would welcome some
improvement. The UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the Mediterranean seem
to be on board with good numbers. And the US for obvious reasons. So, looking at the map we seem to be covering all four corners of the globe, and that's good news.
Jack Frye blog audience,
5/2013
Back
to Brazil... My wife and I recently spent a full day at the Family Research
Library in West Los Angeles obtaining family genealogy information to add to
the family tree. So I decided to look into the Frye family a bit to see what I
could come up with that might add to what I already know. Low and Behold I
found Jack Frye’s 1947 Brazilian photo passport no. 31626 as shown below!
l almost fell of my
comfortable chair and raised the eyebrows of my genealogy attendant helper when
I let out a burst of laughter. After a few minutes of joyful noise of
actually finding a document of Jacks in West LA, I began to put some things
together. No doubt Jack flew all over the world and probably had passports for
many countries of which I hope to find as well. But this passport from Brazil
is quite interesting as it is dated March 19, 1947, no more than a month after
he resigned from TWA and all that rigmarole with Hughes and the board.
Brazil?
Why Brazil... Ah ha, this makes the connection with Jack’s later airplane
designs, the Safari and his working with the Helio Corporation to bring the
Courier and Stallion airplanes down to Tucson by developing new manufacturing
plants for the aforementioned under ‘The Frye Corporation’ which he had
already established in Fort Worth, Texas in 1954. This is well documented historically
leading up to his tragic car accident. I now see that all along, Jack Frye back
in the early 40’s or maybe 1938-39 was looking ahead to South America
for TWA expansion utilizing new routes and wanting to develop new aircraft that
would service that market in its jungle topography. Hence the Safari and
Courier STOL (short take-off & landing) aircraft. Talk about a visionary. Who
other than Jack Frye would have conceived this new territory? I am not aware of any other that would have had the vision for Brazil.
It’s really too bad Hughes
didn’t have the guts and vision like Jack to invest and develop new world
markets that would have propelled TWA as the leader then and even to today.
There was nothing in aviation Jack Frye wasn’t capable of succeeding with.
If Jack had been able to live
out a full life, I would venture to say he would have been the most prolific
all time aviation pioneer of them all, no question about it. By 1970 he would
have been only 65 years old, in the prime of his life propelling the Jet Age
even further, safer and more economically than we see today. Not to mention new
and innovative aircraft designs we don’t see in the air today. This is how
influential and for the better Jack Frye would have contributed had he lived another
15 years.
Just thought I would share
this new find about Jack Frye. The Brazilian passport that helped Jack see
beyond smaller men’s dreams and horizons of aviation progress.
Now, back to the Constellation
aircraft development and its launch into aviation history...
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