Fame comes and goes with time
Just off Scottdale’s main street sits a small monument which most people, I dare say, pass without notice. The monument pays tribute to a pioneer of early aviation, native son James DeWitt Hill.
Old Orchard Beach, Maine, sparkled beneath a late summer sun. The Atlantic Ocean rolled in gentle swells, and in the gathered light of midday, three individuals lifted off the hard-packed sand in their single engine monoplane Old Glory.
The date was Sept. 6, 1927. The world had gone slightly mad over flight, and the men aboard Old Glory — two veteran pilots and a big-city tabloid journalist — were trying for one of the great prizes remaining after Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight to Paris four months earlier. They were headed to Rome, 4,000 air miles away.
At the controls was Hill, a lean, balding, shy 45-year-old, a pilot of only modest renown.
Seated next to Hill in the cockpit was Lloyd Bertaud, like Hill a former air-mail pilot. In the back passenger seat was editor Philip Payne, whose New York Daily Mirror, owned by the powerful William Randolph Hearst, was footing the bill for the flight.
Before taking off, the men waved to the large crowd that had come to bid them farewell. It all seemed so promising — the first non-stop flight to Rome, followed by the acclamation of a wildly adoring public. Their names would be stamped into history.
It is difficult, these many years later, to reclaim the excitement and the danger of those years when transoceanic flight was new and novel, and the men and women who took the risks were heroes on a scale that today is barely imaginable.
Even as rescue ships plowed their way toward the spot in the vast Atlantic where it was believed Old Glory came down, Lindbergh, 23 years old with matinee-idol looks and nicknamed “The Lone Eagle” for his spectacular one-man Paris flight, was winging his way across the country. Here and there, The Spirit of St. Louis touched down to the roars of the crowd.
Lindbergh was the golden boy of American aviation, an idol to millions. For the rest of his life, he remained a celebrity. The Long Eagle’s fame never diminished, even if the luster was tarnished by his early opposition to U.S. involvement in World War II.
Not so with Hill. For several days in September 1927 his name blazed across the headlines. Then nothing. Like most others he disappeared. Out of sight, out of mind.
Just because “fame is fleeting” is a cliche doesn’t make it any less true. Men and women far more famous than Hill have dropped off the ends of our collective consciousness.
To take just one example, Arthur Godfrey was as well known in the 1950s as President Eisenhower.
Godfrey was everywhere. On the covers of magazines. In newspapers. He was on TV and radio practically every day of the week. The host of his own shows, he could make or break entertainers. Just ask Julies LaRosa. Who? Julies LaRosa. You must remember him. No? Oh well.
Today, it would be hard, I think, to find anyone under 55 who has heard of Godfrey. I suspect 50 years from today Americans confronted with Oprah Winfrey’s name will shrug their shoulders and mutter, “Who’s she?”
Every age produces famous people who are forgotten over time. Father Coughlin. Estes Kefauver. Bishop Sheen. Jimmie Foxx. Who are these people?
The phenomenon even extends down to small towns. “Mugsy” Faris was as well known in Uniontown as Godfrey was in the nation. Who remembers Mugsy today? Or Disey Simon? Not many.
An obscure grave at Oak Grove Cemetery in Uniontown holds the earthly remains of James Veech, lawyer, historian, and in the early days of the Civil War, paymaster for state regiments called on to defend the Union. Veech, who’s remembered in his hometown with an alley named in his honor, was Uniontown’s most accomplished citizen.
James Veech is dead to the world, dead to his hometown.
Yet the desire for personal distinction is one of the primary factors that moves the world. Without it the available supply of politicians, scientists, inventors, entrepreneurs, ballplayers, writers — to name just a few professions — would be greatly reduced.
Why do think bylines are important to reporters?
J.D. Hill ended up at the bottom of the Atlantic. He and Payne and Bertaud lost their lives a day after taking off for Rome. For several years following his death, a lone plane appeared in the skies over Scottdale every Sept. 7. Then the flights stopped. It’s been decades since a plane flew in Hill’s homage.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books on local history — Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation and Our People. He can be reached at grandsalutebook@gmail.com.