Gunboats aid defense
Hart explains value of craft in action around Bataan
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The Pittsburgh Press (April 8, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
TUCSON, Ariz. – I suppose she might be termed a neat little trick, this Esther Henderson. She sure ain’t bad to look at, and to top it all off, she’s got brains. She’s just the kind of girl some good man should come along and marry, and that’s just what Chuck Abbott did, damn his hide.
This Esther Henderson makes just about as nice a column as I’ve run onto in a long time. If you want to hear a story of a pretty girl who made good, this is it. I’ll start at the beginning and lead you up to it.
She came to us in Oak Park, Ill., just a couple of jumps more than 30 years ago, I would say. Her mother died about the time she finished high school, so she and her father moved to the resort town of Alexandria, Minn.
Esther was pretty and she could dance like a fool, so she took some extra lessons and then went on the stage. For seven years she was a showgirl. She danced on Broadway, she toured with Franchot & Marco, she organized and traveled with her own act.
Her father went with her, always. They were great pals. He never really kicked on what Esther was doing, but it was a hard life, and it wasn’t what he raised his daughter to be.
So at the end of seven years Esther decided to cut loose while the cutting was good. She liked the life of the stage, but she saw she was about as far as she could go.
One morning in New York she got the telephone book, turned to the classified section, and started going through the lists to see what a girl without a college education could do to make an independent living in the world.
*Enrolls in photography course
The only thing she could find was photography. That day she went down and bought a camera, and enrolled in a three-month photographic course. Then for a year and a half she went on the road again – not dancing this time, but working as a lackey and helper in photo shops, to gain experience.
She worked in New York and New Orleans and San Antonio. All the time she was looking for a place to stop and set up in business. When they came to Tucson she decided this was it. She and her father had some money, so they bought a corner lot out in the residence section, two or three miles from downtown, and built a nice southwestern house on it. She built a studio and small dark room in the house, and then hung out her sign.
Esther decided not to start off humble and work her way up. First-class or nothing, was her motto. So she set her prices high, and her location was exclusive.
She waited six weeks for her first customer. When he finally arrived, Esther was so nervous she almost collapsed. But she didn’t, of course, and everything went off all right.
That was six years ago. Today Esther Henderson is one of the finest photographers in the Southwest. She has put her profits right back into the place. The house has been added to and added to. She has the best-equipped studio between Los Angeles and Kansas City, and how do you like that for an ex-showgirl, out on her own?
Accepts two sittings daily
She is so successful that now she accepts only two sittings a day, five days a week. No matter how badly you want your picture taken, you fit yourself to her hours and her schedule, or else you wait. And she takes four whole months off in the summer time!
The studio – portrait work – is her bread and butter. That’s where the money really comes from. Her pin money comes from, what she does on week-ends and in the summer, which is to rant out over the desert in a station wagon and take outdoor Western pictures, which go to magazines and roto gravures and such.
Esther’s father died two years ago. She carried on alone without companionship. Less than a year ago she married Chuck Abbott. I’ll tell you about that tomorrow.
They are living a life that seems to me ideal – and to them, too. They have simply harnessed their energies and abilities along the right line. They are both sincere and deeply attentive to their arts, but they see no sense in being a slave to anything, so they aren’t.
Their station wagon is equipped with bed rolls and camping equipment. On week-ends they go far into the desert, camp out and take pictures. In the summer time they drive to remote places in the Southwest, camp out under the stars for weeks at a time, have more fun than a box of monkeys, and come back with a cache of beautiful and saleable pictures.
Right now they are just taking off for a two-week trip down the west coast of Mexico. And, in June, they are leaving to spend the whole summer in Mexico, clear down deep into Mexico. Neither has been there before, and they’re as thrilled as children at the prospect.
Those are the material success facts of this remarkable girl. Tomorrow I’ll try to tell you what she’s like as a person, for she’s really a little buzz-saw on wheels.