Flying and Computers Just Don’t Mix, Says County Airport Pioneer

When Eddie Martin started flying--on a ranch in Orange County in 1923--the average life span as a pilot was seven years. Eddie will be 87 next August. He has been beating the odds all those years.

He refuses to say how many flying hours he has logged, even though he started what is now John Wayne Airport (a title he refuses to use) 64 years ago and since then has flown just about everything with wings, from World War I Jennies to commercial airliners.

“I don’t want my hours compared with other pilots,” he says with impeccable logic, “because so many of them pump up their time. I’ve kept a flight log since 1923--and they’re all real flying hours. Hell, they don’t even fly those big planes anymore; it’s all done by computers.”

Despite his reticence, Eddie--”I hate to be called Mr. Martin; I’ve gone by my first name all my life”--might well have built up more pilot hours than any man alive today. He flew many planes without a parachute, with minimal instruments and under abysmal weather and field conditions. He is pilot emeritus of the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants school and for that reason is openly contemptuous of the automated nature of much flying today.

He lives alone in a cottage in an old residential area of Santa Ana with his 15-year-old blind silky terrier named Jackson (“my middle name”), surrounded by artifacts of his years in flying and a desk piled high with papers, where he is making notes for an autobiography. “The reason this place is so messy,” he says matter-of-factly of the general clutter, “is that it’s not my house; it belongs to Jackson.”

Eddie never was known for his outgoing personality. Most of his eloquence took place in the air. “I was so shy,” he recalls, “that it was hard for me to talk to anybody.”

Among the people with whom he does talk was the group that collects every morning for breakfast at Suzy’s Restaurant (“It’s actually run by another guy named Eddie,” he says) on 17th Street in Santa Ana. He has been eating there at the same table for almost nine years, and he says his breakfast companions finally convinced him that he should start talking publicly and writing his autobiography. He thought it over and decided they were right.

His memory is sharp but volatile. One story reminds him of another, often before he’s finished the first. The result is a tapestry of sometimes tenuously interconnected tales that are notable for graphic descriptions and unembarrassed opinions, often delivered so quickly that the listener is still back on an Irvine Ranch landing strip when Eddie has moved along to the perils of early airline flying.

He is, as he says, “a plain-spoken man, always have been.” He wears his age well, with the same kind of amiable truculence that flavors his opinions. He has a full head of gray hair, a slightly receding chin and eyes that look straight at you. He wears red suspenders, which are just right.

Although he is no longer officially connected with it, the company that carries his name--Martin Aviation Inc.--is very much alive and prospering at John Wayne Airport (and two other Southern California locations). Many of Eddie’s heirlooms are on display in its Orange County headquarters. The company threw a party in honor of its 60th anniversary a few years ago, and when Eddie contested the accuracy of the date, it threw another party two years later to square with his recollection. (“I should know,” Eddie says, “Whose airport was it?”)

He was the middle child (of five) of a prosperous rancher in what is now Fountain Valley. None of the boys wanted to go into ranching or had much interest in school. But--according to Vi Smith’s detailed and entertaining history of Orange County aviation, “From Jennies to Jets”--once the Martin brothers discovered flying, all three were hooked.

Eddie remembers seeing a plane overhead with engine sputtering when he was attending a football game for which he’d paid a hard-earned 25 cents. He left the game, watched the plane make a forced landing, and never looked back. He soloed and bought his first plane--a Jenny--in 1923, and that year began flying passengers for pay from a field located on Irvine Ranch property.

Eddie knew he was trespassing and finally forced himself to seek permission from James Irvine Sr. The result was a five-year lease and Eddie Martin Airport (which became Orange County Airport shortly before it was taken over for military flight operations during World War II) was born. Johnny Martin, Eddie’s older brother, who died in 1977, was involved in the airport in its early years but joined American Airlines in the late 1920s and later became its senior pilot. Eddie’s younger brother, Floyd, took over the business end of the airport in 1928 and operated it with considerable skill until his death in an auto accident in 1955.

During those years, when aviation grew from a handful of hellbent-for-leather adventurers to a multibillion-dollar industry, Eddie flew virtually every kind of aircraft known to man--and somehow survived. “No plane,” he says with satisfaction today, “ever got the best of me.”

In all those years, he was forced to bail out just once--and quite remarkably it was the first time he wore a parachute. He was testing a plane in 1928 and “wearing a chute, because I had to, that belonged to a much bigger guy.” The plane went into a flat spin, which is lethal for any airplane and makes it virtually impossible for the pilot to bail out because the rotating plane is almost certain to hit him.

He unbuckled his safety belt and stood up in the cockpit, trying to figure out what to do. “While I was trying to climb out,” he recalls, “I was thrown out. Just then, the plane took a little dive and I popped my chute. I didn’t even look at the ground.” It was just as well. The loose chute knocked him out when it popped, and he came to about 300 feet from the ground--with just barely time to straighten out before he hit. It was the closest he ever came to being a statistic.

Eddie sold the airport that carried his name to his younger brother and a partner in 1937. In the 1930s and ‘40s, he flew for both Western Air Lines and American’s predecessor, Standard Air Lines, worked as a private corporate pilot, and served as a test pilot for Lockheed during World War II.

After the war, he devoted most of his attention to a car agency and real estate (“I’ve been in seven successful businesses”), flying only occasionally. His only marriage (childless) ended in divorce in 1949, and he has lived alone ever since. He bought the equity in the house in which he lives today “for $4,000 from a guy who was working at my car lot.”

As one of the county’s older citizens--”the Orange County courthouse and I are twins; we were both born in 1901”--Eddie is appalled at what is happening here today:

“I used to be in love with Orange County and Santa Ana, but now they’ve been destroyed. There are just too many people here. And as the people have poured in, the history of this area has gotten lost. I mean lost. I went to the Bowers Museum a couple of times, and they’ve turned it into an art gallery. You can’t find out anything there about Orange County history--or anywhere else.”

He looked for some years for a place to donate his flying artifacts from the early years of Orange County. Time and accessibility restrictions required by local museums and the county courthouse displeased him, so he decided to give the collection to Martin Aviation, “the only place left.”

He always refers to the airport as “Orange County” rather than “John Wayne.” Why? “I just don’t want his name on it. I loved the guy as an actor, but what has he ever done for aviation? About the only thing I know is that he wrote a letter to the Airport Commission complaining about the noise. I think if he was alive, he’d agree with me.”

He is also angered by the view of the elder James Irvine that has crept into county lore. “All that stuff about him throwing meat in the fireplace so he could watch his dogs get burned going after it, that’s just not true. I never met a man who was kinder to his animals. I went to school with Myford Irvine, and I heard all those nasty stories about the Irvine family, and they’re damned lies.”

Eddie says he has a lot of feelings about what is happening today at the county airport, “but I don’t want to talk about them, because I don’t want to do aviation any harm.”

That’s certainly understandable, since he has spent most of his life building up aviation as one of its real pioneers, in the county, the nation and the world. In the process, he met and knew Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart and Howard Hughes and other public figures who flew in his planes.

“I’ve lived by my own psychology all the way through,” he says. “I didn’t go to school too far because I always had my own psychology. But I never talked to anybody about it because I was too timid.

“But in all those years of flying, I learned that self-preservation is the first thing. You have to save yourself and your passengers first.

“I’ve also learned there’s no such thing as courage. If you want to do something, you’ve got to have self-confidence. That’s what it takes.”

Does he miss flying?

He rubs the back of Jackson’s neck--”the best friend I’ve got in the world”--and drifts a moment. Then the pragmatism is back. “You can’t miss what you don’t have,” he concludes. “And besides, I’ve got no interest in those big planes, because you don’t really fly ‘em.”