Word: maccracken
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...have been grounded for his own good? Or was he a skilled pilot who prevailed, with a bit of his famed luck, over the hazards of poor aircraft and sloppy maintenance of the 1920s? These questions are raised in an intriguing exchange of letters between Lindy and William P. MacCracken Jr., the first head of the Commerce Department's former aeronautics branch. The letters, written in 1968, have only recently been disclosed by MacCracken's widow (he died in 1969 and Lindbergh...
Lindbergh readily agreed with MacCracken that he had to parachute from planes no fewer than four times in his barnstorming and mail-piloting days before his solo flight to Paris in 1927. But he explained to MacCracken that he had been flying Army salvage aircraft with "rotting longerons, rusting wires and fittings, badly torn fabric, etc." Once, he wrote, "my rusted rudderbar post broke while I was instructing a student during a low-altitude turn in an OX5 Standard." Another time, "my wooden propeller threw its sheet-metal tipping on a southbound mail flight from Chicago." Again, "my DH throttle...
...letters, MacCracken revealed to Lindy that after his fourth jump in 1927, "I was thinking of grounding you so you wouldn't be taking so many chances." He did not do so only because Bill Robertson, one of the owners of the mail service for which Lindbergh was flying, "came into my office in the Department of Commerce while I had on my desk the report [on that last bailout]. Bill persuaded me not to do it because he said they were still trying to get the last $2,000 or $3,000 to build the plane...
What Stockwell wants and MacCracken resisted is the addition of political emphases to traditional relief work. Using the latest ecumenical Newspeak, Stockwell urges a major commitment to "justice/liberation/systemic change concerns" and also "education/ conscientization programs" aimed at U.S. churchgoers. Behind the impasto of jargon is the basic idea that traditional relief and development programs serve as a mere "Band-Aid" and fail to remove the political causes of poverty...
Pull Out. The denominational overseers so far appear to have stonewalled all pressures to change C.W.S., but the debates continue as they seek a successor to MacCracken. There is even talk that C.W.S. might leave Stockwell's department or pull out of the National Council in order to preserve its longstanding strategy...