The Memphis Years - first part.
Now for what is possibly one of the biggest myths of them all - that those in Memphis never cared for the aircraft. Not only is this a huge insult for those who poured their lives, souls and a considerable amount of money into keeping the aircraft in existance, it is a myth that was promulgated by those who should have known better, but guess who was 'playing politics'?
In many respects, it is remarkable that the aircraft survived at all. After Mayor Chandler 'obtained’ 41-24485 for the city it seems that for many years they only cared for it when there was political capital to be made. The aircraft sat out at the Airport, then it seems it was ‘adopted’ by the ‘Memphis Belle Memorial Committee’ under the chairmanship of Roane Waring Jr, a Memphis lawyer with co-Chairmen Henry Loeb - who became Mayor of Memphis in 1960-63 and again 1968-71 - and Judson McKellar, the elder brother of Senator Kenneth Douglas McKellar.
The initial dedication ceremony
Then things seem to have just languished for many years. Without doubt though a large number of people have each played an important part in ensuring that the aircraft survived - but one person stands head and shoulders above the rest - Frank Donofrio.
In 1967 he was president of the Mid-South Metal Treating Co. “I used to drive down Central Avenue on my way to work and I would pass the Memphis Belle. Somehow she always intrigued me because I had seen the Belle film during the war. Then, one day in March of 1967, I picked up a copy of Newsweek and read a story under the headline, ‘50,000 Films for Sale.’ It seemed the government was selling off a lot of films, mostly training films, made during the war. I had always been interested in training films because I used them in my business. But not all of them were training films. A few of them were documentaries and the Newsweek story was saying that the best of these was a film called the Memphis Belle.”
Donofrio, his desire whetted by the daily sight of the Memphis Belle standing on Central, and now by the high praise of the film by Newsweek, wanted the film so badly that he made a special trip to the Government’s film depository in St. Louis to get what was believed to be the only surviving print. Bringing the film home and watching it once more made him a confirmed Memphis Belle fan. He was to devote a good portion of his life to ‘The Memphis Belle Project’.
It started when John Means, a Commercial Appeal writer, heard about Donofrio’s trip to St. Louis and wrote a news article about it, linking it to police inspector Joe Gagliano, who had been a B-17 bombardier at Bassingbourn in the period immediately after the Memphis Belle had been sent home in 1943. Then the 91st Bomb Group Association announced that it had chosen Memphis for its 1967 convention and reunion in July. Colonel Robert K. Morgan would be in Memphis to attend.
Frank Donofrio attended the meeting and became an associate member. Then Memphis radio personality Dottie Abbott got involved. She had been the first Station Manager on WHER back in 1955 when it was owned by Sam Phillips of Sun Records, Roy Scott, and Kemmons Wilson, the founder of Holiday Inn. The station had been promoted as an early experiment in all-women’s radio programming an was billed as ‘the nation’s first successful all-girl station.’
Dottie began pounding the drums for the Memphis Belle. The result - a new committee was formed. They all met in Dottie Abbott’s home. Members were Roane Waring, Jr., attorney and former Legion commander, Thomas Williams, Judge Willard Dixon, Menno Duerksen, Memphis Press-Scimitar, and Frank Donofrio, who was elected chairman.
For the next few years, Donofrio admitted he was not quite able to provide the spark to get the thing going. In the meantime, the Memphis Belle had been painted and refurbished one more time and things did not seem to be that urgent. Then the Tennessee Army National Guard began to talk about moving the Armory to another location which created the need to move the Memphis Belle. Things started moving again.
Donofrio was contacted by George T. Lewis, Jr., an attorney, and John Emerson, a Shelby County employee, both representing the American Legion, which was now trying to crank up a new Memphis Belle project. It was decided that if the new group was to raise funds as a non-profit organization it would have to incorporate. Lewis did the legal work. The organization that would eventually create a permanent home for the aircraft, the Memphis Belle Memorial Association, was a reality. The date was April 6, 1976. Donofrio was elected president. Emerson was named vice-president and Lewis, secretary. The first moneyraising project was to sell memberships. The drive had limited success, not producing enough to build the new home for the aircraft. In the spring of 1977, the National Guard served final eviction papers and the new Association was powerless to stop them. The aircraft was once again dismantled and was taken back to the Airport on April 28 under the care of the Tennessee Air National Guard (TANG). Things, it seems, were starting to go around in circles.
Margaret Polk remembers the move from the Armory plinth: ‘There was this little old guy who worked for Memphis Light, Gas and Water. He had wanted to start something and I was trying to help him. I remember the night before they moved the plane from the Armory, I sat in this little old boy’s pick-up truck, talking to this little old boy who was guarding the plane until about 10 or 11 o’clock’.
The Association on June 30 held another meeting, kicked Donofrio upstairs by making him permanent chairman, and elected Emerson president. The advertising agency of Cochran and Sandford gave the Association a blueprint for raising funds. ‘If we had followed their advice, I believe we could have gotten off the ground. As it was, we didn’t and we never had more than $5,000 in the bank at any time’ admitted Donofrio.
More was taking place in the area of restoring the plane than in raising funds to build the plane a permanent home. Now is the time to introduce one of the co-authors of this book - and one who has had a direct and long-lasting impact on the story - Doctor Harry Friedman.
Harry is a neuro-surgeon, but if anyone ever ran a time check on him, they would almost certainly find that his time was equally devoted to the Memphis Belle! ‘I must have been about five or six years old when I first saw the Memphis Belle movie at the old Suzore Theater on Jackson. We just lived a few doors down the street and I spent a lot of time in that old theater. When I was a kid, airplanes were my big passion. One day - it was around 1948 and I was about nine years old - I went out to see my brother Irving out at the Airport - he was in the Air National Guard there - to see him and the Memphis Belle was standing there. My brother let me crawl into her and prowl around. I was in heaven’.
Harry did not become officially involved in the Memphis Belle project until the Association was chartered - then he paid his dues and went to work although his contributions actually began long before that. ‘...I had been prowling around old aircraft salvage yards for years scrounging parts. I had a Norden bomb sight before I ever became connected with the Association. I’ve developed B-17 parts sources all over the U.S., some in California and others are in Arizona, Illinois, Florida and New York where I bought the bomb sight’.
As the years went by Harry gradually evolved from one of the troops working on the Memphis Belle’s restoration to what might be called the restoration coordinator, collecting parts in an attempt to replace all the parts of the aircraft that had been screwed or pried loose and carried off by vandals during the years.
One day, one of Harry’s patients showed up at his office with a hydraulic pressure gauge and gave it to him. This gentleman had taken it off the aircraft many years ago as a child, and now wanted to return it so that it could be restored to its rightful place. Bob Morgan experienced the same thing: ‘One day I got a package in the mail. When I opened it, there was the pilot’s yoke for the Memphis Belle, along with a note. The writer confessed that one day he and his friends had pried some parts off the plane for souvenirs, but now that they were restoring the Belle, his conscience had hurt until he returned the yoke’.
Sometimes, Harry discovered it paid to scrounge more parts than he needed. He then could use them to trade for things where the owner would not consider cash as an incentive. He has even worked three-way trades in which he traded a part to one person who had a part needed by a second person who has a part needed by the Memphis Belle! Aircraft restoration tends to get complicated like that!
Initially the aircraft was parked on the apron near the Air National Guard hangars, and men of the Guard spent hours of their spare time on the Belle project, including stripping the aircraft of the accumulated layers of paint and grime. The man who did more than anyone else was Master Sergeant Nute Paulk, a full-time Guardsman. The sergeant had been a crew chief for the A-26 flown in Korea by former Shelby County Sheriff Gene Barksdale, who flew combat missions in that war. Later, Paulk remained in the Guard. ‘Nute played a major part in all three moves of the aircraft that were made in Memphis,...’ recalls Harry’...the first move to the pedestal on Central Avenue in 1950, the return to the Airport in 1977 and the move to Mud Island in 1987’.
Around this stage of the restoration work, the Memphis Belle was parked near the Memphis Area Vocational Technical School, near the Airport, students at the school worked on the plane for months on end under the direction of their instructor Henry Martin. Here the first serious attempts at corrosion control, sheet metal repair and other work was undertaken, including some engine work and the complete Restoration of the pilots and co-pilots instrument panel.
In the early 1980’s there was a restaurant in Memphis named the ‘91st Bomb Group’, located on the back side of the airport grounds and part of a chain of speciality restaurants owned by Dave Tallichet. The Memphis Belle was moved alongside the restaurant in February 1983 as fund-raising attempt, at the same time a continuous regime of corrosion location and control was undertaken. The day they moved the aircraft was to be a ‘first’ for Margaret Polk, for finally she got to take a ride aboard the aircraft, even if it was being towed backwards while sitting in the co-pilot’s seat as they moved the aircraft from Memphis Vocational Technical School on Winchester to the restaurant site on Democrat.
A major ‘push’ to provide a permanent home for the aircraft began in 1985 when Harry began a correspondence with Colonel Richard C. Uppstrom, director of the then U.S. Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. He became acquainted with Uppstrom during his years of research on the Memphis Belle and his search for parts. For the record, and for clarification, ‘The USAF Museum’ became ‘The National Museum of the United States Air Force’ on October 14 2004.
One of the archictects proposals for a museum building.
Uppstrom was dismayed at the years of procrastination by the people of Memphis in providing a proper home for the aircraft. Since the city had really done little, if anything, he said, the plane belonged to the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson or elsewhere. Anything would be better than more years of rot and neglect. Uppstrom made these points in letters he wrote to Frank Donofrio and Harry in June of 1985. The second letter, written November 19, was more blunt: “I’m beginning to get that gnawing feeling that the citizens of Memphis have no interest in the Belle and, in the long run, the best thing we could do would be to bring her to Wright-Patterson for care at the main Museum.”
Barbara Burch, a Commercial Appeal writer, got wind of the Museum’s interest. She wrote a story, which appeared under the headline, “Memphis Belle Must Move in or Fly Away.” It said Memphians must take concerted action or the Belle would be gone. Harry Friedman: “That story did it. It got the attention of Mayor Dick Hackett, who called a meeting of Memphis’ top business men and told them that a way must be found to keep the Belle in Memphis.”
Business leaders in the city proposed that the new home for the aircraft could be on Mud Island. This was a unique Mississippi River park which included a Mississippi River museum and a small scale replica of the river itself. The park was attracting national attention as something different in the way of spectator entertainment. It was thought that moving the aircraft to Mud Island could play its integral part in the overall revitalization of the downtown area. A short time later. Jimmy Ogle, director of Mud Island, met with Donofrio and Friedman to present their case.
‘I suppose the main difference in thinking between Emerson and me,’ said Donofrio, ‘...had been on the type of building we wanted, and the site. He was adamantly opposed to the Mud Island site and he wanted to raise two million dollars to build a permanent, enclosed building. All of which was good if you could do it. But being realistic, I felt that $500,000 was a more practical goal and if the city was willing to give us the Mud Island site, I was willing to settle for that.’
In the meantime there was more action from Colonel Uppstrom. In a letter dated February 7, 1986, he had set a deadline. If the newly reorganized Memorial Association could not come up with the means to
provide a proper home for the Memphis Belle by April 15, he would consider such failure as evidence that Memphis did not have enough interest in the old plane to save her. He would take steps to recover the aircraft for the USAF Museum Program.
Directors of the MBMA held another meeting with Memphis business leaders to ask for financial help and to solicit ideas from the business community on projects for raising money. Three of the men who spoke at that meeting were Ward Archer Jr., an advertising executive, Al Sackett, a retired Naval rear admiral, associated with the Commercial Appeal, and Robert Snowden, a real estate executive. Each offered suggestions - and were promptly asked to put them to work.
Archer, assisted by Sackett, became the chairman of a committee working on local fund-raising projects. Snowden was put in charge of the building committee, which did the actual planning of the building for the plane. It was under Archer’s and Sackett’s direction that the Association suddenly found itself sponsoring a string of local events such as dances, beauty pageants, exhibitions and what have you. Each reaped dollars.
Mayor Hackett persuaded the Memphis City Council to give $150,000 including the site on Mud Island. Other Memphis business organizations weighed in with smaller gifts. The Commercial Appeal, which had long battled on behalf of the Belle, gave $5,000. When it became clear that a vigorous new effort was in to provide a home for the Memphis Belle in Memphis, Uppstrom extended his deadline to July 31, 1986.
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