Tuxedo, Dinner Jacket, Monkey Suit Take Your Pick

                      

                         How men think they look in a tuxedo.  Trust me, they don't.

Mopes like me get to put on rented evening wear a handful of times in our lives.  At a prom—if   we can find a date—and at weddings.  The process of rental is expensive and time consuming.  And most of the time the fit isn’t all that great, upon closer examination the suit has gone out more often than the easiest girl in high school, and the patent leather shoes pinch.

But standing in front of the mirror in the shop you could, if you squinted, imagine yourself as debonair as Cary Grant, as hip and swinging as a Rat Packer in Vegas, or as cool as James Bond at the baccarat table in Monaco. 

But in high school, I came of age when the lapels grew as wide as the shoulders, shirts got frilly, and instead of sophisticated black, designers thought that pastel shades—mine was baby blue—with lots of satin ribbon trim was the way to go.  Kinda destroyed the illusion.

My prom '67 prom picture is long lost, but my tux looked a lot like this with satin ribbon trim on the lapels.  Imagine  a head of a nerdy looking guy in Clark Kent glasses with a zit on his chin, and you get the ugly picture. 

I got one more chance.  My prom date, the lovely Ida Fidritch, asked me to be her escort at the Germania Club Ball in Chicago.  The Germania club was maybe the city’s swankiest ethnic club, set in an elegant building just of LaSalle Street in Old Town.  The ball was a big deal, and Ida was officially coming out there.  That’s right.  I know you don’t believe it, but I was officially dating a debutante.  She, tall and elegant, looked lovely in a shimmering strapless gown. 

Unfortunately, I blew all my money renting the prom suit.  So, I borrowed a cream-colored evening jacket that my Dad bought when he was in the Wyoming state cabinet and had to attend formal functions.  It was a western cut with arrowhead pockets and a yoke on the back.  And set off with patent leather cowboy boots three sized too long for me but also too narrow.

The Germans, being old school and proper, all showed up in classic black jackets.  Maybe one or two in white.  Needless to say, no one else was dressed like Gene Autry at wedding.  Ida’s embarrassment was deep.  I solaced myself with the discovery that I could be served at the bar.  Tragically, it was our last date, although I did glimpse her that summer when she was elected Queen of the Skokie Ox Roast.  She was later a first runner up to Miss Illinois.  Clearly my sartorial choice pegged me as not even close to her league.

I skipped formal wear at my wedding—got married in a brown hand-me-down suit also obtained from my father and pearl snap western shirt embroidered with brown roses.  But I did have to get dressed up for my daughter Heather’s wedding.  And if I do say so myself, I cut quite a figure at the American Legion Hall where we danced the night away for her reception.

                    American Tuxedos circa 1898.

All of this is prologue to the topic of the day—the introduction of the tuxedo at a posh New York country club on October 10, 1886.  On that date a leading society toff and tobacco heir, Peter Lorillard IV was said to have shown up at the first annual Autumn Ball of the Tuxedo Club, a country club retreat for the Big Apple elite, wearing a tailless black formal suit.  He created a sensation and a tradition.  This is the same club memorialized years later by Glenn Miller in Tuxedo Junction when his swing band was hired to play there.

Other members aped Lorillard’s style and the new jacket became a trademark of club membership.  When some began to wear it to dinner in the city, instead of at an “informal” country club, the style began to catch on.

The suit style, quickly dubbed for the club of its debut, caught on as, ironically, informal wear.  The black tailcoat suit, white waistcoat, starched bib shirt front, wing collar and white tie worn with spats on the dancing pumps and a silk high hat remained the full-dress formal wear for a night out.  As anyone who watches old movies will attest, that style still ruled into the 1930’s and is still, on rare occasions, trotted out by the very swellest of swells at the toniest of charity balls or opera openings.

The tuxedo was more typically reserved for dinner, summer wear (they tended to be made from lighter material than tails), or, increasingly, for formal occasions away from Broadway.  Because they were worn at dinner, they quickly became the uniform of waiters in eateries highbrow to beer hall and earned the derisive name, monkey suites.  This low-class adoption probably contributed to the continued use of tailcoats among the very top members of the societal pecking order.

Despite earning their name and spreading in popularity from the American country club, the suit style did not originate there.

The Prince of Wales, Queen Victoria’s son the future King Edward VII is the usual suspect.  Stories claim that as early as 1860 he asked his tailors, Henry Poole & Co. of Seville Row for a blue silk smoking jacket for use in informal dining at country estates away from formality of Court and London.  He liked the comfort, but the smoking jacket was considered lounging wear and may have shocked his guests and/or hosts, if such people could afford to be shocked by the eccentricities of the heir apparent.

English roots of the dinner jacket.

By the 1880’s Edward had refined his idea, based on the tailless short mess jackets of Army officers of the period.  In 1885 he can be confirmed as ordering from Poole’s a “tailless diner jacket” made of the same black cloth as formal tailcoats.

The next year, Edward is said to have shown the style to visiting New York millionaire James Potter, another early member of the Tuxedo Club who may have shared his discovery with Lorillard.  Or perhaps giving the daring new style the stamp of royal approval simply gave it that extra aura of respectability.

We do know that Edward was wearing the style and it spread in the drawing rooms of the Great Houses by the turn of the 20th Century.

The classic Tuxedo style was one-button with un-notched satin lapels that recalled the earlier smoking jackets.  It was more closely fit and tailored than a standard men’s business suit.  A satin ribbon stripe often ran on the outside trouser seam.  If worn with a waistcoat—the vest was black—or daringly a contrasting bright color—the boiled bib was worn.  By the ‘20s a starched and pleated formal shirt with studs was generally worn with a cummerbund.  They were worn outside with informal hats—a bowler in Winter, a straw skimmer in Summer.  Eventually, those gave way to soft black felt hats, either homburgs or fedoras.  By the mid ‘60s the hat was generally disposed of entirely.

Styles did change.  Lapels became peaked or notched, wider and narrower as fashion dictated.  Two and three button versions and double-breasted styles were introduced.  By the ‘30s white was becoming fashionable for Summer wear, although this style reverted to the British name of dinner jacket.

Still, most of us picture the simple elegance of the tux as it was worn in the early ‘60s by various cultural icons.  Then the aforementioned late ‘60s early ‘70s kitsch took over resulting in various abominations including plaid and denim suits.

Movie stars displayed a range of styles this year at the Oscars.

 

These days most rental tuxes follow styles on display at the previous year’s Academy Awards.  Currently that means black coats tailored looser and more like business suites, usually without the satin adornment on the notched lapels.  Shirts are softer dress shirts worn with cuff links but often dispensing of studs in favor of buttons.  In the early 21st Century long ties, previously taboo in evening wear, are becoming fashionable. The overall effect was more like a funeral director than a waiter.

Recently a variety of looks were on display.  Most still wore black but traditional tuxes were worn mostly by nominees and winners in the technical and craft categories. But stars wanted to show off flair.  Some disposed of ties and went with their shirt necks unbuttoned.  Other sought attention with color or designer flights of fancy. Billy Poerter rocked traditional top with an elegant floor-length skirt.  Wicked stars opted for emerald green.  Elegance was back in style.  I don’t remember anyone showing up in a Tux t-shirt for awhile.

Of course, I may never have to worry about picking out a tux again.  Unless I get that call from the Pulitzer Committee for my richly deserved Poetry Prize.  Then stand back and watch me rock the duds.  And now I even have a black cowboy hat to go with the suit.  Ooops--somethings never change.

 

Walking the Walk and Compassion for Campers Update for October 9 2026

Look for new opportunities for action, education, community, and solidarity in and around McHenry County here every week.  

Walking the Walk

The nation-wide coalition behind some of the biggest and widest spread protests of the Resistance is back with  No Kings--Vote Early on Saturday, October 17.  "No Kings: Vote Early is the next step of reclaiming our power after a year of mass mobilizations. It's a day of nonpartisan voter participation, being in community with each other, and making sure every eligible voter has a plan, knows their options, and is ready to make their voice count." Resources to make a voting plan are found a Resource Guide & Community Response For No Kings Day — No Kings.  At least three McHenry County events are scheduled.  Indivisible McHenry County will return to Ill. Route 31 & McCullom Lake Road in McHenry, from 11 am to 1 pm.  Indivisible Crystal Lake will line the north side of the Northwest Highway (US 14) between Pingree Grove and Main Streets in Crystal Lake from Noon to 1:30.  Another event will be held earlier that morning on the Fox River Bridge at Algonquin Road & South Harrison Street  in Algonquin from 9 to 10:30 am.

Compassion for Campers

Great News!  Thanks to our partners at harm reduction program Live4Lali, Compassion for Campers will be able to resume serving the unhoused and housing insecure in McHenry County on Friday, October 16 from 10 am to Noon at their offices at  665 W. Jackson Unit C2 in Woodstock.  We will be able to use the space until at least the end of 2026 or until a search to find a new location for the whole McHenry County Resource Center program to find a new location.  The space is small and a very limited number of supporting agencies and groups will be able to be on hand Fridays starting October 9. Hot lunch and services like showers, laundry, and haircuts will not be available.  C4C resume our distributions on the First and Third Fridays of the month.

Meanwhile, Financial support remains critical to fulfilling our mission. The best thing you can do is offer your critically needed financial support. Money donations are always welcome at     https://tinyurl.com/3bz96axe.   Look for updates here.  Email compassionforcampers@treeoflifeuu.org .

Bruce Catton Put the Civil War on America's Coffee Table Long Before Ken Burns

 

Bruce Catton in front of the Michigan home where he was born.

You know you have stumbled on to the blog of a history geek when you find not just antiquarian trivia but posts about historians—notorious drudges whose personal biographies do not typically make gripping reading.  Over the several years I have been committing these posts, I have made entries on one English historian, Edward Gibbon of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire fame—“Another fat, square book, eh, Mr. Gibbon?  Scribble, Scribble. Scribble!” said King George III.  But mostly I have taken note of American historians of the American experience.  Among them have been Frances Parkman, the virtual founder of serious American history; Henry Adams, detailed chronicler of the Jefferson and Madison administrations and his own education; Fredrick Jackson Turner who expounded a thesis on the American Frontier; naval historian Alfred Thayer Mahan  whose book was considered one of the ten most influential 19th Century volumes in the world and which led to an international arms race and ultimately World War I; Bernard DeVotto, whose work on the fur trade exposed the roots of western expansionism and Manifest Destiny; Charles and Mary Beard who insisted on taking into account technological advancement and economic causes and maintained that history must be more than a parade of heroic actors and the achievements of the elite;  Stephen Ambrose, World War II tale teller and a believer in the great actor in works on Lewis and Clark and the building of the Transcontinental Railway; and finally Howard Zinn who turned things upside down with his People’s History of the United States.

Now it is the turn of Bruce Catton, the man who rescued the Civil War from generations of Lost Cause myth makers and Southern apologists, almost succeeded in making American history cool to a couple of generations, and did so with a journalist’s eye for compelling narrative.  He did it in a series of wildly successful books, as editor of a slick magazine, and without the benefit of an academic degree.  Naturally, he was often disparaged by the Ivory Tower crowd, many of whom were green with envy for what they considered his un-merited public acclaim.

Bruce Catton was born in Petoskey, Michigan on the southeast shore of the Little Traverse Bay of Lake Michigan on October 9, 1899.  That’s the country where young Ernest Hemingway spent his summers fishing and hunting with high school buddies and was the setting for his early Nick Adams stories.  His father was a Congregationalist minister serving the New England diaspora who populated much of the Upper Midwest giving it a Yankee and loyally Republican character.

In early childhood the family moved to Benzonia, Michigan in the heart of lumber country.  The village was founded as a Christian colony before the timber boom and as the home of what became Benzonia Academy.  His father took a teaching position at the school and soon became headmaster. 

Many local residents flocked to the colors when the Civil War broke out.  Michigan was a hotbed of abolitionist sentiment and was near the top of all Northern states in supplying troops to the Union as a percentage of the population.  When Catton was a boy, the Civil War was closer in time than the Vietnam War is for us.  There was a large and active Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) post in the town which participated in all public occasions.  Many of the veterans were esteemed civic leaders, businessmen, and politicians still young enough to be vigorous and active.  In his memoir of his Michigan childhood, Waiting for the Morning Train, Canton would recall listening to the stories of the veterans with rapt attention and frank hero worship. 

Catton went off to college in 1916 to that bastion of liberal Congregationalism, Oberlin College in Ohio with an eye to following his father into an academic career.  But fate, in the form of the American entry into World War I intervened.  What was a young man steeped in patriotism and tales of glory to do, but volunteer?  He dropped out of school and enlisted in the Navy.  He saw no combat duty and after the Armistice was one of the thousands of recruits who were allowed to leave the service early as the Navy prepared to shrink.

After the war, young Catton drifted before he began to pick up assignments as a freelance reporter for The Cleveland News.  He turned out to be very good at it.  A newspaper man was born.  He scaled the professional ladder quickly.  From 1920 to ’24 he worked for Hearst’s Boston American.  In 1926 it was back to Ohio for a turn as an editor at The Plain Dealer, the prestige paper in the Cleveland market.

From 1926 to 1941, Cantton worked for the Scripps-Howard Newspaper Enterprise Association Syndicate where he wrote editorials, book reviews, and served as a Washington correspondent.

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, Catton was 42 and too old for military service.  Other men of his age and professional accomplishment as well known around Washington as he were able to secure commissions and given administrative, staff, or support duties.  But Catton lacked the college degree that was the magic ticket to such appointments.  Instead, he took a job as Director of Information for the War Production Board which he held through most of the war.  Later he took similar positions at the Department of Commerce and the Department of the Interior.  The latter job included the National Park Service which produced hundreds of historic documents related to its sites, including several Civil War battlefields and cemeteries.

Catton’s perch as a Washington insider during the war gave him insight on the enormous effort to quickly and efficiently organize to mobilize American natural resources and production into the greatest arsenal the world had ever seen.  He kept careful notes during the war and afterward while still working at Commerce and Interior, conducted meticulous research into the effort that sprawled across virtually every agency of the Federal government.   The result was his first book, War Lords of Washington, published in 1948.  Although the public’s interest in books about the greatest event of its time seemed insatiable, it did not extend to tales of Washington bureaucrats and desk jockeys.  Although well reviewed, the book was not a success.  But it did inspire Catton to leave government service to concentrate on writing and history. 

With one great war just behind him and his work at the Interior Department to refresh his interest, Catton turned to what would be the great subject of the rest of his career—the Civil War.

His attention focused on the famed—and often criticized—Army of the Potomac—which General George B. McClellan whipped up into one of the best trained and best equipped armies ever to take the field—indeed in the opinion of many military historians the first really modern army for an industrial age.  Yet McClellan was loathe to risk his creation and constantly overestimated the numbers and condition of his enemy, Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.  Most accounts of that confrontation had been little more than swoons over Lee’s alleged military genius and the daring-do of brilliant subordinates like J.E.B Stuart and Stonewall Jackson by the creators of the Lost Cause myth. 

In Mr. Lincoln’s Army, published in 1951 Catton followed the Army from its shaky beginnings to the epic, bloody, Battle of Antietam, a narrow Union tactical victory but a monumental lost opportunity.  Although well researched and footnoted, Catton departed from a dry academic approach and painted a picture in vivid detail of the daily life of the troops and told many stories gleaned from letters and diaries as well as press accounts and official battle reports.  He approached his epic subject like a novelist with attention to narrative.  It was written frankly not for an academic audience, but for what was then called the intelligent public.

                                    

                                                 A Stillness at Appomattox in the paperback edition that enthralled me at 16.

It was the first book of what became a trilogy.  Glory Road in 1952 followed the Army under a succession of commanding generals from Fredericksburg to Gettysburg.  But it wasn’t until the third volume, A Stillness at Appomattox, which became a runaway best seller, that the full scope of Catton’s achievement became apparent.  The final book traced the Army under its new de facto commander—George Gordon Meade, victor at Gettysburg, was in nominal command but Ulysses S Grant, in charge of all Union armies, made his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac.  It was a brutal war of attrition with massive losses on both sides which devolved from a war of daring maneuver to a slug fest and eventually trench warfare that previewed the carnage of World War I.  Capping it off was a moving account of Lee’s final surrender and the extraordinarily generous terms old Unconditional Surrender Grant gave his enemy following Lincoln’s directive to “let him up easy.”

The book won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for History.  Readers who had missed the first two volumes were sent scrambling to get a hold of them.  In addition to the original hard cover and subsequent book club editions, mass market paperback editions flew off drug store racks as if the books were romance novels or detective thrillers.  That’s where I picked up my well-thumbed copies in the early ‘60s.  During the Civil War Centennial all three books were issued together in one thick volume as Bruce Catton’s Civil War. 

                           

                                        Bruce Catton was the creative and intellectual soul of American Heritage.

That fame and his background as a journalist led directly to Catton’s new job as founding editor and leading contributor to the ambitious American Heritage magazine in 1954.  The magazine aimed directly at the audience of the hugely successful National Geographic—a supposedly middle brow reader with a decent education and curiosity about the world.  Each issue was mounted on quality paper, without advertising, and hardbound—meant to be saved and shelved.  Articles were lavishly illustrated including many cuts in color.  Topflight historians who were willing to adapt to the narrative style of the magazine as well as gifted journalists and writers were recruited to contribute.  Under a distinctive logo of a Federal eagle, wings outstretched, the magazine unapologetically celebrated America.  Catton put it this way in his introductory essay:

We intend to deal with that great, unfinished and illogically inspiring story of the American people doing, being and becoming. Our American heritage is greater than any one of us. It can express itself in very homely truths; in the end it can lift up our eyes beyond the glow in the sunset skies.

In its general outlook, the magazine exuded Eisenhower era patriotism, confidence, and conviction that overall, the nation was on the right side of history and still the “hope of the world.”  Yet it wore its ideology relatively lightly and did not grind its ax too noticeably.  The warts of American history—slavery, the displacement and near eradication of native populations, exploitation of the working class, the age of the robber barons, political corruption, and Jim Crow—were all frankly acknowledged but it did not dwell on them or examine deeply root causes.  The role of immigrants was acknowledged.  And if women were ornaments, not actors on the stage, well, it was all part of the myopia of the times. 

As intended under Catton’s editorial direction American Heritage became a fixture in many middle class homes.  Mine included.  As a youthful history geek, I eagerly awaited each issue and poured over it upon arrival.  It influenced how I write history, even if I take a less rosy prospective and add a dash of class consciousness to my analysis.  My stories are still narrative driven and strive to be entertaining as well as informative.  As middle brow as it gets.  

The historian at work at American Heritage.

Similarly, Catton and American Heritage shaped the sensibilities and style of film documentarian Ken Burns.  It is no accident that his main script writer and the author of the accompanying coffee table books to his epic documentary series was Geoffrey Ward, a Catton disciple and one of his successors as American Heritage editor.

Catton remained the guiding force behind the magazine until 1959 and remained a regular contributor the rest of his life.

Catton continued to mine the Civil War for more books.  U. S. Grant and the American Military Tradition in considered Grant’s military legacy as the essential author of modern industrial warfare and incorporated what is still considered the best of the short biographies of the general. The next year he aimed for young readers inn Banners at Shenandoah: A Story of Sheridan’s Fighting Cavalry about Union cavalry in the Shenandoah Valley in 1864.

But the crowning achievement of the mid-‘50s was This Hallowed Ground.  It was an account of the war from the Union perspective. Unlike so many other military historians of the war, Catton was an unabashed Union sympathizer.  This book, widely considered the best single volume history of the Civil War, captured the flag from the Southern partisans who dominated the field and was a major turning point in how the war was popularly conceived.  It received the Fletcher Pratt Award from the Civil War Round Table of New York in 1957.

In America Goes to War in 1958, Catton stepped back from the battlefield a bit and examined the Northern mobilization of its vastly superior resources and much larger population.  Drawing from insights from his own World War II experience, Catton was one of the first to depict the Civil War not as the last gasp of Napoleonic set piece battles and chess board maneuvering by opposing armies but as the introduction of industrial and total war in which the enemy’s population, economy, and resources are as important a target as armies in the field.  He recognized that while Virginian romantic George Patton may have channeled dreams of glory and Stonewall Jackson in his imagination, Dwight Eisenhower was the heir of the relentless, merciless Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman.

 

                                                        Catton's two volumes on Ulysses S. Grant were repackaged into a deluxe box set.

In fact, Catton returned to Grant as a subject when the widow of Lloyd Lewis, author of the popular Captain Sam Grant tapped him to complete a projected biographical trilogy about the Union’s triumphant general.  Using Lewis’s research notes as well as his own original research, Catton completed Grant Moves South in 1960 and Grant Takes Command in 1969.

The Centennial of the Civil War naturally brought renewed interest in the subject.  Catton was ready.  The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War and its briefer companion for adolescent readers The American Heritage Short History of the Civil War were both issued in 1960 and became instant classics.  The glossy Picture History was a hefty coffee table tome with more than 800 reproductions of color paintings, illustrated newspaper engravings, and what were then rarely seen photographs.  It also included easy to understand maps.  My mother invested in the very pricy big book.  I was so glad she did.  I spent hours closely examining every illustration and digesting Catton’s text.  So did Ken Burns.  His PBS documentary series was born in Catton’s book.

Handsome illustrations like this reproduction of Winslow Homer's Prisoners from the Front were the hallmark of Catton's The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War. 

Catton’s main effort of the ‘60s was an even grander trilogy, Bruce Catton’s Centennial History of the Civil War.  These books went beyond the familiar territory of military history to examine the root causes and social context of the conflict as well as its effects on civilian populations both North and South.  The Coming Fury in 1961explored the causes and events leading to the start of the war, culminating in its first major combat operation, the First Battle of Bull Run. Terrible Swift Sword in 1963 followed both sides as they mobilize for a massive war effort continuing the Battle of Fredericksburg. Never Call Retreat carried the war through Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and the bloody struggles of 1864 and 1865 before the final surrender.

In 1963 working with his son, historian William Bruce Catton, he reached back to examine the building national tensions that lead to the war using the lives of future adversaries Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis as the lenses viewing the events unfold.  The book was an attack on the still common assertion by Southern partisans that the Civil war “was not about slavery.”

UPI and American Heritage collaborated on this book which was rushed to print within days of the assassination and funeral.   Special editions were printed to be offered to the subscribers of UPI member newspapers with the logo added to the cover.  They became the keepsake of a generation.

The same year Catton had to interrupt his work on the Civil War to prepare one of the most popular instant histories of the Kennedy Assassination, Four Days: the Historical Record of the Death of President Kennedy, a 144-page collaboration of American Heritage and United Press International (UPI) which became a must-have memento in millions of homes, mine included.

By the end of the decade, Catton had finally completed his work on the Civil War and moved on to a partial retirement.  He was spending more and more time back home in Michigan where he established a summer residence near his boyhood home of Benzonia.  He crafted Waiting for the Morning Train in 1972, a nostalgic memoir of his childhood and youth.  He followed that up with Michigan: A Bicentennial History in 1976.

Catton had one more big, fat book in him, The Bold and Magnificent Dream: America’s Founding Years, 1492–1815, an ambitious survey from the Age of Discovery through Americas “second war for independence,” the War of 1812.

In 1977 fellow Michigander President Gerald R. Ford presented Catton with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Ford noted that Catton, “made us hear the sounds of battle and cherish peace.”

                            

                                                The historian becomes history--a Michigan state marker near Catton's home.

Less than a year later, on August 28, 1978 Catton died at age 79 at his summer home in Frankfort, Michigan.  He was laid to rest under the familiar soil of Benzonia Township Cemetery.

There is considerable irony in the fact that this Union partisan’s papers somehow ended up in the custody of the Southern military academy The Citadel in North Carolina.

The Real Unsolved Case of a Bomb on Board a Boing 247

 

The doomed United Air Lines Boeing 247, registration number NC13304 was photographed over Chicago's Century of Progress and Soldier Field just weeks before it went down.

It seemed like a routine flight for the relatively early days of regularly scheduled commercial airline operations.  In the late afternoon three crew members and four passengers climbed aboard one of United Air Lines most modern aircraft, a twin-engine Boeing 247, at Newark, New Jersey for a transcontinental flight to Oakland, California with several stops for fuel along the way.  Most of the passengers had Chicago as a destination.  Other fares would be picked up there.  After a stop in Cleveland, Ohio the plane was cruising at about thousand feet over Indiana around 9 pm October 10, 1933 when it was ripped apart by and explosion, falling in two pieces into cornfields near Chesterton and the Dunes of Porter County.  Everyone on board was killed.

The sleek new Boeing 247 was not a likely candidate for an accidental explosion.  The aircraft, which was introduced into fleet service in May and was the highly talked about centerpiece of the Boeing exhibition at Chicago’s Century of Progress, was the safest and most modern commercial plane in the air.  It was so far advanced that it immediately made the high-wing Fokker and Ford Trimotors and Curtis Condor bi-planes then in service obsolete.  It was the first airliner with an all-metal anodized aluminum construction, a fully cantilevered (low) wings, and retractable landing gear. Other advanced features included control surface trim tabs, an autopilot, deicing boots for the wings and tailplane, and even a climate controlled, air-conditioned cabin for passenger comfort.  Its airspeed was faster than the most modern Army Air Corps fighter, but its design allowed it to be set down gently at a mere 62 mph on a remarkably short runway for its size and weight.  The 247 was so revolutionary, it essentially was the prototype for all subsequent multi-engine passenger planes.

Witnesses on the ground in Indiana reported hearing an explosion shortly after 9 pm and saw the plane in flames at an altitude of about 1,000 feet.  A secondary explosion occurred after the main body of the aircraft plowed into the ground.  The tail section aft of the baggage compartment and lavatory was found mostly intact almost a mile away from the main wreckage indicating that the plane had broken up almost immediately after the initial explosion.

Rescuers arriving on the ground immediately noted suspicious conditions of the debris.  By the next morning, Melvin Purvis, head of the Chicago office of the United States Bureau of Investigation, an already a famous gang buster whose regular appearances in the newspapers was stirring the ire of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, arrived on the seen with a team of agents to investigate the wreckage.  He found the toilet and baggage compartment smashed into fragments with metal shrapnel riddling the inside of the toilet door while the other side was free of the metal fragments.  Purvis later reported to the press that:

Our investigation convinced me that the tragedy resulted from an explosion somewhere in the region of the baggage compartment in the rear of the plane. Everything in front of the compartment was blown forward, everything behind blown backward, and things at the side outward…The gasoline tanks, instead of being blown out, were crushed in, showing there was no explosion in them.

 

Dapper Melvin Purvis, agent in charge of the Chicago office of the Bureau of Investigation gets off of anther Boing 247 shortly after he got Most Wanted gangsters Pretty Boy Floyd and John Dillinger in 1934. His knack for getting publicity for his high-profile cases was irritating his boss, J. Edgar Hoover.

Dr. Carl Davis of the Porter County Coroner’s Office called on the Crime Detection Laboratory at Northwestern University to conduct forensic tests on the wreckage.  His report, based on the Lab conclusions was that the plane had been brought down by an explosive device, probably employing powerful nitroglycerine.  There seemed to be no doubt that the plane was sabotaged with a bomb.  The Coroner’s Jury ruled that the seven dead were homicide victims.

It was the first known case of what we would now call a terrorist bomb bringing down an airplane.

Figuring out who did it and why proved virtually impossible.  No note was found. Nor was there a claim of responsibility that would be common in aircraft bombings decades later.  Investigations turned up no known enemies of the passengers or crew.  There were no attempts to extort the airline or its parent company and plane manufacturer Boeing.  No one carried un-usual or extravagant insurance coverage.  In short, no motive could be established and without a motive, suspects were impossible to identify.

There was a brief stir of excitement when a witness recalled seeing one of the passengers board the plane in Newark with a package wrapped in brown paper.  Then the package was found intact amid the wreckage.  There was also a rifle on board, but it was in the nearly destroyed baggage compartment and was the property of a passenger on the way to Chicago to compete in a shooting match at the North Shore Gun Club.  All of the passengers and crew were evidently in their seats when the mid-air explosion took place. 

The crime has never been solved.  

 

Stewardess Alice Schiber's hometown Stevens Point, Wisconsin newspaper printed this diagram and illustration of the bombing based on Purvis's conclusions.     

Air crew victims included Pilot Harold R. Tarrant of Oak Park, Illinois, Co-pilot A.T. Rudy also of Oak Park, and 26-year-old nurse and stewardess Alice Schiber of Chicago’s North Side.  The unfortunate Miss Schiber had the distinction of being the first stewardess ever to die on a commercial flight.

Other than the fact that they could afford the hefty price of a plane ticket during the Depression nothing seemed unusual about the four passengers.  They were 28-year-old Chicagoan Fred Schendorf, the manager of the apartment division of R. Cooper, Jr., Inc., a manufacturer of refrigerators; 25-year-old Dorothy M. Dwyer of Arlington, Massachusetts; Emil Smith, age not noted, of Argyle Avenue in the Roger’s Park neighborhood; and H. R. Burris of Columbus, Ohio, a United Airlines radio technician dead heading to a work assignment.

The bodies of Smith and Burris, believed to have been seated next to each other nearest the explosion, were thrown from the plane and found the next morning a half mile from the wreckage.

Pilots Tarrant and Rudy had both been married within the year and members of Tarrant’s family rushed to the grim scene of the still smoldering wreckage.  Stewardess Schiber had left her Stevens Point, Wisconsin home just two months earlier to take up the exciting career of an airline hostess.

The crash was the first with loss of life for the seven-year-old airline.

It could have been much worse.  Only 4 passengers occupied the ten available seats.  The plane was operating therefore at a loss.