In 1931 a portly little publisher-politician from Georgia went about the country handing the Solid South to Franklin D. Roosevelt. His name was Clark Howell and his paper the Atlanta Constitution. In 1933 President Roosevelt offered Democrat Howell a fat diplomatic post which he declined on the ground he could serve party & nation better at home. Some of his friends said that the Constitution's publisher did not feel that his deflated pocketbook could afford the personal outlay required by such foreign service. Last week Mr. Howell changed his mind and decided to represent the U. S. abroad this summer, at Government expense.
Three weeks ago the telephone tinkled in the Howell home in Atlanta. The President of the U. S. was on the wire in Washington.
President Roosevelt: I am leaving tonight. I've called to tell you good-by and to ask you to do something for me.
Mr. Howell: I'll do anything I can.
President: I want you to act as chairman of this aviation commission I am appointing today.
Howell: What I don't know about aviation would fill a book.
President: I know that. That's why I want you to act. I want this problem solved from a business as well as from an expert standpoint.
Mr. Howell, aged 70 and thrice married, took the job. Vowed he: "When I get through I will know every damn thing about it."
Under the new Air Mail Act the President also appointed the following men to his aviation commission:
¶ Commander Jerome Clarke Hunsaker, U. S. N. retired, aircraft designer (Shenandoah, NC-4), onetime chief of navy aircraft design, head of the department of mechanical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, onetime vice president of Goodyear-Zeppelin Corp. (Akron, Macon).
¶ Edward Pearson Warner, editor of Aviation, professor of aeronautical engineering at M. I. T., onetime (1926-29) Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Aeronautics.