Eddie Rickenbacker
Edward Vernon Rickenbacker (October 8, 1890 – July 23, 1973) was an American fighter ace in World War I and a Medal of Honor recipient. With 26 aerial victories, he was the United States’ most successful fighter ace in the war and is considered to have received the most awards for valor by an American during the war.[1] He was also a race car driver and automotive designer, a government consultant in military matters and a pioneer in air transportation, particularly as the long-time head of Eastern Air Lines.
Edward Rickenbacker was born at 1334 East Livingston Avenue in Columbus, Ohio, the third child to Swiss immigrants. His father, Wilhelm Rickenbacher, aspired to own his own house-building business, but remained stuck in wage labor for breweries and street-paving crews. His mother Lizzie, née Liesl Basler, took in laundry to supplement the family income. With a loan from Lizzie’s parents, the couple was able to purchase a small home on Livingston Avenue, at the edge of the city limits, two miles southeast of downtown. Edd, as he was called,[2] was three years old.
Growing up in the little house, Edd had the “privilege” of “working long hours before and after school.”[3] He helped in the garden (potatoes, cabbages, and turnips) and with the animals (chickens, goats, and pigs). He brought in money by delivering papers, setting up pins at the bowling alley, and selling scavenged goods to the junk man. He gave most of his nickels to his mother, but spent some on himself, including on Bull Durham tobacco, a habit he picked up from his big brother Bill. Edd was “sort of the leader” of the local Horsehead Gang, with whom he smoked, played hooky, and, on at least one occasion, broke streetlamps up and down Miller Avenue.[4] Later in life, Rickenbacker called himself the “black sheep” of the family,[5]
Edd was a hard worker and a streetwise tough, but he had a sensitive and artistic side, too. He enjoyed painting watercolors of “flowers and scenery and animals.”[6] Art was a passion he hoped to pursue as a career. He and his Horsehead Gang buddies constructed “pushcarts” in a kind of precursor to the Soapbox Derby. About the time of the Wright brothers first heavier-than-air flight, Edd famously tried to “fly” a bicycle outfitted with an umbrella off his friend’s barn roof. Another time, he tried to design a perpetual motion machine. His father berated him for wasting his time on an invention that had no purpose.[7]
Rickenbacker was accident-prone. In his autobiography, he recounted numerous scrapes he had in his early years. Even before entering school, he toddled into an oncoming horse-drawn streetcar and fell twelve feet into an open cistern. Early in his school career, he ran back into his burning school building to retrieve his winter coat, and nearly paid for it with his life.
