The flight of L’Oiseau Blanc

Everyone remembers Charles Lindbergh and his flight from the US to Paris in 1927, in pursuit of history as well as a $25,000 prize. Not so well remembered, however, are Charles Nungesser and Francois Coli, two French aviators who disappeared just 12 days before Lindbergh’s flight, as they tried to make the same Atlantic crossing in reverse, from Paris to New York.

Some believe their big Lavasseur biplane, the L’Oiseau Blanc, or White Bird, crashed in Maine’s Washington County after they ran out of fuel in a heavy fog.

TIGHAR, a research group that specializes in historic aircraft recovery, came to Maine in April of 1987 to search the dense woods for L’Oiseau Blanc. I took part in that search and wrote about it.

By ARTHUR FREDERICK

MACHIAS, Maine (UPI) – If a certain theory is correct, the big white biplane was nearly out of fuel when it flew low over the Atlantic and skimmed over the eastern coast of Maine in chilly, foggy weather on May 9, 1927.

According to the hypothesis, the French pilot flew inland and peered down through the fog, looking for a place to land. He finally sighted a small lake and began to descend in a slow circle.

Perhaps the pilot did not see a ridge in front until it was too late, or perhaps the big Lavasseur biplane simply ran out of fuel.

Whatever, a fisherman casting for pickerel on Round Lake heard an engine, a ripping sound, a crash, and then, once again, silence.

No one knows for sure, but the fisherman, Anson Berry, may have heard the tragic end of an historic attempt to link France with New York by two of the world’s most famous fliers of the day, pilot Charles Nungesser and navigator Francois Coli.

Coli and Nungesser were trying for the prize that lured Charles Lindbergh to attempt the same flight from west to east, just 12 days after the French plane is believed to have crashed.

Now, 60 years later, searchers are getting ready to head into the dense Maine woods, about 50 miles east of Bangor, in hopes of untangling the mystery once and for all.

white bird airplaneRichard Gillespie, an aviation historian who is heading the search for the White Bird, said the chances of finding the plane’s wreckage are fairly good if his theory about the end of the flight proves true. Previous searches have narrowed the area to be covered, he said, and some sophisticated equipment will be used for the first time, which may make it possible to locate the plane from the air.

Gillespie’s group, The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or TIGHAR, plans to send a crew to Maine today to lay down search grids. On Saturday, ground crews will begin searching the woods for the remains of the plane.

“On the 30th of April, an Aerospatiale helicopter will arrive, equipped with a special forward-looking infrared turret installed for this search,” Gillespie said. “The aircraft has every remote sending device they know of, and we will use it for aerial searching April 30 through May 2.”

nungesser et coli 2

Nungesser and Coli

The search will continue through the weekend of May 9-10, and Gillespie hopes that will be enough time to find the wreckage.

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Henry Kissinger in the nude

When I worked for UPI in Boston in the early 1970s, I found the Harvard Lampoon, across the Charles River in Cambridge’s Harvard Square, to be a great source of funny stories. We developed enough of a relationship that they would call me when they were planning something. In this case, they decided to do a parody of Cosmopolitan Magazine, which had recently published a nude centerfold picture of actor Burt Reynolds. In this case, however, the featured what would now be called a “photoshopped” version of a nude Henry Kissinger. Quite a few newspapers across the country ran this story.

By ARTHUR FREDERICK

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (UPI) — The Cosmopolitan Man’s pearly teeth glitter above a freckled pot belly. Spindly, hairy legs reach demurely for the right side of the centerfold. Is that really Henry Kissinger, presidential adviser supreme?

One member of the Harvard Lampoon staff says it is, because Kissinger “was the only person to call us up and volunteer for the centerfold.”

Somebody else says it’s only Kissinger’s face “on the body of a cab driver we met near Central Park.”

kissingerThe Harvard Lampoon has struck again, after a three-year silence. Monday, the Lampoon released advanced copies of its latest parody – Cosmopolitan magazine, which recently published a centerfold picture of actor Burt Reynolds.

For the past 98 years, the Lampoon has been poking fun at various publications, printing absurdly funny articles and pictures in an exaggeration of the style and format the publications use. The last parody was of TIME magazine in 1969.

In the present issue, the centerfold subject brandishes a cigar in the right hand, covers his privates with the left arm, and leans back, grinning, on the skin of a giant panda.

“The American public wanted Henry Kissinger,” said James Downey, a Lampoonster. “We were thinking along the lines of Ralph Nader.”

The cover promised such articles as “10 Ways to Decorate Your Uterine Wall,” “How to Tell if your Man is Dead,” and “For a Good Time Call Lola, 555-5493.” (That turned out to be a non-working number.)

Lampoon President Eric Rayman said the choices of Kissinger and Cosmopolitan were “ideas whose time had come.” President Nixon had been in the running, he said.

The parody calls Kissinger a “bewitching Berliner” who “cuts a dashing political figure that would make Tallyrand turn in his codpiece.”

The White House said it makes no comment on such matters. One source said, however, “Henry doesn’t smoke cigars.”

The ugly side of business reporting

Not sure whether to categorize this story, that I did for the Tampa Bay Business Journal in 1997, as business journalism or investigatory journalism. Maybe a little of both. I don’t recall very much about it, but I think what happened was this: The Business Journal did an annual Book of Lists, categorizing different businesses according to size. Fort example, ad agencies would be listed on the Ad Agency List page according to their size. I believe this business wanted to be listed in the Book of Lists, and submitted an application. But the numbers in the application resulted in the paper taking a closer look at the business, and this story resulted.

By Arthur Frederick
Staff Writer

A self-described sports promoter who served a federal prison sentence for tax fraud in Hawaii has established a number of businesses in Lakeland in ways that echo his days in the Aloha State.

Elijah Jackson Jr., a one-time Lakeland High School basketball star, was convicted in the late 1980s for trying to gain illicit refunds from the IRS.

He also illegally tried to sell several million dollars’ worth of stock in businesses he owned, an act that elicited fines and two cease-and-desist orders — including one issued this spring — from Hawaii’s Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs.

Jackson closed his Hawaii business in 1995, and now operates several Lakeland-based businesses under the name JBS Inc. The businesses include JBS Management Corp., which allegedly provides everything from sports promotions to an escort service; and JBS-Jackson Real Estate Investment Trust, which claims to provide real estate investor services and property management services.

Efforts to reach Jackson were unsuccessful. Calls to his office were picked up by an answering machine.

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White bird

whitebird 3

This picture is kind of interesting to me because it happened on a day when I had left my camera at home. This guy came and landed on a railing about a foot or two from my table when I was having lunch on a deck at the Bayport Inn, about 50 miles north of my home. I shot the picture with my old Iphone 4, the only thing I had with me. The picture came out pretty good for two reasons — he let me get real close to him (I guess he was used to begging for food) , and the sun was really bright and lit him up nicely.

Tampa Bay’s seawall master

Back in the late 1990s, I worked as a writer for the Tampa Bay Business Journal, covering the business of sports, commercial real estate and the local advertising and marketing business. It was a good place to work and I enjoyed my time there. I don’t really remember doing this story, but I do dimly remember that I used to drive by this place of business on my way to and from work.

By ARTHUR FREDERICK
Staff Writer

Bill McNamara wasn’t thinking much about docks and seawalls when he was installing chain link fences around schools and prisons in Philadelphia. But when he moved to the Bay Area in the early 1970s, he found there wasn’t much of a market for chain link fences here.

“There was no money in it, no volume, and it was too competitive,” McNamara recalled of his Florida chain link fence prospects. “It got old.”

He needed something else to do, but he didn’t know what. To fill in the time, he started doing some work for a Clearwater-based company that installed boat lifts.

“I just started putting in boat lifts,” said McNamara, whose McNamara & Son is now the biggest dock builder in the Bay Area. “We made one connection after another, and things started to grow for us, just like things were starting to grow for Tampa. I had to hire help, and soon we were doing everything. Before long, we were all the way at the top. We are bigger than anyone as far as residential stuff is concerned.”

“We” is really McNamara, his 36-year-old son Kevin, and a group of employees and subcontractors that right now stands at around 15 people. The 60-year-old McNamara usually stays close to the company’s offices on West Hillsborough Avenue. The younger McNamara can usually be found on one of the company’s barges, placing seawall material or overseeing dock construction.

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Island officials deal with junk cars that litter scenic island

While we’re on the subject of islands off the Maine coast, this was a story I wrote in 1989 after seeing a small news story in the Bangor Daily News. I’m sure that Vinalhaven and the other Maine islands that are big enough to have roads and ferry services have more serious problems to worry about. But then, what DO you do with junk cars on an island?

By ARTHUR FREDERICK

VINALHAVEN, Maine (UPI) – Vinalhaven Island’s tiny network of roads has spawned a chronic and difficult waste disposal problem – hundreds of junk cars that rot in back yards and clog illegal junkyards around the island.

Last fall, town officials spread out around the island and conducted a nose count of inoperable automobiles. They found 438 of them, one for every three island residents. The year before, the town rounded up and got rid of another 200 junked autos.

On the mainland, junk cars can simply be hauled off to wrecking yards. Yard operators will often tow the old cars away for free, and may even pay a little if the junker isn’t too old.

But on the islands that dot the Gulf of Maine, getting rid of the junkers is anything but a simple matter.

“Everything is more expensive on the island because of the transportation problem,” said George Putz, a writer and researcher who works for the Island Institute, a mainland-based organization that provides services to the offshore islands.

vinalhaven-carver-harborVinalhaven’s junk car problem is not unique among the offshore islands. But it may be somewhat more serious because Vinalhaven is big for a coastal island, having more than 1,000 year-round residents. It also has a paved main road and a total road network that covers 45 miles, and the island also is served by a ferry that can carry as many as 17 cars at a time.

When a resident’s car dies, it isn’t usually pushed to the ferry for a final ride to the mainland. More often than not, the old car is simply pushed aside, and another car is purchased to take its place.

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Maine schoolhouse one of a kind

There are more than 3,000 islands off the coast of Maine, and many great stories originate on them. The islands are rich in history and culture, and many island families can trace their roots back many generations. This story, written in 1990, was about the only schoolhouse on Isle au Haut, and the fact that enrollment had dwindled over the years to just a single student.

By ARTHUR FREDERICK

ISLE AU HAUT, Maine (UPI) — The green-and-white schoolhouse on this rugged offshore island functioned this year as it has for a century, but with one major difference: For most of the year, the morning bell summoned only a single student to class.

Every morning, Meredith Mattingly , 10, the son of a U.S. Parks Service ranger, walked down to the shore just outside the only village on the island to take his seat in the 100-year-old school’s only classroom. The fifth-grader had the undivided attention of his teacher, Tanice Jason.

“I believe in individualized instruction, and that happens naturally in a one-room schoolhouse,” she said.

isle au haut school picThe old wooden schoolhouse has the smallest enrollment of any school in the state. And although most of Isle au Haut’s 30 year-round residents scratch out meager incomes from the sea, the school easily has the highest per-pupil cost in the state at $44,000.

The school can offer instruction to children from kindergarten through the eighth grade. Normally, it serves between five and 10 students, and has served as may as 30. But the populations of both the school and the island have dwindled with the decline of fishing stocks off the Maine coast.

In spite of the decreasing numbers, however, the island residents have almost unanimously supported the local schoolhouse, knowing that closing the school would force even more families to leave Isle au Haut and move to the mainland.

At the end of winter, Meredith was joined by another student, fourth grader Jason Barter, who returned from the mainland with his father, a lobsterman.

Judith Lucarelli, the superintendent of schools in the district that includes Isle au Haut, said she favored keeping the island school operating, even though it is expensive.

Lucarelli said the quality of education at the old school is excellent — not simply because of the individualized instruction, but also because the school is equipped with everything from a MacIntosh computer to a well-stocked library.

Jason said this year will be her last at the Isle au Haut school, even though she enjoys the time she has spent with her handful of students.

Lucarelli said she has already decided on Jason’s replacement, who will also help ease Isle au Haut’s enrollment problems; the new teacher has two children of her own, and they will attend the school next year.

(NOTE: I checked, and the Isle au Haut school is still operating. This year (2015), it has four students, two in the fifth grade and two more in the sixth.) 

William Law named SPC’s new president

A press release written and distributed for St. Petersburg College in 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:

Bill Frederick
St. Petersburg College
727-341-3076
Frederick.bill@spcollege.edu

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (April 13, 2010) — William D. Law Jr., president of Tallahassee Community College for the past eight years, was selected today as the new president of St. Petersburg College. He replaces Carl M. Kuttler Jr., SPC’s longtime president who retired at the end of 2009.

The vote by the college’s five-member Board of Trustees was unanimous. Law was selected from a slate of four finalists, a list that had been culled from an initial field of 25 candidates.

“This was a difficult decision, as all four finalists brought interesting credentials and visions to the process, and any one of the four could have led SPC with distinction,” said Terrence E. Brett, the board’s chairman. “William Law possesses the unique set of leadership qualifications and values that we were looking for.”

Law noted in his application that he has led three different community colleges. Before assuming the presidency at Tallahassee, he was president of Montgomery College in Texas, an institution he helped found. Before that, he was president of Lincoln Land Community College in Illinois.

In the 1980s, he was vice president of institutional and program planning at what was then St. Petersburg Junior College.

“I have been the president of three different community colleges, each one increasingly more complex and sophisticated,” Law said in his application for the SPC presidency. “The opportunity to advance to the ‘top rung’ on the professional ladder at an institution as complex and multi-dimensional as SPC is exciting and enticing.”

Kuttler announced in mid-2009 that he planned to retire, but he initially declined to set a date for his departure, and indicated that he might remain as president for up to two years to give the college plenty of time to find his replacement.

As the year neared its end, however, Kuttler said he had decided to leave much earlier than that, finally announcing that his last day on the job would be Dec. 31.

The Board of Trustees quickly began a search process. It named a 13-member search committee, made up of community leaders as well as members of the college community, to help with the selection process.

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