Eddie Rickenbacker

Edward Vernon Rickenbacker (born Edward Rickenbacher, October 8, 1890 – July 23, 1973) was an American fighter pilot in World War I and a Medal of Honor recipient.

With 26 aerial victories, he was the most successful and most decorated United States flying ace of the war.

He was also a racing driver, an automotive designer, and a long-time head of Eastern Air Lines.

Rickenbacker was born Edward Rickenbacher in Columbus, Ohio.

He was the third of eight children born to German-speaking Swiss immigrants, Lizzie (née Liesl Basler) and Wilhelm Rickenbacher.

Later in life, he changed the spelling of his last name to Rickenbacker and adopted a middle name, Vernon.

His father worked for breweries and street-paving crews and his mother Lizzie took in laundry to supplement the family income.

In 1893, his father owned a construction company.

With a loan from Lizzie's parents, the couple purchased a lot and built a small home on 1334 East Livingston Avenue, 2 mi southeast of downtown at the edge of the city limits in 1893.

The house lacked running water, indoor plumbing, and electricity.

This is where Edd, as he was called by his parents, spent his childhood.

Growing up, Rickenbacker worked before and after school.

He helped in the garden where the family grew potatoes, cabbages, and turnips and cared for the family's chickens, goats, and pigs.

He earned money by delivering papers, setting up pins at a bowling alley, and selling scavenged goods.

He gave most of his earnings to his mother but spent some on Bull Durham tobacco, a habit he picked up from his older brother Bill.

As a child, Rickenbacker was accident-prone.

Before entering school, he toddled into an oncoming horse-drawn streetcar and fell 12 ft into an open cistern.

His brother rescued him from a passing coal car twice.

Once, he ran back into his burning school building to retrieve his coat and nearly paid for it with his life.

Sixty years later when producing his autobiography, he found significance in these close calls.

He came to believe that God had repeatedly saved him for a higher purpose.

Young Rickenbacker had an artistic side and enjoyed painting watercolors of animals, flowers, and scenery.

He tried to design a perpetual motion machine, but, his father berated him for wasting time on an invention with no purpose.

He was also "sort of the leader" of the Horsehead Gang, with whom he smoked, played hooky, and broke streetlamps.

With the Horsehead Gang, he constructed pushcarts that were a precursor to the Soapbox Derby.

Once, the Horsehead Gang took a "roller coaster ride" in a quarry cart and his leg was run over and badly sliced.

After the Wright brothers' first airplane flight, Rickenbacker tried to "fly" a bicycle outfitted with an umbrella off of his friend's barn roof.

The summer before Rickenbacker's fourteenth birthday, his father was injured in a brawl.

After being hit in the head with a level, Rickenbacker's father was in a coma for almost six weeks before his death on August 26, 1904.

His assailant was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to ten years in prison.

Though his older siblings Bill and Mary were working, Rickenbacker felt a responsibility to help replace his father's lost income.

He dropped out of the seventh grade and went to work full-time, lying about his age to work around child labor laws.

He worked eight different jobs during the next two years.

While working at the Oscar Lear Automobile Company in 1905, he took an engineering course from the International Correspondence School.

Chief engineer Lee Frayer took Rickenbacker under his wing, giving him more responsibility in the workshop.

Two months later, when it came time to compete in the 1906 Vanderbilt Cup race, Frayer brought Rickenbacker to New York as his riding mechanic.

After two practice runs, their engine overheated and they failed to get to the starting line for their qualifying run.

Back in Columbus, Rickenbacker followed his mentor to the Columbus Buggy Company as a chief testing engineer, supervising upwards of a dozen men in his department.

The sixteen-year-old Rickenbacker's hard work and mechanical acumen impressed Harvey S. Firestone, his new employer.

Firestone chose Rickenbacker for special assignments, including troubleshooting in Atlantic City and demonstrating at the 1909 Chicago Automobile Show.