Jackie Cochran didn't own a pair of shoes until she was eight years old. Compared to what she suffered as a child in rural Florida, I was raised like a little country gentleman. She never knew her real parents or why she was given away. The people who raised her lived in a shack without power or running water. As a little kid she had to forage in the woods for food to keep from starving to death. She had no education, no affection, no nothing. She was kept filthy dirty, her only clothes an old four sack. Who knows all the things that happened to her growing up; she didn't talk about it much. But when she married Floyd in 1934, she hired a private detective to go back to Florida and find out who her parents were. She figured Floyd had a right to know about her heredity. The detective gave her a written report in a sealed envelope, which Floyd returned to her unopened. "It's still unopened," she told me, "sitting in my vault unread all these years." It was still there when she died in 1980, and was burned unopened.
Jackie was tough as nails. She learned how to become a hairdresser, got out of Florida, and finally landed in New York. She got into the cosmetics business and started her own company. She became very successful, got interested in flying, and her boyfriend at the time, named Mickey Rosen, who stayed close to her all her life, taught her how to read and write, and tutored her so that she could take her exam for her pilot's license orally, rather than in writing, because writing was a real struggle. She bought an airplane, a Waco, and entered air race competitions. Then she met Floyd, the son of a Methodist minister from Ohio, who had started out as a shoe salesman and had built himself a business empire. Floyd was a real gentleman, a tremendous human being, and he polished Jackie. Until he got clobbered by arthritis, he flew with her to all the air races. By the time we met them, Floyd was confined to a wheelchair, always in terrible pain, and spent a lot of time in the big outdoor pool that was kept heated to ninety degrees.
Over the years, Glennis and I came to consider that ranch as a second home, but, man, those first weekend visits we spent most of the time just pinching ourselves. It was the garden spot of the world with an army of servants, and it was just unbelievable for us to be there. I'd get up real early and go down to the stables. Glennis was out on that golf course until sunset. I loved shooting skeet, and Floyd had the finest collection of guns I'd ever seen. In the evening, we'd dress and go up to the main house for cocktails and a wonderful dinner party. You never knew who you might meet: wheels from all over the world. Dr. Edward Teller, father of the H-bomb, might be seated on my right and Bob Hope on my left. Jackie knew how to collect interesting people, and in her house we met African big-game hunters, dukes and duchesses, a Las Vegas casino owner, doctors, writers, movie stars, adventurers-even a Nevada sheriff. But what she liked most of all was to invite down a bunch of us test pilots from Edwards and talk flying.
She took Glennis and the other wives into her room and threw open her clothes closet and told them to help themselves to her wardrobe. She'd go over to the spring fashion show in Paris and clean out Christian Dior, come back with twenty thousand dollars in dresses, and give Glennis the clothes the models had worn. She drooled over Glennis's slim figure, really a perfect model's figure, and loved to see her wearing those expensive fashions. She gave her furs and jewels, too. She was extremely generous that way. So was Floyd. He'd hire a fleet of taxis to take all of us into Palm Springs and spend Saturday night as his guests at some posh private club.
For us military pilots at Edwards, being invited down to Jackie's was a big, big deal. She really liked Col. Fred Ascani. Jackie was a devout Catholic and so was Colonel Fred, but she gave him hell for having eight kids. They'd argue birth control all the time. She liked Jack and Nell Ridley and Pete Everest and his wife, Avis. General Boyd was a special favorite. She usually invited down the old man as her only guest. But Jackie was damned fussy about everything, including her guest list, and really put me and Glennis on the spot by asking our advice about the pilots she should invite down. But there were some guys, like Dick Frost, for instance, who politely turned down her invitation because they found her too overbearing and wanted nothing to do with her. Jackie was a tiger. She expected to get her own way in everything, and, if you ever crossed her, you'd better duck. I remember the first time I met General Eisenhower there, we sat down after dinner and talked together for more than an hour. Hell, he remembered everything about me: how I had gone to him during the war and asked to stay with my squadron, and he even recalled the article in Stars and Stripes when I had shot down five Germans. He laughed and said, "How could I forget anybody who refused to go home?" Jackie couldn't stand it any more and came over to where we were seated. "General, do you realize what a famous pilot you're talking to?" she smiled. Well, the General really laid it on with a damned trowel. He said, "I've known Chuck more than twenty years. We go back together to since the war." Later, Jackie was really sizzling. She said to me, "How could you let me play the fool? Why didn't you tell me you knew General Eisenhower from day one?" I said, "Hell, you never asked." I thought she was going to punch me. She turned her back and marched out, slamming the door nearly off its hinges and didn't talk to me again for a couple of days.
General Eisenhower presented me with the Harmon Trophy at the White House in the spring of 1954 for my flight in the X-1A, and we got to know each other quite well at Jackie's place. One time I brought down a friend of mine named Delbert Moses, a big raw-boned Texan, who was a neighbor. Delbert was an electrician, a very nice and quiet guy who seldom said a word. Floyd had planted what he called "Hell's Half-Acre"-lemons that were sweet, oranges that were sour, all kinds of oddball fruits-and I took ol' Delbert over to show it to him. We began to pick some tangerines that were sour as lemons to take hack to our friends. We were talking about a hundred feet from General Eisenhower's study, where he was working on his memoirs. The next moment, he was right on us, waving a walking stick. "What are you two doing here?" He thought we were thieves stealing fruit. Then he saw me and smiled. "Oh, it's you, Chuck," and invited both of us over to his study for a cup of coffee. Delbert was really flabbergasted.
Jackie was Floyd's hobby. Going for speed records cost a fortune, but he happily paid the bills, and kept pushing her to try for more. She'd say to him, "But I'm not sure I can do this even with Chuck helping me." And he'd tell her, "Of course you can and I expect you to do it." He was damned proud of her, and really got a kick out of her. Sometimes she could be so outrageous that you just had to laugh. She got all over me about learning to play golf. I said, "No way." God, she hounded me to at least go on the course with her. She and Floyd had opened it to the townspeople of Indio, charging them five bucks to play nine holes. One day I did go out with her, and there were a bunch of people playing ahead. Jackie just said, "Coming through, coming through." One guy didn't recognize her and said, "The hell you are. What gives you the right?" Jackie got hot. "You son of a bitch, get your fat ass off my golf course and never come back." Man, that was it for me.