Floyd just doted on her. His day was made if Jackie gave him an affectionate hug or a kiss. I got to know him well when I was recovering from having Susie. Jackie insisted that I recuperate at the ranch. After being so sick, I was barely walking. She brought me down, had a nurse for the baby, bought me a motorized golf cart to get around in. She really could be very kind. Floyd insisted that I spend a lot of time in that hot pool. We were practically in the same condition. He was about twenty years older than Jackie, his body wasted by being so crippled. He was a kind, gentle person, who kept his pain to himself, and needed to be strapped in two life preservers to stay afloat. It took a lot to get him angry, but sometimes Jackie pressed the right button, and then the back of Floyd's neck would turn crimson and he'd erupt: "Great Scott!" That was the worst you could get out of him.
Each of them lived in separate worlds, Jackie was always off and running somewhere, and Floyd was deeply involved in his business dealings. He was tough and tightfisted with everyone but her. He and Howard Hughes were close in business. Hughes was so paranoid that he refused to call Floyd at the ranch because he was sure the ranch's telephone operator listened in. So Floyd had a private line installed. All he had to do was lift the receiver and the phone would ring in Hughes's suite, wherever he was. Jackie once bragged that she could get through to Hughes whenever she wanted to. She lifted that receiver and got one of Hughes's henchmen, and that was that.
One time Howard Hughes came out to the ranch to meet with Floyd. But he wouldn't come to the house. He insisted they meet out on Floyd's golf course. He didn't say where. "Just drive around; you'll find me." I took Floyd out on my golf cart. We finally found him parked behind the bird aviary at the edge of the course. Terry Moore was with Hughes. Floyd got off the cart and walked to the car using his canes. He got in the car and had his meeting. When Floyd got out of the car, I saw Terry Moore spray the air inside, probably a germ disinfectant.
Another time, I went with Floyd to Las Vegas to help him get around when he had a meeting with Howard Hughes, who was then living at the Hilton. I took Floyd up in his wheelchair to keep the appointment. We got out of the elevator on Hughes s floor and found ourselves in a locked room. The elevator closed and we just sat there in that locked room with no way out. Somebody finally came to fetch us and took us into another room that was very lovely, and finally, Howard Hughes came in and greeted us. He looked like all the newspaper photographs from his younger days, very handsome and fit, but he was really in bad mental shape, filled with paranoia. Floyd introduced me, and Hughes, being so active in aviation, knew who Chuck was, and that seemed to relax him a bit about my being there. But he stood far back, away from my germs. Floyd could walk on a level floor and followed Hughes into another room to have their meeting.
Floyd became like a favorite uncle to us. Chuck and I had a very modest savings account, and he took some of that and invested it for us in the stock market. He also started The Fat Cat Uranium Corporation for Chuck, Jack Ridley, Pete Everest, Bob Uhrig, and General Boyd. They flew up to Utah and staked out several claims. Floyd even staked them to a small airplane that they kept out at Pancho's strip and used to ferry up geologists to do research for them in Utah. The corporation ultimately made quite a lot of money; we still have our shares.
Well, Jackie lived vicariously through Chuck, and Floyd lived vicariously through Jackie s exploits, so it was a strange kind of merry-go-round. But we stayed close with them. They visited us in Germany when Chuck got his squadron. Floyd had put Jackie up to running for Congress against the Democratic incumbent in Indio, but she lost badly and wasn't in the best mood. She went off flying, and Floyd and I took a steamer up the Rhine. We each had our own staterooms, just like a transatlantic ship, and our seating for dinner. The food was fabulous and we had a wonderful trip.
Later, when Chuck went to the War College for six months and I stayed behind, Jackie invited me and the children to stay at the ranch. Jackie professed to love kids, and I had raised ours to be well behaved, but I kept my brood out of her way. Jackie was not famous for patience. Jackie was five-eight, wore an eight or nine shoe-a big woman, buxom but not particularly heavy. Most of the dresses she gave me I had to take in because she was twice as big as I was.
But Jackie would stab me every once in a while. I started turning gray back in the 1960s. Jackie said I should dye my hair. "Damn it, Glennis, nobody should ever be gray." She tinted her hair gold, but I had black hair and the gray really showed. I was pulling out so many gray hairs that my hair was actually thinning. So, finally I agreed with her about dyeing my hair. She had just come in off the golf course when I approached her about it; she had been a professional hairdresser and owned her own cosmetics business. But she just erupted, "Oh, for God's sake, I've got a lot more to take care of than to worry about your hair. Do what you want with it. Shave it off if you want to." And she roared off.
I felt terribly hurt, but I got the message. She didn't give a damn what I looked like and actually hoped that I'd screw up. I got some dye that was okay except it turned my hair red when the sun shone on it. Later, when Chuck was sent to Korea, I stopped dyeing it. When he came back it was real salt and pepper. He looked at me. "I hope you like it," I said. "It cost an awful lot for them to do this." He laughed. "The hell it did. You just let it grow out." He was hard to fool with those good eyes. Chuck never wanted me to wear makeup or dye my hair. "Don't listen to Jackie," he said. "Just be yourself."
In the spring of 1953, when I was preparing for my flights in the X-1A, Jackie approached General Vandenberg about trying to set speed records in an F-86. She would use a Canadian-built Sabre, built by Floyd's company, which had more thrust than the American jets, but, being a civilian, she needed special permission to use Air Force facilities and equipment. During a trip out to Edwards, General Vandenberg discussed Jackie's request with General Boyd, who knew her well and admired her. When the old man and I had been to France testing the French airplanes, Jackie happened to be in Paris, and he had taken her up in a two-place jet fighter, the first time she had flown over 600 mph. So, General Vandenberg approved Jackie's request, and the old man asked Colonel Ascani to make all the arrangements, which was ironic because Colonel Ascani then owned the existing low-altitude speed record. Anyway, he asked me to be Jackie's instructor on the F-86.
It was summer on the desert, and in order to get smooth air for precision flying, we had to fly early in the morning. That first day, I set us up for a six A.M. takeoff and told her she had to be there at five to get briefed on the flight, get her G suit on and so forth, in order to start engines at six. I was there at a quarter to five. At five, no Jackie. Six, no Jackie. Six-fifteen rolled around and she came bouncing in. I shut the door to the office we were using and sat her down. I said, "Look, I want to tell you something. If you want to fly this program, you're gonna be here on time. You've got fifteen people out here working at four in the morning to pre-flight your airplane and get your gear ready, while you, a single pilot, can't get here on time. Look at all the man-hours you've already wasted for the Air Force, not to mention the guys who are busting their tails for you. If you want this program, you're gonna be here when you're scheduled to be here." From then on we had no more problems. If I said be here at five, she was.
She had no jet experience and was a little apprehensive. I had checked her out in the airplane's systems the day before, teaching her the cockpit, the landing gear handle, the flaps and the throttle, the techniques for flying the Sabre-but only what she needed to know, the basics. I would be right with her on these flights and could analyze any problem that came up and tell her what to do. I didn't want to get her muddled by throwing everything at her all at once, and it made it a lot easier for her. The big thing I told her over and over: "If I tell you to do something, you do it immediately and don't ask why."