I suppose everyone assumed I’d grow old as a spinster lady. I taught school part time, and Saturday mornings I helped do the cataloguing at the Carnegie Library. But then Charles Ryterband came into my life. It was still the Depression then, you know. We had very little. Mostly we lived on the money Harold sent us. I had the two part- time jobs but I only earned about thirty-five dollars a week. Still, in those days you could make a dollar stretch a long way, couldn’t you?
Mrs. Ryterband, I wonder if we could jump ahead to the subject of the partnership between your brother and your husband-to-be?
I’m sorry, Mr. Skinner. I’m sixty years old and I do tend to ramble on. You’ll have to help keep me on the strait and narrow.
(Laughter) Yes, ma’am.
Well, they had been working together in the designing department at Dearborn. Charles had come to Ford in February, so they had been getting to know each other for about two months then. I’d had three or four letters from Harold, mentioning his new friend. Harold wasn’t a demonstrative person at all, you know, but he did write terribly good letters. Actually they were addressed to our mother, in those days, but of course my sister and I were always expected to read them, too.
Yes. Go on, please.
I’m sorry. To make a long story short, Mr. Skinner, the two of them had agreed very quickly that they were fed up with the restrictions under which they had to work. They had resolved together to quit their jobs at Ford. That was the main reason why Charles traveled down to Cincinnati on the train with my brother that weekend-they wanted to hatch their plans.
And what were those plans?
They wanted to go into business for themselves. They were brimming over with ideas for new airplanes and new engines.
They formed Crayband Motors then. Where did they raise the capital to start their company?
That was Charles’ doing. My brother was a shy man but Charles was very outgoing. He went out to California the very next week on the train, after he had quit his job at Ford. He visited his old friends at Ryan Aviation, and he went to see some of the other manufacturers out there as well. He had some of the drawings that he and my brother had been working on in Dearborn in the evenings and on the weekends. Some of the people he saw in California were very excited by their designs-as well they ought to be. When Charles returned from California he had orders in his pocket for three prototype engines. Then he and Harold were able to go to the bank and raise money on the strength of those commitments.
I see. So they started Crayband with a bank loan.
Yes, sir. They went right to work in Cincinnati. They hired three young men to help them-you could hire people for eight dollars a day then.
But the company failed, didn’t it?
That wasn’t their fault, Mr. Skinner. The only deliveries they were able to make were the two engines for Ryan. We hear so much about shortages today, but we seem to forget what things were like during the Great Depression. They simply couldn’t get delivery of the materials that they needed. The contracts they’d signed were penalty contracts and when they couldn’t You mean there were penalties if they didn’t deliver the completed engines on time?
Yes, sir. The payments were reduced if they were late. And after the original prototype contracts expired, they were at the mercy of the open-bidding system. To get a contract to supply engines they had to bid against other designers and manufacturers, and they weren’t willing to cut corners and cheapen their designs for the sake of money.
So they didn’t win any bids, is that it?
That’s what happened. They were making the best engines of their kind anywhere in the world. But the big companies didn’t care about that. All they cared about was shaving pennies.
Crayband folded around the end of nineteen thirty-eight, didn’t it?
Yes, sir. That was when our mother died, too. The two things were a great blow to Harold. He felt he had to get away. You could understand that. He was very sensitive. Most people have no idea what a sensitive man he was.
He joined the Balchen Expedition to Alaska and the North Pole, didn’t he?
Yes, but I don’t think his heart was in it. He quit the job before they left Point Barrow. After that he just sort of bummed around, you know. Working on bush planes, getting jobs wherever he could. He didn’t even write letters to me very often. He was quite at loose ends for a while. I don’t think he cared what happened to him.
But then he opened a workshop in Anchorage, didn’t he?
There was a bush pilot who had started a small air service with several planes and pilots. He had taken a liking to Harold, and of course he had recognized what a brilliant man Harold was with airplanes and engines. He lent Harold the money to open his own maintenance hangar there. His name was Chandler Reeves-a very fine man. He died in the war, flying cargo out into the Aleutians.
Mr. Ryterband joined your brother in that enterprise?
At the beginning of nineteen forty, yes, sir.
What had Mr. Ryterband been doing in the interim?
He’d had a job with the Martin Company over in Cleveland-they were developing a new bomber over there.
You saw him fairly regularly during that time?
My, yes. You see, Charles’ family was out in California. We were the only family he had in Ohio, my sister and brother-in-law and I. He’d come down to Cincinnati almost every weekend. He’d bought a secondhand Cord roadster and you used to see him cruising down the street hooting his horn every Saturday afternoon, waving to everybody on our street. He was so proud of that car. He loved to tinker with it.
You were still employed as a teacher and librarian in Cincinnati?
Yes, sir. I’d received a full-time teaching position in the grammar school in the fall of nineteen thirty-nine. I was making one hundred and fifteen dollars a month.
Had you and Mr. Ryterband made plans to marry at that time?
Well, don’t think we hadn’t discussed it, Mr. Skinner. But we weren’t officially engaged, or anything like that. We were both people who liked to take our time about things like that and make sure we were doing the right thing. I get so upset by the way young people today have to rush into Yes, ma’am. Now, in nineteen forty Charles Ryterband joined your brother in Anchorage.
I’m sorry. Yes, we had a letter from Harold telling us about his new business up there, and he invited Charles to come in with him. Charles jumped at the chance, of course. It was less than a week before he’d left his job at Martin and packed his suitcase and was off to wild Alaska-and in those days it was wild, believe you me. I remember Charles couldn’t bear to part with his Cord roadster. He could have sold it, you know, but he left it in my charge instead. I didn’t drive, of course, but we kept it in my yard and the children from the neighbors used to come over and polish it and keep it shiny clean for the day when Charles would come back for it.
The people there generally liked Mr. Ryterband, did they?
Oh, indeed, yes. Charles had a great deal of charm, you know. My sister used to say to him, “Charlie”-she called him that, I never did-”Charlie,” she’d say, “I swear you could charm the quills off a porcupine.” But I don’t mean to suggest for one minute that he was a slicker or anything like that.
No, ma’am. But he was popular and well-liked. I take it.
He certainly was. I counted myself very fortunate to have a beau like Charles. He was in his late twenties then, of course, and he’d come down the street in his open Cord roadster as dashing as you please. The young people admired him tremendously.
He worked in Anchorage with your brother until the beginning of the war, isn’t that right?
Yes. Then naturally the both of them went charging right off to enlist in the Army, right after Pearl Harbor. In Alaska at that time, of course, they weren’t sure but what the Japanese would invade Anchorage at any moment. It was much closer to Tokyo than any other American city, you know.
But Mr. Ryterband was rejected by the Army.
As a child he’d had rheumatic fever and very bad asthma. That was why his parents had moved to Southern California-for Charles’ health. By the time he grew up he wasn’t sickly at all, of course, he was the healthiest man I
