Our Own Hall of Fame

 

HAROLD E. TALBOTT

 

EAGLE SHARPENED TALONS UNDER TALBOTT’S CARE

 

DAYTON DAILY NEWS, FEB. 13, 1961

BY MARY ELLEN LYNCH’

Daily News Staff writer

Ninth of a Series

 

     Harold E. Talbott was a boy with a broken bicycle when he saw his first airplane motor.  It was a little square gasoline engine sitting, as yet untried, on a work bench in the back of the Wright Brother’s repair shop.

     Fifty years later Talbott was the No. 1 man of America’s mighty air arm.

     When he became secretary of the Air Force in 1953, he brought to the post almost a lifetime of intimate involvement with airplanes.

     He took the job at great financial sacrifice and he was to leave it two-and –a –half years later in controversy, but in between Talbott saw the USAF grow from 98 wings to 122 and earned plaudits from President Eisenhower on down.

     ONE OF NINE children in a distinguished Dayton family, Talbott had the Wright’s sister, Catherine, as a teacher in school here. Later he went off to private school in the east and to Yale, but in 1910 returned to Dayton to become associated with his father in the Talbott enterprises.

     Six years later he was president of the Dayton Wright Airplane Co., which built more than 3,000 planes for the Signal Corps during World War I.  As a major, Talbott also served a year on active duty.

     AS HIS business interests mushroomed, he moved to New York in 1920, later said: “Whenever anyone asks me where I live I say New York, but when they ask me where my home is, I say Dayton.”

     Talbott soon earned a reputation as one of the nation’s outstanding financiers, serving as director and board chairman for countless firms.  Among his other posts, he was chairman of the board of the North American Aviation Co. in the 30’s and a long-time member of the Chrysler Corp. finance committee.

     TALBOTT WAS an avid sportsman.  With his wife, the former Peggy Thayer of Philadelphia (whose father, a Pennsylvania railroad vice president was lost in the sinking of the Titanic), he went on a big game hunt to Africa.

     During the 30’s he was one of the country’s top polo players, for a time owned a stable of race horses, was a hard-rooting baseball fan.

     During World War II, Talbott served as head of aircraft production for the War Production board.  An active worker in the high echelons of the Republican party for more than 20 years, he became one of a team of confidential advisors to Thomas E. Dewey in 1948 (others: James C. Hagerty, John Foster Dulles) and was rumored to have been in line for the post of ambassador to England had Dewey won.

     FOUR YEARS LATER Talbott was one of the leaders instrumental in persuading Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower to seek the presidency as a Republican, and later directed fund raising for the campaign.

     Talbott was on a hunting vacation in Tallahassee, Fla., when he was notified on Dec. 19, 1952 of his nomination as secretary of the Air Force.

     Before he was confirmed 47 days later by a Senate vote of 76 to 6, he had agreed to dispose of extensive stock holdings (and take a capital gains tax licking) and resign from all positions that might be involved in Department of Defense contracts.

     AT 64, the black-haired, straight-backed Talbott tackled his new duties with a vengeance, logged well over 300,000 miles as the country’s most-traveled Air Force secretary.  Twice he and his wife spent New Year’s Eve with the troops in Thule, Greenland.

     But in 1955 Talbott’s private business interests came under Senate scrutiny again and a few months later he resigned.

     At issue were the secretary’s activities from his Pentagon office in behalf of a small New York firm engaged in clerical efficiency studies.  Talbott was a partner in the company, the only private interest he had retained when he took the $18,000 air secretary’s job.

     HE MAINTAINED that his actions had been correct, but said he was quitting to save President Eisenhower from embarrassment.

     Talbott returned to private business after being decorated by the Department of Defense and praised for his “fine accomplishments” by the President.

     In March, 1957, while vacationing in Palm Beach, he was stricken with a cerebral hemorrhage and died.  Talbott was buried with full military honors, one plane--representing the former Air force secretary—missing from a formation of jets which roared over Woodland cemetery.

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