Pyle not dead – lives forever, senator says
WASHINGTON (UP) – Ernie Pyle’s senators paid tribute to him today.
Sen. Raymond E. Willis (R-Indiana) reminded the Senate that Pyle was born and reared in Indiana.
“Indiana,” Sen. Willis said, “is proud to claim Ernie Pyle as our noblest contribution to the cause of the preservation of freedom.”
Sen. Carl A. Hatch (D-New Mexico) from the state in which Mr. Pyle maintained his home – at Albuquerque – claimed him, too.
“Ernie Pyle is not dead,” Sen. Hatch said. “He was not killed by Japanese bullets. He shall live wherever the story of brave fighting men is told anywhere in the world.”
But though Mr. Pyle was born in Indiana and lived in New Mexico, he was claimed by everybody.
Everywhere in the Capitol, secretaries, elevator boys, policemen as well as lawmakers, were talking about Ernie Pyle. An elevator boy said: “You know, the servicemen would have elected him President.”
Pyle death shocks Aero Club head
Knew Ernie before he started rambling
Wednesday, April 18, 1945
The death of Ernie Pyle was a great shock to Clifford Ball, president of the Aero Club of Pittsburgh, and Mrs. Ball, who were intimate friends of the Pyles for 16 years.
Mr. and Mrs. Ball met Ernie Pyle and his wife Geraldine, or Jerry, in 1929 when they went to Washington on their honeymoon.
Became close friends
“Ernie then was aviation editor of The Washington Daily News,” Mr. Ball recalled. “I was arranging for an airmail line into Washington and he came to see me, bringing Mrs. Pyle with him.”
Started roving job
Mr. Ball said:
We became very close friends, like brothers and sisters. We visited each other for years and corresponded frequently.
This is how Ernie came to be a roving reporter. As aviation editor, he wrote human interest stories about people who fly. Then they made him managing editor and he stopped writing. When 18 out of 22 subscribers in one small community stopped the paper because he wasn’t writing anymore, the management decided to make a roving reporter out of him.
When he left for overseas the first time, he came here to get his outfit and Mrs. Ball went with him while he shopped.