Justice Alights at Airport as Eddie Martin Finally is Honored

Justice finally landed at John Wayne Airport a week ago last Thursday, after circling for almost a decade.

About 100 feet from the statue of Wayne, which fronts the present terminal building, a plaque was dedicated to Eddie Martin.

The current terminal will be enlarged, refurbished and used for general aviation when the commercial flights move to the new terminal now under construction. And the general aviation building will thereafter be known as the Eddie Martin Terminal.

This is as right and appropriate as John Wayne’s name on the airport is inappropriate--an assessment with which Eddie Martin agrees (he refuses to refer to it by that name).

I suspect John Wayne would agree too. About the only connections Wayne ever had with aviation in Orange County were infrequent flights in and out of the airport.

Eddie Martin, by contrast, finagled a lease in 1924 from James Irvine Sr. to fly passengers for pay from a field on Irvine Ranch property. A few years later, that field became Eddie Martin Airport, a name that stuck until it officially became Orange County Airport shortly before it was taken over for military operations during World War II.

Eddie flew out of it for more than 4 decades--as an instructor, airline pilot, test pilot, general hot-dog, and finally as co-owner of what is now John Wayne Airport. As Robert Clifford, former president of AirCal and now a member of the Orange County Centennial Commission, said at the dedication of Martin’s plaque: “We wouldn’t be standing here today were it not for the vision of Eddie Martin.”

Indeed we wouldn’t.

The ceremony last week bore a remarkable resemblance to pictures of a similar ceremony 7 years ago when Robert Summers’ larger-than-life sculpture of Wayne was officially dedicated. There seems a small irony in the fact that the ubiquitous Supervisor Thomas F. Riley--the principal mover and shaker in pushing through the airport’s present name--also presided over the Eddie Martin ceremony.

The biggest differences were that Martin, at 88, was present for his ceremony, and the company that now bears his name (he sold out his interest in it many years ago) threw a shindig afterward. Eddie, never known as a social butterfly, worked the crowd with considerable enthusiasm before the ceremony. Wearing a faded blue jacket, rimless eyeglasses and a new mustache, he pressed flesh and hugged babies as if he were running for Riley’s job. And afterward, he held forth at a tent set up for the occasion, shaking hands and signing commemorative posters for a multitude of visitors.

But I was sure the trenchant Eddie (“I’ve gone by my first name all my life”) I knew and admired was in there somewhere--and so he was.

When I shook his hand after the ceremony, I said (not very inventively): “Congratulations.” He thought that over for a moment, then said with acerbity: “I don’t know what the hell for.”

John Wayne might well have said the same thing under similar circumstances. Only Wayne didn’t fly. And Eddie Martin did. Boy, did he.

When he started flying in 1923, it was such a dangerous business that pilots survived an average of about 7 years. He flew for many years before pilots routinely wore parachutes.

The first time Eddie wore one in 1928 was the only time he ever bailed out of a plane--when it went into a flat spin on a test hop. He once told me with satisfaction: “No plane ever got the best of me.”

He lives today with a blind 16-year-old silky terrier named Jackson in a cottage in an old residential area of Santa Ana--an honest-to-God Orange County pioneer. He calls himself a “plain-spoken man,” which he is. He makes no effort to hide his contempt for “those big planes that are flown by computers” or the overcrowding of Orange County, “which I used to love until all those people poured in here.”

Eddie Martin probably would have enjoyed the conversation at the other tables at his party more than the handshaking he was doing. A lot of his pilot friends were there talking flying--mother’s milk to Eddie. Mostly the conversation was about the lights going out at Orange County--ooops, John Wayne--Airport.

But this is another generation of pilots. Eddie Martin never worried much about landing lights or parachutes or those other modern refinements.

He’s presently writing his autobiography, which he hopes to have out by the end of this year. But whether he does or not, there will always be that plaque in front of the general aviation building to commemorate the man who provided the catalyst for the growth of aviation in Orange County.