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The Story Behind the Book - Page 1

My interest in aviation began at an early age when I was captivated by the wooden models of airplanes that my father had built during the World War II era.  At first I constructed airplanes and ships from mostly plastic kits, but, had to give it up as work, schooling, and family intervened.  My true Clipper collecting craze began in 1982 by accident.  When a case of head shingles threatened to take my sight and left me in terrible pain, my wife tried to distract me.  She remembered that I had collected stamps, so she went to the local stamp and coin store to buy me a gift.  She brought back a few envelopes, each with a beautiful image of the China Clipper covering the envelope.  To be they were stunning.  I had to know more about them, and the China Clipper.  Like many others, I was captivated by what has been called “the most romantic of all aircraft.”  From that beginning, I began to collect everything relating to the clippers, and began earnestly to study more about the history and personalities of the 1930s and 1940s surrounding the clippers.  This was aided by historians and friends who had worked for Pan American World Airways.

Since I taught college popular culture classes, I particularly was interested in collecting anything related to the China Clipper’s expression in pop culture—airline posters, magazine advertising, pulp fiction, comics, art deco, toys, clothing, beverages, coloring books, puzzles, music—the works.  Twenty-five years of collecting provided me with plenty of objects to research and preserve.  Through one acquaintance, I even acquired a healthy chunk or two of the Philippine Clipper which crashed into the hills of northern California, claiming the lives of many top Navy officers in the Pacific in World War II.  Holding the piece in my arms was like clutching a part of the Hindenburg, knowing the lives that had been lost against the duraluminum skin.

Since clippers spanned both Atlantic and Pacific, it was a real treat to obtain background material for the book by visiting the Foynes Flying Boat Museum in Ireland and such places as the Bishop Archives in Hawaii.  One of the highlights to one of these forays occurred at Foynes when I was able to donate to the museum the Irish flag flown on the first clipper into Foynes in the 1930s.  Oral history tapes from some of the flying boat crew members also yielded rewarding research.

I began to have fun publishing and making presentations about the China Clipper at various popular culture conventions, aviation meetings, and philatelic meetings.  Since so much of what was collected was ephemera, that is, materials that usually were quickly discarded or consumed after they were produced, I thought it important to preserve these materials of historical importance in a book so that others could enjoy them, use them for their own research, or come to understand how much the clippers shed light on our nation and who we are.  In short, popular culture is complicated.  We are complicated.  The meaning the China Clipper is complicated in the way it reveals and combines so many of our bedrock beliefs, which are in themselves, often contradictory.  Although many books have been written about Pan American Airways, the China Clipper, and flying boats, none examined the China Clipper from a popular culture perspective, which asks what the clippers meant in the lives of everyday people.  Others had focused mostly on the history of an airline, reminiscences, political ramifications, and philatelic concerns.

Writing the book posed many problems.  Since so many products dated back to the time of the clipper sailing ships and used the clipper name, it proved difficult to distinguish between those using the clipper name to identify with nineteenth century clipper sailing ships and those using the clipper name to identify with twentieth century clipper flying boats.  What was further confusing was to find that some popular culture products had done both:  first identifying with the speed and technological advancement as seen in clipper sailing ships, and then changing over to the even faster flying boats going on a century later.

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