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Show WHO'S NEWS THIS WEEK I - I By LEMUEL F. PARTON (Associated Newspapers WNU Service.) NEW YORK. It will come hard to think of Gen. James H. Doo-little Doo-little as the Jimmy Doolittle who used to be the bantamweight boxing r champ of the Top Boxer, Racer, Paciflccoast. Air Stanter He's But there's , no mistake. Now Gen. Doolittle The newiy elevated general, nominated by President Roosevelt, is none other than the weather-beaten, tanned, wrinkled, rumpled, bandy-legged roughhouse fighter and flier of a few years back. He has grown gray in the air, and much of his hair has been wafted out into the wind-stream, wind-stream, since the days when he first became known as a speed demon. He won't be long in opening up his own fighting front, somewhere, somehow judging by the way he did the same in a boxing match in which we once saw him. His father, a carpenter and prospector of Alameda, Calif.f took his family to Alaska and there young James bucked blizzards, bliz-zards, mushed with sourdoughs and got generally case-hardened for his latter adventurous career. Back in the States, he enlisted In the army air service. Outside loops were to him just like skipping the rope and he quickly became be-came the army's crack stunt-flier and racing pilot, instructing rookies at San Diego. He studied at the army's technical school at Dayton, Ohio, and later enrolled at the Massachusetts Mas-sachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1925, he won the Schneider cup for the army, hitting a speed of 232 miles per hour. These exploits of his daredevil years qualified him for some hair-raising hair-raising adventures in demonstrating demon-strating American planes to foreign governments. In 1928, showing off fighting planes in Chile, he fell from a window ' ledge and broke both ankles. The next day, when a competing German pilot went aloft to give his plane a sales workout, Doo little had himself lifted into the cockpit of his plane, with his broken ankles tied to a rudder bar. Then by clever and hazardous hazard-ous maneuvering he forced his, rival to the ground, and tore WT-a WT-a few snap-rolls arounrrUie iT . peaks of the Andes. His stunt brought to the Curtiss company one of the largest contracts ever awarded to an American company. T3ARNEY OLDFIELD, the auto- L) mobile racing driver, pulled up In a race to change a tire. There was a bit of bungling on the job. r -a tl i- l His French Esprit The Thing m e c h a n . c That Slams Out spoke up: n. . "Meester Piers in Jig Time 0 1 d f i e 1 d, what zis crew needs is esprit." "Go out and buy one!" bellowed Barney. "We gotta win this race." It's like that in war. We can't buy the "esprit," although we are fanning up quite a lot of it. Somehow Some-how we've got to get the teamwork. In the meantime, there is observable observ-able in these parts a serial demonstration dem-onstration of fast' double-play teamwork team-work between management and labor, la-bor, which is heartening. We cite the George Rogers Construction Con-struction Co., demon pier-builders, who recently finished a 700-foot pier and shipway in 43 working days 25 days, or more than 30 per cent, faster than any previous record for a job of this type. This company has been slamming out similar piers since 1869. It is crucially important war work, as on these piers, fighting ships are repaired or remodeled. There's no involved incentive plan for employees. The workers work-ers are old-line shipbuilders who know what they are building build-ing for. George W. Rogers, grandson of the founder of the firm, and now its head, says of his workers: "At mass meetings meet-ings of the various shifts on the job the men themselves have helped provide the driving force required to maintain the record-breaking record-breaking schedule." Mr. Rogers studied engineering at Cornell university, with no intention of ever being a "dock-walloper," as he calls his occupation. He went to Cornell and won his letters in basketball, bas-ketball, football and track. When his father died, he took up the family business. In the last war, he served in the navy as a deck officer on a battleship, battle-ship, and did convoy duty and saw action with submarines. With the outbreak of this war he tried to get back in the navy, but they offered him three stripes and a desk and he decided he would be more useful in kicking out piers in a hurry which is an old family custom. He lives in Forest Hills, and has two daughters, daugh-ters, one 19 years of age and the other 21. They are studying in one of the defense projects, learning to be motor mechanics, dismounting and assembling engines. |