Milligan: So, this is Sarah Milligan with the Kentucky Oral History Commission.
And I’m here at the Grundy plantation. Is that what you call this?Grundy: That is correct.
Milligan: Grundy plantation in . It is March 18, 2008. I’m here with Hugh
Grundy, his wife Frankie Grundy or Elizabeth Grundy, Jim Wallace of the Kentucky Historical Society and we’re going to talk a little bit about the Grundy farm and the Grundy themselves, a little bit of their life. [pause]So, I guess if it’s alright let’s start a little with the history of the farm.
How far back does this go? And what’s the story and how do you know about the history of it?Grundy: Well, like a lot of history it’s hearsay or folklore and so forth. But I
think it’s pretty accurate cause I been here since I was a youngster. So it was [creaking sound from door] pretty well documented in Tennessee Historical Society, Filson Club in ...Milligan: Were you born here?
Grundy: ...congressional records and so forth. Well actually there was several
Grundy farms up and down here. The first one was north of here. Just down the road, not very far. And this is the second one. And there were several more scattered around the area. There were five Grundy homes all together and there is a, I’ve forgotten the exact name of it, but a Grundy home historical district... all five places are mentioned on that.Milligan: What’s happened to those buildings now?
Grundy: That’s the National Registry of Historic places, they have that, you can
probably pull it up on a website.Milligan: What happened to those houses?
Grundy: Well, four of them are still standing. [coughing] The fifth one was
razed, oh, several years ago while we were in . And let’s see the first one, and the second one, and the third one, and the forth one are all standing. The fifth one and the newest one, biggest and finest one was torn down. So it’s no longer there and it doesn’t appear on the National Register because they only treat houses that exist, not houses that were.Milligan: What about the house we’re in now? When was it built, the house we’re
in now?Grundy: This one is, all three of them we’ve got...
Milligan: Yeah [laughing]
Grundy: The first section, the brick section, the federal, federal style brick
building was about 1800, 1802. And this room we’re in was the old slave kitchen and it was built at the same time. Because, as I understand it- I wasn’t here of course but – [laughing] the first things you do when you’re going to build a house…you dig a well so you got water. Second place, build a kitchen so you got a place to eat. Third, build your house. So, kitchen, which was a slave kitchen in those days, was built at the same time as the front section of the house. Speculating that as the family grew, they added the wood section, this intermediate wood section. And there’s some old [squeaking noise] guttering we had gotten some dates off of, 1832, indicates that was done in about 1832. And then I added a section here in 2005. So it’s really a three piece house.Milligan: What about the other buildings? How old are the other buildings?
Grundy: [squeaking] The first one was reportedly built about 1785, 17 what was
it 85 or 95? 1785, I guess they, I have no documentation on that so I don’t know. But I suppose that’s about right. Because the ancestors who settled this place, at that time this area was a western frontier. ?Mrs. Grundy: Mmm, mmm.
Grundy: ...ancestors in this area and they left Virginia, northern , which is
now . That’s part of it. There was a war going on at that time. Because the Revolutionary War, I guess, didn’t really settle the independence. That didn’t get done until the War of 1812 and in the interim there was war in that area where the Grundy family lived in . [squeaking] So they...[coughing]Milligan: It’s his foot. [referring to the squeaking]
Grundy: They were run out by the war in the area and went to Red Stone, . And
then in 17, that was about 1778. Then in 1779, 1780 they arrived here and settled the first house I was telling you about.Milligan: Yeah.
Wallace: Were you, you were actually born here on the farm weren’t you?
Grundy: On the, not on this, not in this house, but on an adjacent farm. And
then we farmed this house, this farm. We farmed all three farms.7 minutes, 17 seconds
Wallace: Ah, ok. What time, when were you born Hugh? What year were you born Hugh?
Grundy: January 7, 1916.
Wallace: 1916. So you grew up in the county here. Did you grow up in this area then?
Grundy: Oh yes, I grew up helping my dad farm, raising show horses. We raised
year-, yearling saddle horses took them countr-, county fairs and show them. Ended up in at the State Fair. We used to, there was a railroad station up here on the farm, Valley Hill. L & N railroad station. We loaded the show horses, they was just one, and all of gear and road the train to . Got off at the stockyard and stayed with the horses, showed them in the ring.Wallace: What, what kind of farming do you do here on this farm compared to what
you did as a boy helping your father? It’s a different kind of farming isn’t it?Grundy: Yes, in those days [cough] the farms were broken up into small fields,
usually fenced in. You raised much smaller crops. A lot of manual labor, hand labor. Horses and mules pulling implements, none of these big push button tractors and things of that sort. We raised, I’d say, much the same thing, tobacco. Usually a fairly large tobacco crop, and corn, wheat, rye, and [ ] and things. Very little alfalfa as I recall. At least we were, we were raising corn, and [ ], and, or hay, timothy, orchard grass. So it’s not terribly dissimilar to what you see today, but in much smaller quantities. And done largely with much more primitive type of equipment, methods. But it worked alright, I think were…Wallace: What, what are…
Grundy: …just as happy as we are today. Maybe more so…
Wallace: What are you raising, what do the farmers who are leasing property from
you, what are they raising here? Is it dairy?Grundy: Here we were raising about the same thing, raising tobacco. Fairly large
tobacco crop until we took the tobacco buyout a few years ago. Because labor and expenses were getting so high it was becoming marginally profitable. At that point I was not really the farmer. I was overseeing it and another gentleman, a neighbor, was a young fellow in his thirties, I guess, forty, early forties, was, you know, running the farm, doing the farm under my supervision or agreement. And he raised wheat. It was a joint farming operation. In other words, I didn’t do much of the work but I participated in the decisions, the results, expenses, and revenues, and things like that. The principle cash crop was dairy. That was started in, oh, back in the 60s I guess when I first bought the farm from my aunt and uncle who lived here then and owned it. And I bought from them on a preemptive arrangement, they could use it [cough] as long as they lived and…Wallace: Sort of like a life…
Grundy: And they…
Wallace: …like a life estate?
Grundy: … and they passed on and…
Milligan: Yeah.
Grundy …came into my possession. And that happened in the early 1960s and then I
started operating in.Milligan: When you were born, how many families were living here? Were they,
were there lots of Grundys living on the acreage.Grundy: Yes, there were, I guess three big families as I remember it. Three
families- one on this farm, one on the next one over, and one on the third one over.Milligan: How were they related to you?
Grundy: Well, my aunt and uncle lived here and a cousin lived on the farm next
door. And my father owned the third farm.Milligan: Did you have any siblings?
Grundy: No children.
Milligan: No, no children. Did you have brothers and sisters?
Grundy: I had a sister, quite a bit older than I was. She passed on in the early
1960s, wasn’t it?Mrs. Grundy: Mm, hm. 63.
Milligan: 63?
Mrs. Grundy: 63. She had cancer.
Milligan: Oh gosh. So did everybody help farm?
Grundy: Well, it’s always been a… let’s then go back to the definition of
plantation. [laughing] And that is the [squeaking] owners live there and other residents do the work. I’d refer politely I guess to slavery.Milligan: Politely…
[laughing]
Grundy: They were residents and they did the work. But now we can’t really call
it a plantation today. But it’s not accurately so described because the people who work on it usually don’t reside here. The owners still reside here.Milligan: Right.
Grundy: So it’s all, since its beginning it has been an owner type thing
overseeing it. And other people conducting the operations and such.Wallace: Well, prior to the Civil War you, were the Grundys wealthy enough to
have slave labor working on their farm? Were the Grundy’s of the 1840s and 1850s, did they actually have slave labor working the farm?Ca. 15 minutes, 35 seconds
Grundy: Yes sir. Some old papers I’ve run across here indicate twenty-three slaves…
Wallace: Boy.
Grundy: …at one point. I don’t remember exactly remember when that was, but…
Milligan: Wow.
Grundy: But they’d gone through a quite a bit of a turmoil. The ancestors,
ancestors that settled it was George and Elizabeth, [cough] excuse me, Grundy. And I guess George died four years after they settled here. So that left a widow at the farm and so forth. And then they, this place was still under Indian arrestment and so she was a, shall we say wiped out.Milligan: Hmm.
Grundy: Indian raid killed a son, wrecked the place in effect.
Milligan: Yeah.
Grundy: Vandalized it I guess. And she went to work in a tavern or something for
a while. I guess time, the family finally recovered a bit. One of the sons, Samuel Grundy, continued building up the place in the traditional manner, slavery and so forth. I am not sure, I think the slaves probably, slave population grew under him, rather than under the first ancestor. But…Wallace: But that…
Grundy: I want to say a little bit of that’s speculation cause I don’t have it recorded.
Milligan: Right.
Wallace: But that number of slaves to have, to have over twenty slaves, as far
as operations, that’s, that’s a large, that’s indication of a large landholding, very well-to-do…Milligan: Right.
Wallace: …family. Because that’s…
Grundy: Yeah.
Wallace: …that’s a pretty good number of…
Grundy: There are, I remember…
Mrs. Grundy: Well, it’s been said that [cough] the Grundy’s had six thousand
acres. From this road, , to the .Milligan: Oh my goodness.
Mrs. Grundy: So that was, see that’s why they had the houses all built on this area.
Milligan: How many acres are there now on the Grundy plantation?
Mrs. Grundy: Oh…
Grundy: When I was a youngster, I remember slaves who were no longer slaves. But
they, a lot of them were still here.Milligan: Mm hm.
Grundy: I mean they had, had houses, homes and jobs. And so why leave?
Milligan: Still living on the…
Grundy: So they were, [cough] they here then just working as hands on the farm.
Milligan: Yeah.
Mrs. Grundy: Aunt Emma that used to sit out…
Grundy: I remember, I used to go and play with the black children and eat in
their homes, so forth. [laugh] They had, they had food I thought was better than ours.[laughing]
Mrs. Grundy: You tell them about Aunt Emma, with the wart on her nose.
Grundy: What?
Mrs. Grundy: The black lady that, Aunt Emma I think you called her, that had the
green wart on her nose…Grundy: Oh yeah.
Mrs. Grundy: …and smoked the corn-cobbed pipe and sat out here on a stone bench.
Grundy: Yeah there used to be a…
Mrs. Grundy: She bossed everybody around.
Grundy: …stone bench under the window there. And she was a wiry little black
lady and she had a good, big green wart that stuck up on her nose. She, and she smoked a ( ), corncob bed pipe, wore her bonnet. And she was sort of the boss of the place, you know. [laughing] She started to say, “you do this” and “you do that,” including me. [laughing] But, there were quite a few black folks around, on the farm, when I was a youngster.20 minutes
Wallace: Are there…
Grundy: A lot of them took the name, you see a lot of black Grundy’s now and
they all came from here.Wallace: That’s what…
Grundy: They took the family name.
Wallace: That’s what I was going to ask you. Are there many Grundy’s, are there
many Grundy’s left here? In or the area?Grundy: Are they any…
Wallace: Are there any of them who are related to, to you guys? Not, not
necessarily the black ones.Grundy: The white ones or black ones?
[laughing]
Mrs. Grundy: Well, I think there’s more black ones, you know that took the name…
Milligan: Yeah.
Mrs. Grundy: And this is, you know, ( )
Grundy: There are no white Grundy’s left in this area they are in .
Wallace: Ok.
Grundy: Otherwise, they scattered out all over. But, I guess the two closest
ones – cousins, first cousins- are [cough] Mark Grundy who is a lawyer in Greenebaum.Wallace: Oh, Doll, McDonald? Greenebaum, Doll, McDonald?
Grundy: And Mary Lou is, that his sister isn’t it? Yeah.
Mrs. Grundy: Mm. Hm.
Grundy: She was a, she was a chairman or, of TARC you know.
Milligan: The transit?
Grundy: That’s a big…
Milligan: The bus?
Grundy: Bus system…
Wallace: Yeah, the
Grundy: … transportation.
Wallace: What, what is her name? Lou…
Mrs. Grundy: Mary…
Grundy: Beg your pardon.
Mrs. Grundy: Mary Lou.
Wallace: Mary Lou?
Mrs. Grundy: Uh huh.
Wallace: Grundy?
Mrs. Grundy: Seller.
Wallace: Oh, Selder.
Grundy: She was a…
Mrs. Grundy: Oh, excuse me, Northern.
Wallace: Northern.
[laughing]
Mrs. Grundy: I always get these North and South mixed up.
[laughing]
Mrs. Grundy: Yeah.
Grundy: She was a..
Mrs. Grundy: She was married to a lawyer also.
Grundy: The wife of…
Milligan: I see.
Grundy: …of Richard Northern. [squeaking]
Wallace: Ok.
Grundy: Yeah.
Mrs. Grundy: Keep your shoes from the table.
Grundy: What?
Mrs. Grundy: The squeak, your shoes against the table squeaks. It comes in on
the tape.Grundy: What about it?
Mrs. Grundy: Keep your feet away from the table, because it squeaks underneath.
Grundy: Oh, ok.
[laughing]
Milligan: How long did you stay on the, the farm here?
Grundy: Until 1933.
Milligan: Till 1933?
Grundy: In ‘33 I was, I’d graduated from high school and [squeaking] I was
offered a job in the… I kind of liked things mechanical, or engineering, scientific things more than I did farming actually. So I was offered a job in the Ford agency in . So I accepted that and started working off the farm. I still lived on the farm but worked off farm.Wallace: What were you doing Hugh? Were you repairing automobiles? Did you say
Ford agency?Grundy: I was a mechanic…
Wallace: Ok.
Grundy: …and part-time manager and service manager and eventually deputy general
manager. At that, I’d been flying with a local friend who had an airplane. So I decided I wanted to enter aviation. So then I left and went to to flying school and aeronautical school. So that happened in ‘38, I guess, ’37…Mrs. Grundy: 9
1:00Grundy: ’37, ’38.Mrs. Grundy: ’39.
Wallace: Do you remember the first time you were ever up in an airplane? Do you
remember the first time you ever went up in an airplane?Grundy: First time? Yes, that must have been about, 1926 or so- ’25, ’26. My
brother-in-law took me out to Bowman Field in for a airplane ride, you know. The first time I flew in one was probably about 1929. That’s when I started flying with the friend who had an airplane here. First just sort of hanging about, watching what he was doing and pretty soon I was helping. And pretty soon [laugh] I was flying.Wallace: What, what, was it a plane that your friend had made himself, or
herself? Or was it, what kind of a plane was it? A biplane or…Grundy: Oh, it was a small single engine tail aircraft. Two place side-by-side,
two place with a 37 horsepower engine on it. engine.Milligan: Were you scared?
[laughing]
Grundy: No.
[laughing]
Milligan: No?
[laughing]
Grundy: I liked it first time I ever rode. I liked the idea before I rode. I
liked to ride, I liked the machinery. So, it was all pleasant and I survived for nearly eighty years, I guess, associating with flying or associating with airplanes. Either as a pilot or an engineer, or an executive in a… I guess I never been scared. [laughing] Military, foreign airlines, and probably airplanes that a lot of people wouldn’t fly in. Flown by foreign crews and…Milligan: What made you decide to go for, for aeronautics school?
Grundy: Well, that was sort of the center of aviation at that point. All the,
most of the big plants were on the west coast, , Boeing, and…Milligan: Mm hm.
Grundy: …lot of the aviation schools. I went to a Curtiss-Wright Institute of
Aeronautics and ( ). I worked for them, and flew with them, and I was going to grad school at the same time at Curtiss-Wright.Milligan: Mm hm. Was that a common thing for people to do, was to decide they
were going to fly a plane? Were there a lot of people in your school?Grundy: Oh yeah. There were a lot of people around, but not, certainly not to
the extent of today. There were, oh a lot of people like myself, I guess that decided they wanted to enter the aviation business in some form or another.Wallace: Well did, did you and Frankie meet in ? Did…
Grundy: No, she’s local.
Wallace: Ah.
[laughing]
Grundy: We… [laughing]
Milligan: Where did you meet Frankie?
Grundy: We met when I was working at the Ford agency. Described, her father also
worked there. She come to see dad, of course.Milligan: Uh huh.
Grundy: Guess I liked what I saw. So…
[laughing]
Mrs. Grundy: And, and the owners daughters were friends of mine. We were all
friends, you know.Milligan: Oh yeah.
Mrs. Grundy: We were kids together and grew up together. So she would go to the
garage; I would go too.Wallace: Were you a city girl? Were you a girl? And he’s a country fellow.
Mrs. Grundy: Yeah.
Wallace: Ok.
Mrs. Grundy: Well, I lived, I lived in the country on the other side of .
Wallace: Ah.
Mrs. Grundy: I lived on the .
Wallace: Oh, ok, ok. So your family was a farming family?
Mrs. Grundy: No.
Wallace: No?
Mrs. Grundy: No. My father was an automobile man.
Wallace: Ah, ok.
Milligan: When did you all get married?
Mrs. Grundy: In 1943.
Grundy: ’43.
Mrs. Grundy: Uh huh.
Grundy: Yeah, see I was, after I was in the , as I said I worked for ( ) . And
incidentally, one of my people I worked, next to mostly, Howard Hughes. Because he, he and the [cough] air college shared a hanger, he had half of it and they had half of it so…Wallace: Did you get to know Howard very well? Did you get…
Grundy: I didn’t know him well, I just knew him because we worked in the same
hanger. He came out and worked on his own airplane quite often. I guess he was, he had plenty of money [laugh] and movie in the business and he was head of TWA airlines. But he guess he got some relief just getting under his motorcycle riding out to the field and putting on his cargos. Working on his…[laugh]Milligan: What was he like?
30 minutes
Grundy: …airplane. So, when he needed a helping hand, maybe he’d have something
he couldn’t handle, he’d get one of us in the hanger to help him do that job. So, that’s the extent of my knowledge.Milligan: Interesting.
Grundy: …working on whatever little project it was at the time. We knew who he
was and all that, but we didn’t get into that. Anyway, from the schooling there at , I was recruited by Pan American Airways and went to . And was hired on and went to and they sent me to .Milligan: With Pan Air?
Grundy: Pan American Airlines.
Milligan: Pan American?
Grundy: Pan American Airways it was called then.
Wallace: What year was that Hugh? Do you remember?
Grundy: It was ’4-…
Mrs. Grundy: ’41?
Grundy: It was ’41.
Milligan: So you all weren’t, were not married yet?
Grundy: Were not married…
Milligan: Were you, were you courting?
Mrs. Grundy: Uh huh.
Grundy: Yes, it’s hard to court from [laughing] …
Wallace: I was about to say that’s…
Grundy: from …
Wallace: …that’s a long distance.
[laughing]
Milligan: That’s why I asked.
[laughing]
Grundy: I came home every Christmas. We would, a bunch of, I had a car and maybe
three other would pool together. I would furnish the car and we shared expenses and we’d drive from . One fellow was , I guess. And we would drive from, actually the school was all, all at , , which is a suburb of . And the airport there was Grand Central Air Terminal, which was the airport for .Milligan: Uh huh.
Grundy: In those days, international traffic all had to come from or . You
didn’t fly across the Atlantic in ( ) planes in those days, or course either the Pacific or . So that was the international airport for . Now it shifted over to a [cough] little field I used to go practice on, is where the international airport is now in . If…Wallace: Huh.
Grundy: When I was there, it was just the opposite, you see. The big airport was
here and the little training field over here. And now it’s the other way around to accommodate the large amount of overseas, international traffic, and plane traffic.Wallace: When you get hired by, by Pan American, what are they hiring you to do
Hugh? When you were hired in ’41 by Pan American, what were they hiring you to do?Grundy: I was there, I was a pilot, licensed pilot at that time. But I was hired
as a, shall we say, a mechanic, technician or a mechanic. Part of the engineering group. They were ostensibly originating an air route across to connect with their Pacific operation. Pacific operational flying boat was a ( ) in . It went to the and Hong Kong and and and ( ) in . And the, a picture presented to public and employees and everybody else was that they would, that they were all really flying to . Sea planes, water planes there was no landing traffic across the ocean in those days. And, so the idea was to setup a landline across Africa into and then they’d have a round the world circuit, combination of water planes and land planes. [coughing] So, I joined that group to, you know, set that up. Had to setup the line and the radio stations, and the weather stations and maintenance stations, quarters and all the things you have associated with an air group. It turned out after the, after World War II was over, it was revealed that it was a contact between Pan American and the British and American governments [cough] to establish an air supply route across, really to the belly of Europe. Because the Atlantic routes were pretty well beleaguered by submarines, and so forth. And so their idea was they’d put in a supplemental supply route to deliver military goods to like and so forth. .Milligan: So that was Pan ?
Grundy: So it was in preparation…World War II. Really wasn’t accidental it was…
Wallace: 35.14?
Grundy: …they were preparing for…
Milligan: Interesting. So…
Grundy: The ( ), like I say, the [throat clearing] African was more or less in
British hands in those days. They weren’t about to let Pan American come [laughing] intrude or take over their routes. But as an expediency to support the war effort, or, well that was an agreement between British government and Imperial…Milligan: Finessing…
Grundy: The airways is what is now called British Airways was in those days,
Imperial Airways.Milligan: Ah.
Grundy: Because, I used to stay in the Imperial quarters in and .
Wallace: What, what time frame are you talking about? Is this 1941, ’42, what?
Grundy: It was, we started to do it in, oh, mid ’41, shall we say. And then,
happened in December of ’41. And the war was over, when in 1945, I guess? So that’s, all this is going on…Wallace: All during that period.
Grundy: … in that period. I, you asked me about the marriage, [laughs] this is a
long way…Milligan: Yes.
Grundy: ...round to that. But anyway, I was over there with Pan American, I was
offered a commission into the U.S. Army Air Corp as a First Lieutenant. And I accepted that, then I was, the Pan American had promised us that we could come back to the States on leave after certain period of service over there. And the military honored that, that promise to us. So I came back in 1943, it was a March and we were married. I had a short leave and returned to Africa and I served most of the war with the military in .Wallace: So, you marry Frankie and then you immediately come back. And you, you
go with him? Or you…Mrs. Grundy: No, no, see it was wartime.
Wallace: Oh, ok.
Grundy: As she says, she didn’t go to with me.
Mrs. Grundy: I couldn’t go to .
Grundy: I came home…
Mrs. Grundy: I would have like to have gone.
Grundy: …we married and I went back to .
Mrs. Grundy: See it was wartime and, and families we not allowed to accompany them.
Milligan: So this month is your anniversary? Is that right?
Mrs. Grundy: Uh huh. We just celebrated sixty-five years last Wednesday.
[whistling]
Wallace: Congratulations.
Milligan: Wow.
Wallace: Well, most of your early courtship years, and maybe even your early
marriage is, it’s this tremendous long distance romance.[laughing]
Mrs. Grundy: Yeah.
Wallace: It’s funny, what it boils down to.
Mrs. Grundy: Yeah, cause he was in , you know, a long time. Well not a long
time, but a lon-, shorter time. But then he went overseas and he was gone a long time and I told him when he came back, you know, and I thought was home for good, but he was only there six weeks. Then he had to go back to . And so I left and told him, I said, “If I had known I, he was going back to , I may not have married him.”[laughing]
Wallace: Well, what led you to go back to after the war? What…
Mrs. Grundy: That was his job.
Grundy: Because I had a…
40 minutes
Mrs. Grundy: He just…
Grundy: I just, I was over there and in the military. And you don’t tell them
what to do, [laughing] they tell you what to do. And they granted me leave to come and do this. Otherwise they might have said, “you just stay here.” But they…Milligan: Well you were still…
Grundy: It was an unusual arrangement for them to grant military personnel leave…
Wallace: Leave.
Grundy: …to come back to the States. Now it’s routine with the Iraq War, but it
certainly wasn’t then.Wallace: So when the war is over, are you, when the war is over are you still in
the military for any length of time? Or you revert to you Pan American?Grundy: Well, I was, I remained in the military and in the late stage of the
war, I was transferred back to the continental . Because I had been, had several capacities in Africa, was Deputy Wing Engineering Officer of the Central Africa ring and Commander of the big depot at in British West Africa which is now Legos, or now . Was all the time I served in the military, and in . And I qualified for transfer to continental. I came back and was a, lets see first, first station was . And then were I was the, my profession in the military was engineering officer. My MOS, what they call Military Occupational Specialty, I was an engineering officer and an aircrew member. So I did some flying, but mostly engineering type work. Like in Pan American, I started out as a mechanic and pretty soon I was inspector. I was what they call station engineer of the, person in charge, technical person in charge at in Sierra and in . I was concurrently chief of both places and flew all flights between the two.Milligan: So you were in charge of…you were in charge of the aircrafts that went
in and out of both of those places?Grundy: Yes.
Milligan: During World War…
Grundy: I was in charge of all the ground tech, ground technical operations at
those two places. And there was a route from to to , and there it met the, the land service met the Atlantic flying boats from . They came into , so you connect at the two there. And I flew as flight mechanic and occasional substitute copilot cause they was a occasion shortage of pilots. So when there was I substituted copilot on Pan American. But anyway, when my tour of Africa was over I came back to in the first military air transport, MATS I guess they call it. First pilot organization they setup. There were two services during World War II, the Air Transport Command, ATC, of the U.S. Army, U.S. Army Air Corp, Army. It started out as U.S. Army Air Corp and then during the war it changed to U.S. Army Force. And the after the war it became Department of the Air Force, separate…Milligan: Mm, hm.
Grundy: …department. But anyway the, there was an Army Air Transport Service and
a Naval Air Transport Service, called NATS. There were two different departments of the military Defense Department, the Army, the Navy, each running an air service, service.Milligan: They merged them…
Grundy: The Pentagon had decided, we’ll put those together. And the MATS or
Military Air Transport Service was the new organization. So we were setting up the pilot organization for the , and I was engineering their office there. And then I had worked for an engineering chief in , he was transferred back to the Pentagon. He had a real high level job there, so asked me to transfer to where they had a big fleet of more than fifty C-54s. There was a four engine, the latest, kind of like the Boeing 747 today. It was the biggest airplane available at that time. And [cough] the mission was to haul critical supplies, blood thinner, plasma, things like that to combat area in Europe and . And they just, they had this big fleet of airplanes. All the people all just weren’t ( ). Utilization of that big fleet of airplanes was about an hour and a half a day, which is real poor from aviation standards. So…Milligan: What year was that?
Grundy: This was, must have been, what, 1944?
Mrs. Grundy: Would…
Grundy: ’44. About ’44, I guess.
Mrs. Grundy: Would have been… We lived about seven months in .
Grundy: Anyway, he sent me to to see what I could do about that.
Milligan: And you were with him Frankie by this point?
Mrs. Grundy: Hm, hm.
Milligan: Good.
Grundy: Yeah, she was with me at that point.
Mrs. Grundy: I was, yeah, we went to together. That was our first time after he
got, were we, were he was working after he came back over, from overseas.Milligan: Ok.
Mrs. Grundy: So, I’ve been with him ever since.
[laughing]
Grundy: So I got, I found out what was happening at [coughing] . There was a
staff, a bunch of New Yorkers, it was a civilian depot in a military depot. And shall we say it was a, sort of a clique. They were stationed at , but that’s close to , and they were constant rotation back to to take care of their business. They weren’t really doing their job in the military. [laughs] And they, none of them had ever been oversees. So, [laughs] I arranged to transferred them overseas and get some overseas people (?) and within about eight months, I guess, we had the (?). About thirteen hours a day.Milligan: And you were in charge of that?
Grundy: I was in charge of the engineering part of it. Yes.
Milligan: Mm, hmm.
49 minutes
Grundy: And, and at that point the war was winding down. And they decided to
consolidate a bunch of military bases in . So I was sent out there to work on that. And about that time Clinton Roosevelt was a Pan American Vice-President, Clinton Roosevelt, Jr. And he was my boss, he and Harold Bixley who was the backer. Backerup (?) Lindbergh’s wife. Course it was in 1927. They were my two bosses in Pan American. Anyway he called me at and ordered me to come back to Pan American in . So I elected to leave the active service, enter the reserves, and rejoin Pan American. I liked the military alright; I didn’t like the constant moving around. Because you just a place and (?). And I like to create something…Wallace: Stay with it.
Grundy: …and stay with it. So I figured I could do that better in Pan American.
Wallace: So you headed, headed to live in New…Did you go to to live at that time?
Grundy: Yeah, I, I went to… You never went to New York did you?
Mrs. Grundy: Yeah. We lived, we lived in the hotel.
Grundy: Huh?
Mrs. Grundy: We lived in a hotel for a few for a few weeks. We lived in a hotel…
Grundy: Ok.
Mrs. Grundy: …a few weeks. Remember?
Grundy: Ok, yeah. Alright. Yes, I was assigned to Pan American headquarters.
And, at that time it was in the up in . I remember my office was on the forty-third floor. [laughing] You could actually see the building sway a little bit.Milligan: But you like it. [laugh]
Grundy: Yeah.
Milligan: It doesn’t bother you, it seems.
[laughing]
Grundy: Doesn’t bother me.
[laughing]
Mrs. Grundy: It would bother me.
Grundy: Get out, get out on the balcony and see all those big buildings. But
anyway, from, I worked on a project, Pan American had an affiliate in . They had, were partners with the Chinese government in an airline called, China National Aviation Corporation. CNAC. So they assigned me to that project and sent me to to take charge of the modification of a fleet of surp-, surplus military C-54s, the biggest…Jim Wallace: Big one.
Grundy: …military airplane available, because there were no civil airplanes like
that. So they were converting these. See a military airplane doesn’t qualify to fly civil routes. It has to be certificated by the FAA, given a type certificate. So you take them there and you modify them and bring them up to whatever FAA requires. And then they give it a type certificate and then it’s a certificated airplane, just like they came out of the…Milligan: Mm.
Grundy: …manufacturers factory. Because a military airplane might be constructed
for a different purpose than carriage or public passengers. So anyway, I had a program of modifying a bunch of those airplanes for the Chinese fleet. And also, preparing a presidential airplane for President of China, Chiang Kai-shek, Generalissimo. And it was kind of like a presidential airplane that Bush has now. In other words, it’s…Jim Wallace: Air Force One.
Grundy: …fancy airplane, in other words. It was a sh-, it was a military
airplane converted to a civil airplane and then gussied up to be a presidential airplane.Milligan: Did you know that’s what you were working on? Did you know who you
were working on that for?Grundy: Oh, yes. We knew that…
Milligan: How did that make you feel?
Grundy: [laughs] Just another job.
[laughing]
Grundy: We tried, we tried…
Milligan: Howard Hughes, President of …
Grundy: We tried to give it a little special attention because of who it was
for. But…Wallace: Did you get to help present the plane to Chiang Kai-shek when it was finished?
Grundy: Beg your pardon?
Wallace: Did you get to help personally present the plane to Chiang Kai-shek
when it was finished and delivered?Grundy: No, I didn’t present it. I got it off the field at [laughs] and that… I
knew the crew that operated it and we both knew President Chiang and Madame Chiang. We’d gone to dinner at their house and so forth, but never discussed this airplane particularly.Wallace: How did you get to know President Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Madame?
Grundy: Beg your pardon.
Wallace: How did you get to know the President Chiang Kai-shek and his wife?
What led you to interact with them? How did you get to know them?Grundy: How did, how did…
Wallace: What were the circumstances of that led to you getting to know the
President of China and his wife?Grundy: Oh, well Madame Chiang was interested in airlines and so forth and
hotels. And I was director of a hotel that she had an interest it and she took an interest in the air, airline. I met her several time and then I got to meet Generalissimo through Admiral Felix Stump who was the Commander and Chief Pacific. (?) I guess he used to deal with him on military matters and he became our chairman of the board and so I got to know him through that route.Milligan: What hotel were you the director of? That she was interested in? The hotel?
Grundy: Grand, Grand Hotel in .
Wallace: Well, we should, I, I, I shouldn’t have interrupted cause you were
telling the story about reworking the, was it C-54s? How, how did…Grundy: That’s right.
Wallace: What happens after you work on that, the, the, the airplanes for the
Chinese government? What, what are the next steps in your career?Grundy: Well see, well, Pan American owned an interested in the airline, CNAC,
with the government. But it really was an airline not government as such. Government was an owner of it, part owner of it and it operated obviously, operated under government control, but it was a civil airline. Just like Pan American was civil airline in the .Wallace: Ok.
Grundy: It started out as a… Back in 1929 the Curtiss-Wright Corp-,
Curtiss-Wright Company I believe they called then, made the original deal with the Chinese government for a partnership airline. CNAC. But Curtiss-Wright was really more interested in selling engines and airplanes to the Chinese military than they were in just running a plain old civil airline. So in 1933, Pan American bought out Curtiss-Wright’s interest. And as a side note, my Chinese pilots license was issued to me and signed by a gentleman named Ernest Allison. [cough] You’ve heard of the airmail pilot? They started a, the first air routes in the . I’m not sure when that happened, but right shortly after World War I. And it was a few pilot who started it was a government operation, U.S. Airmail. Anyway, he was a pilot for…Wallace: For the…
Grundy: …for the Airmail. One of the few, I guess there were probably a dozen of
them or so.Milligan: Oh.
Wallace: Huh.
Just under one hour
Grundy: And then he was the first pilot that Curtiss-Wright and Pan American had
when they started CNAC. He was flying Boeing (?) flying boats up the rivers in . And then later, when I went to , he ended up as my boss. He was director operation, vice-president, I was chief engineer. So in that arrangement, he was a designee of the Chinese government for issuing the license. In other words you get the license not from an airline but from the government.Milligan: Hmm.
Grundy: Just like the FAA here. But he was designated because of his long
experience and position in aviation. He was a designated by the Chinese government to act for them in issuing pilots’ licenses. So he issued me, that’s were my pilot’s…Milligan: So when did you move to ? When did you move to ?
Grundy: When did I go to ? ’48. ’47, I guess it was.
Wallace: Were you going with him Frankie?
Mrs. Grundy: I couldn’t go when he, when he went. He had to go first and I guess
get settled. And then I went in August, he went in May of ’47. And I, I accompanied him in…Wallace: How did you feel about moving half way around the world to ?
Mrs. Grundy: I was very excited about it. [laughs]
Milligan: It, did you move from, from to ? Was that the…
Mrs. Grundy: Yes.
Grundy: We came…
Mrs. Grundy: Yeah, we lived, we lived in . Which was a suburb of Baltimore
Grundy: You were here. We came from here and I…
Mrs. Grundy: Well we had to pack up our belongings and things. Cause we had, you
know, we had just limited stuff with us.Grundy: Yeah, I, I went to …
Mrs. Grundy: And then I came home and stayed with my parents, here, until I was
permitted to join him, which was August of the same year.Milligan: Were, were your parents worried?
Mrs. Grundy: I imagine they were, but they didn’t show it. [laughs]
Milligan: What about your parents? Were your parents worried? All this
globetrotting…Were your parents worried about you going all over the world? [laughing from Mrs. Grundy]Grundy: I guess not. [laughing] They didn’t say anything about it.
[laughing]
Grundy: I guess I was always a little independent anyway.
Milligan: Sounds like it.
[laughing]
Grundy: So…
Mrs. Grundy: We spent twen-…
Grundy: They were…
Mrs. Grundy: We spent twenty-seven years, you know overseas and…
Grundy: My father died while I was in …
Mrs. Grundy: And I know one time my mom, when we were home on leave, and mom
said, ‘child do you remem-, do you realize that you have spent half of your life in ?’ Cause at that time I was you know a certain age. And she said, you know, do you realize you had spent half of your, your life in . I had not thought about it that way.Milligan: Yeah. What were you saying about your dad in Af-, you dad when you
were in ?Grundy: My father died while I was in Africa and I didn’t really know about it
until afterwards. So I didn’t come home for that.Milligan: Yeah.
Grundy: That was, that was
Mrs. Grundy: That was in…
Grundy: Not too long after I had been back here though.
Mrs. Grundy: Yeah
Grundy: ’43 wasn’t it?
Mrs. Grundy: No, I think…
Grundy: Yeah…
Mrs. Grundy: …we had been married…
Grundy: Yeah, I came home, we were married, I went back and wasn’t too long
after that…Mrs. Grundy: I think, I thing he died before you came back.
Milligan: Mmm.
[End of 2008OH04.1a]
[Begin 2008OH04.1b]
Milligan: So, you went to in 1947?
Grundy: Yes, I did. I went first. We were in...[]. We were in , I guess. We came
back here. I went to San Francisco and caught on a CNA Seas airplane that came from Shanghai and I flew on over and maybe three months later, four months later she back over…Mrs. Grundy: And I was, I was the only passenger. They picked me up in and
Chinese banknotes. They had a whole plane load of banknotes and me.[laughing]
Wallace: Well you, you tell us a very story about the Chinese government and the
money and printing up so much money. That apparently inflation was rampant.Mrs. Grundy: Oh, it was terrible.
Wallace: And you’d pay somebody something in the morning and by the time that
they went home in the evening…you’ll have to tell her that story. That’s…Grundy: Well it was, when I signed on at, to go to it was, it was a currency
called CNC- Chinese National Currency. And the foreign exchange rate 2700 Chinese dollars to one dollar. That sounds like a lot doesn’t it?[laughing]
Grundy: By the time I got to several months later it was 3300 to one. And the
CNA sea airplanes we flew the Pacific three times a week from to . And the main load going back was money. Because…Mrs. Grundy: Cause it took lot of it.
Grundy: Currency was printed here somewhere in the .
Milligan: Uh, huh.
Grundy: And every time it went back, it’d have to carry a bigger denomination
bill. [laughing] So when a plane landed in , you could count on the inflation rate going up. Because when you, you know, went to dinner or something and take money, you’d take a bag. [laughing] Can’t carry it in your pockets, you know what I mean.Mrs. Grundy: And, and that was days before credit cards.
Milligan: Yeah.
[laughing]
Grundy: And, anyway this went on for a year, something like that. Don’t remember
the exact period. And the government decided, you know, this is gone too far with 12 million to one. [laughing]Wallace: Good God.
Milligan: Ye-, how do you carry 12 million bills….
Grundy: You carry a bigger bag.
[laughing]
Grundy: And…you don’t try to hang on to the money. You convert it to solid goods
quick as you can. Anyway, the government decided, you know, it’s gone far enough we’re going do away with this currency and start a new one. So they declared the old currency invalid, couple of days or something like that. And set up a new one called a G.Y., the Gold Yuan. And the President’s son, Chiang Kai-, Chiang Ching-kuo was put in command of . was kind of like here, it was a finacial market and center of all good things and bad things. He was made commander of the district and they said, you know, Gold Yuan is four to one [cough] and anybody that…in effect anybody that doesn’t agree get’s shot at sunrise. They had all these black marketers and so forth. And they did shoot a lot of them in the public square. [laughs] As long as that was going on it stayed…Wallace: Four to one.
Grundy: …four to one. I guess maybe, but several months, maybe three or four
months, and oh everybody…they said no foreign currency no dollars. And some of the people, like the lady that owned the apartment that we had in , she was scared to death cause she had some dollars. Had she been caught will them, she was subject to may be getting shot. So, she was desperate for me to take the dollars. I couldn’t risk it either.Milligan: Right.
Grundy: So, I don’t know what she did with them. She not got shot as far as I
know. [laughs]Milligan: So…
Grundy: But anyway…
Mrs. Grundy: But the, but the money was very dirty, you know. Because the-, in
handling it, and it, and if, on the black market if you had clean money you got a better rate. So we used to wash our bills and iron them. And you get a better rate.Milligan: Your dollars or your G.Y.s?
Mrs. Grundy: The paper, the paper money.
Wallace: The Chinese…
Mrs. Grundy: The Chinese…
Milligan: The Chinese…
Wallace: Chinese paper money?
Mrs. Grundy: Yeah. The Chinese money.
Grundy: It’s a…
Mrs. Grundy: So, we lau-, we would…
Grundy: It’s two o’clock.
Mrs. Grundy: launder it and, and dry it, you know, and ironed out nice and
smooth. And we got a better rate.Milligan: Interesting. How did you all find an apartment in ?
Mrs. Grundy: You had pay key money.
Grundy: They had a, you could, you could, they were available as long as you had
the money. What they did was sell at a rate they called key money. In other words, you, in effect, buy the key, not the apartment.Milligan: I see.
Mrs. Grundy: Yeah.
Grundy: And you can buy the key and then you can… live there and you can sell
the key to somebody else.Milligan: Huh.
Grundy: And they were, the better places were available on that basis. Cause we
had that apartment and then we had a another one in one of the big fine apartments out in the co-, a little bit out in the country. And I got it from one of our pilots who, in fact the pilot who had flown me to initially, was off on leave and he turned that over to us. But this Gold Yuan at four to one, that lasted a few months with all this strict enforcement. And then the pressures, corruption and so forth, grew and Chiang Ching-kuo, who later was president of after his dad died, but anyway he was relieved of his command. And somebody else was put in charge. I bet it wasn’t two weeks before it was five to one, then it was seven to one, then it was ten to one, and then it was…Wallace:
Grundy: …forteen to one, then it was twenty to one...
Milligan: Hmm.
Grundy: And by that time of course the war is going, this is 1949. And by the
time I left , I left on the last civil airplane out of there, it was sixty-four million.Wallace: Sixty-four million. Whoa. We-, well you all were living in the dangerous…
Grundy: [laughs] Just some to talk about, cause obviously nobody wanted, you
could barter…Milligan: Yeah.
Grundy: And prior to that, I had mentioned to you about paying from the middle
of the payroll instead of paying from A-Z was normal. We’d start in the middle pay both way because if you didn’t the Z guy was going to suffer.Milligan: Every time?
Grundy: Because the currency would inflate…
Wallace: So fast. So fast by the time you…
Grundy: In a matter of…
Wallace: …got to the end of the alphabet.
Milligan: Uh, huh.
Grundy: …in the matter of a few hours. Particularly, with this big payroll going
into the market. So they’d grab the money and everybody got off duty when they got paid. [laughs]Wallace: Well, well you guys are living in a country that’s basically engaged in
a civil war.Grundy: Oh yes.
Wallace: Were your lives ever, I mean did you ever feel like you were personally
in danger? At risk of being killed? Or…[Mrs. Grundy laughs]
Grundy: Not really. I guess there was some danger but…
Mrs. Grundy: We never experienced anything.
10 minutes
Grundy: …but we stay, we stayed at a, we started evacuating from Moctent, in
northern Manchuria, and that was the first base we let go, went down to [], [], moved on Ting Tou, Shanghai and we were always ahead of the, cause the Red Army was…Mrs. Grundy: Moving in.
Grundy: …moving, Communists were moving in. But somehow we always managed to
[laughing] plan good enough I guess to stay with them. To get pushed off, all the way to .Milligan: So you were still with this company at that time?
Grundy: Yeah.
Milligan: You were still with this airline company?
Grundy: I was with CNA, CNAC.
Milligan: And what were you all doing?
Wallace: The company?
Grundy: Just running an airline.
Milligan: Just…
Grundy: Flying planes to San Francisco, and flying to . And flying domestically
with what was left, cause your plan is gradually disappearing, so you, used to fly to what’s now course was lost, we don’t go there anymore. Finally end up, you haven’t got anyplace to go really. And in the final days we were just flying to, between Hong Kong and .Milligan: Huh.
Grundy: At that point the, the, in effect CNAC was, the business side of it was
Chinese and the operational side of it was American. And the managing director, instead of having a president they had a managing director, and one of the directors was appointed to run the airline. He was Chinese and he defected to the Communist side along with some pilots and other staff of the airline. At that point then CNAC belong to the Chinese Communists. And so really it was no more operation at that point. We had the shops, and supplies, and the airplane. And the pilots that had defected with the managing director had taken maybe three or four airplanes with them when they defected. All the rest of the airplane were there at airport, British colony Kai Tak. And they became embroiled in a big lawsuit by an affiliate company of Civil Air Transport, CAT. Now that was an airline had been started by General Claire Chennault. You’ve heard of the Flying Tigers.Milligan: I’ve read about it.
Grundy: Read about it?
Milligan: Yeah.
Grundy: Ok, well he was, he was a military tactician. Air tactician. And I guess
the government was sympathetic to the Nationalist government of and they released a lot of military pilots, including Chennault. They resigned their commission in order to be called [ ] operation [ ]. Still retain their military rank but they are discharged and become civilians. And he started the American Volunteer Group which acquired the nickname of “Flying Tigers.” And they, the government sold to a bunch of P-40 fighter airplanes. Chinese government hired all these pi-, pilots and they took them over to, they went into I guess it was, where they started…Milligan: Why were they called the “Flying Tigers?”
Grundy: [laughs]
Mrs. Grundy: Good question.
Grundy: If I remember, well a tiger is a, an aggressive thing and they were
flying so that’s, had a Chinese connection. And they, course they painted the nose of the airplane with a, shark’s mouth. I don’t know what, what connection that had but the flying tiger, I think associates with a [laughs] the most aggressive animal, the most powerful animal.Milligan: So this, this group was an aggressive group. How were they aggressive?
Grundy: Well they were fighting the Japanese. For the, they were in effect the
Chinese air force, for the Chinese government. Because the Chinese air force, shall we say, totaling ineffective against the more modern Japanese, well-organized, well-equipped, and modern fighter force. But they, I’m not sure I’ve told you right about the origin, but I suppose that’s about right. Cause I was called tiger. [laughing]Wallace: Is that a nickname of yours?
Grundy: The name of [ ] in Chinese means boss.
Milligan: Who gave you that name?
Grundy: My crew.
[laughing]
Grundy: The people who worked for me.
Mrs. Grundy: He, he would, many of times he’d show up at midnight out at the air
field, you know. And check and see if they guys were all working. And he would just sort of walk in. You know, say one o’clock in the morning. Things like that.Milligan: Surprise.
Mrs. Grundy: That’s why, how he got “Tiger.”
Grundy: I used to, when I went over there, when I first arrived Johnny had a
habit of taking a nap at noontime. And you walk into the shops and everybody laying around on tables everything. Some of the Americans didn’t approve of that and they, the name would go around, “Here comes the Tiger,” or “Here comes the boss.”[laughing]
Grundy: I, I thought that was a good practice cause it allowed them to renew a
little bit. So I’d started telling them you know just carry on. I’m walling through, but never mind you. Go on with your name and when you finish with it go to work. That policy worked pretty good.Wallace: Well when does, when does Chennault form the CAT? When does, when does
CAT get organized?Grundy: When did he form CAT?
Wallace: Yeah.
Grundy: Yeah. Well, see he was, let’s see, the Flying Tigers actually didn’t
last very long. They were actually active for only about six months. And then the entered the war and setup the 14th Air Force. And Chennault then went back in the military and was Commanding General of the 14th Air Force. And that went on till the end of the war. And then there was, you recall the United Nations Rehabilitation Administration? [coughs] It was called U.N.R.A. That was United Nation’s program to rehabilitate . And they would deliver relief goods to the shores of . But that didn’t really solve the problem because the goods are needed all over the country if they’re going to rebuild the country. So Chennault, who is well acquainted with Generalissimo and all that being his aviation arm, setup a company called Civil Air Transport. I’m sorry that’s not right. Setup a company called C.N.R.A. air transport, Chinese National Rehabilitation. So instead of U.N.R.A. it was C.N.R.A. And that was to pickup those goods and deliver them to interior points in and pickup [ ] or tin or whatever, and haul it back to the ports for export. Well eventually U.N.R.A and C.N.R.A. wound down with the mission either accomplished or wound down. And at that point, Chennault started a civil airline and then letters, you know C.N.R.A. air transport inevitably is going to be C.A.T. So by that time it had gained a reputation as CAT. So when he started the airline to retain the letters C.A.T., he called it Civil Air Transport. And it was an ordinary airline, but there was no provision in for operating an airline like in the . They were all under, all government.Milligan: Mmm, hmm.
Grundy: So they got a special dispensation to…and the real name of this airline
which I eventually took over Civil Air Transport Civil Aeronautics Administration…[coughs] [Wallace laughs]…Ministry of Communications. [Wallace laughs] It was about that long.Milligan: I don’t know why that didn’t work.
[laughing]
Grundy: So you wonder why they call it CAT.
[laughing]
Grundy: And, so anyway, that was done in, let’s see it would have been, I’m not
sure of the date you asked about. But it would have been, may be a year or a year and half after the start of this U.N.R.A. program. It must have been about 194-, perhaps 1947. In that neighborhood, I don’t know the exact date. And, of course, after the competitor airline to C.N.A.C. [coughs]Milligan: You were still with C.N.H.C then weren’t you?
Grundy: I was still C.N.A.C. I was chief engineer, C.N.A.C., until the
Communists took over in . And I actually continued to work for communists. One morning when I went to work, they, my say top Chinese guy met me and said, “Good morning Mr. Grundy you’re no longer in charge. We are.”Milligan: How was that?
[laughing]
Grundy: That, well [laughs] a bit, a bit of a shock but nothing I could do about
it. But they said we’d like for you to continue as our chief engineer. You just work for us instead of who you formerly worked for. I consulted the American, they didn’t have an Ambassador, they had a Consul in . So I consulted him and got the blessings of the American government to carry on with the Communists. So I work for them for maybe three, four months.Wallace: How did you…
Grundy: And they were alright except they didn’t have any money. [Mrs. Grundy
laughs] And they…[laughing]
Milligan: They had lots of money right, sixty-four million…
Grundy: They, they, yeah they were not reported finance (?). And they wanted to
cut corners and save money. “Don’t, don’t do this.” “Skip that.” And that was compr-, I built up a real good state of safety and efficiency. And, so that was going to be compromised. And about that time General Chennault offered me the job as chief engineer of CAT. So I figured, political tensions were pretty high at that point, I figured it’d be better for me to go that way then to continue this battle which I obviously wasn’t going to win on, you know technical matters and safety and things like that. Cause they were the boss and they didn’t want to adhere to the same safety standards. So I was in no position to win that battle. So I figured I better just accept the job with CAT, which I did. And I continued there as chief engineer for about, till 1954. That happened in 1949.Wallace: Were you in at that time Hugh?
Grundy: I was in at the time of the Communist defection and the turn over of the
airlines. And then shortly after there, that, the Nationalist government had already receded to . And Chennault joined them in . So we all shifted out of Hong Kong to, to . The British were in a, shall we day, in a little bit of a squeeze there. There, on the Chinese mainland, subject to take over by the Communist but they wanted to remain there and have some accommodation with them. So they weren’t exactly sympathetic to the Nationalists. And that was part of the reasons everything Nationalist ( )…Wallace: Shifted.
Grundy: …. And the Communists were most favored in . And we, the thing became a
great legal battle between CAT and the Communists over all these airplanes and shops and materials and things like that. The residue of C.N.A.C. And it was battled in the courts in Hong Kong and in the courts in . Finally it was, and that was conducted by, there was a number of these CAT companies. There was CAT, Civil Air Transport, which was a Chinese airline. There was another company called, by the way the, Chennault partner was Whiting Willauer. He was a prominent lawyer from up, say an type lawyer. Pretty well connected. He’d been a high government official in the aid program to and so forth. But he setup these various companies. It was, Chennault was o-, ostensibly the head of it, but Chennault or rather well, there was the creator or organizer of it from a legal view point. And there was Civil Air Transport the Chinese airline and there was CAT, Incorporated. Not CAT, Inc. but CAT, Incorporated a American, corporation. And there was also a CAT company called, CAT, Inc. [Wallace laughs] And that…Wallace: That’s a lot of CATs in the same…
Grundy: CAT, Inc. these, these are the registered actual corporate names.
Milligan: Yeah.
Ca. 30 minutes
Grundy: They’re shortened up or called something else sometime. But these are
the legal entities. And that third one was called CATI, C-A-T-I. So everybody called it CATI.[laughing]
Grundy: Was CAT Air, CAT there, and CATI here. [laughs] And they were the ones
that were conducting the legal battle over the assets. And finally they won an appeal council in after losing Hong Kong courts, lower, lower courts in . They finally prevailed and they took all the assets and took them to and sold them.Milligan: So these were all civilian air? All civilian air?
Grundy: Beg your pardon.
Milligan: They were all civilian air, airports or airlines? They didn’t…
Grundy: They…
Milligan: They weren’t…
Grundy: They were an aviation company.
Milligan: Right.
Grundy: Yeah. Not, I don’t believe they were registered as an airline, but an
avi-,aviation company. The other two Civil Air Transport and CAT, Incorporated and if you can imagine the, lets see at that point I was chief engineer and I ran a big depot in southern , about nearly six thousand employees. And it maintained the airline fleet of CAT and CAT, Incorporated, it also did contract work for the U.S. Air Force, and occasionally for other people like Pan American Airways, Northwest Airlines, Cathay Pacific in . They even, Varig in sent airplanes to us. But, if you can imagine a situation of two CAT in the same geog-, geography operating air operations and using the same people and the same airplanes, and getting them fixed at the same place, and trying to keep the books straight…[Milligan laughs]
Wallace: Ah, no. Incredibly confusing.
Grundy: Confusing a Chinese airline and a American airline, and all these
company. And I had such an awful time when I was chief engineer, getting the cost chart to the right airline and the right company and the…I couldn’t keep track of it myself…Milligan: Right. [laughs]
Grundy: I really don’t expect a mechanic down there to punch his clock exactly
the right way.Milligan: So when did you, when did you take over? Was it still CAT when you…
Grundy: I, I was elected
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