Eddie Rickenbacker

Rickenbacker was born Edward Rickenbacher in Columbus, Ohio. He was the third of eight children born to German-speaking Swiss immigrants, Lizzie (née Liesl Basler) and Wilhelm Rickenbacher. Later in life, he changed the spelling of his last name to Rickenbacker and adopted a middle name, Vernon.

His father worked for breweries and street-paving crews and his mother Lizzie took in laundry to supplement the family income. In 1893, his father owned a construction company. With a loan from Lizzie's parents, the couple purchased a lot and built a small home at 1334 East Livingston Avenue, 2 miles (3.2 km) southeast of downtown at the edge of the city limits in 1893. The house lacked running water, indoor plumbing, and electricity. This is where Edd, as he was called by his parents, spent his childhood.

Growing up, Rickenbacker worked before and after school. He helped in the garden where the family grew potatoes, cabbages, and turnips and cared for the family's chickens, goats, and pigs. He earned money by delivering papers, setting up pins at a bowling alley, and selling scavenged goods. He gave most of his earnings to his mother but spent some on Bull Durham tobacco, a habit he picked up from his older brother Bill.

As a child, Rickenbacker was accident-prone. Before entering school, he toddled into an oncoming horse-drawn streetcar and fell 12 feet (3.7 m) into an open cistern. His brother rescued him from a passing coal car twice. Once, he ran back into his burning school building to retrieve his coat and nearly paid for it with his life. Sixty years later when producing his autobiography, he found significance in these close calls. He came to believe that God had repeatedly saved him for a higher purpose.

Young Rickenbacker had an artistic side and enjoyed painting watercolors of animals, flowers, and scenery. He tried to design a perpetual motion machine, but, his father berated him for wasting time on an invention with no purpose. He was also "sort of the leader" of the Horsehead Gang, with whom he smoked, played hooky (Playing hooky means to stay away from school, work, or another responsibility without permission), and broke streetlamps. With the Horsehead Gang, he constructed pushcarts that were a precursor to the Soapbox Derby. Once, the Horsehead Gang took a "roller coaster ride" in a quarry cart and his leg was run over and badly sliced. After the Wright brothers' first airplane flight, Rickenbacker tried to "fly" a bicycle outfitted with an umbrella off of his friend's barn roof.

The summer before Rickenbacker's fourteenth birthday, his father was injured in a brawl. After being hit in the head with a level, Rickenbacker's father was in a coma for almost six weeks before his death on August 26, 1904. His assailant was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to ten years in prison.

Though his older siblings Bill and Mary were working, Rickenbacker felt a responsibility to help replace his father's lost income. He dropped out of the seventh grade and went to work full-time, lying about his age to work around child labor laws. He worked eight different jobs during the next two years. While working at the Oscar Lear Automobile Company in 1905, he took an engineering course from the International Correspondence School. Chief engineer Lee Frayer took Rickenbacker under his wing, giving him more responsibility in the workshop.

Two months later, when it came time to compete in the 1906 Vanderbilt Cup race, Frayer brought Rickenbacker to New York as his riding mechanic. After two practice runs, their engine overheated and they failed to get to the starting line for their qualifying run.

Back in Columbus, Rickenbacker followed his mentor to the Columbus Buggy Company as a chief testing engineer, supervising upwards of a dozen men in his department. The sixteen-year-old Rickenbacker's hard work and mechanical acumen impressed Harvey S. Firestone, his new employer. Firestone chose Rickenbacker for special assignments, including troubleshooting in Atlantic City and demonstrating at the 1909 Chicago Automobile Show.

Later that year, Firestone sent Rickenbacker to Texas to figure out why the new Frayer-designed engines were overheating. Rickenbacker solved the problem and stayed on to head up Columbus Buggy's Dallas agency. At eighteen, he was the chief engineer, experimenter, demonstrator, mechanic, and salesman. During this time, he served as a chauffeur to the visiting William Jennings Bryan, getting his picture and his cars in the newspaper. He made three sales as a result. In March 1910, Firestone sent Rickenbacker to direct the Upper Midwest Agency out of Omaha. At nineteen, Rickenbacker was in charge of six men, covering sales, distribution, and maintenance of Firestone-Columbus automobiles in four states. He earned $125 per week (equivalent to $4,300 in 2025).

Rickenbacker met Adelaide Frost Durant, 5 years his senior, in Los Angeles before World War I. At the time, she was married to Clifford Durant, a racing competitor of Rickenbacker and the hard-partying son of William Durant of General Motors fame. Durant was also an abusive husband. Adelaide chose to get a hysterectomy to ensure she would bear him no children. Her father-in-law stepped in to allow her to live independently, buying her a comfortable home and giving her $220,000 in equities, half being GM stock.

Rickenbacker saw Adelaide again in New York in 1921 and was smitten. She finalized her divorce in July 1922, and the two were married on September 16, 1922, in Cumberland Presbyterian Church of South Beach, Connecticut. Following a seven-week honeymoon in Europe, the newlyweds set up home at Indian Village Manor in Detroit, Michigan. They adopted two boys: David Edward in 1925, and William Frost in 1928. Before the second adoption, the couple purchased a home in Grosse Pointe. In 1931, the family moved to Bronxville, New York. New York City was Rickenbacker's favored home base and remained the couple's primary residence for the rest of their lives, along with their second home in Key Biscayne. They also owned a ranch in Kerr County, Texas, in the 1950s. Both of their sons attended the Asheville School, where Rickenbacker served on the board of trustees.

On February 26, 1941, Rickenbacker was a passenger on Eastern Air Lines Flight 21 on a Douglas DC-3 airliner that crashed outside Atlanta, Georgia. The survivors were rescued after spending the night at the crash site. Rickenbacker barely survived being soaked in fuel and trapped in the wreckage. The press mistakenly announced his death.

In his autobiography, Rickenbacker gave a dramatic retelling of the incident. While he was still conscious and in terrible pain, he was left behind while some ambulances carried away the bodies of the dead. When he arrived at the hospital, his injuries were so severe that the emergency surgeons and physicians left him for dead for some time. The doctors instructed their assistants to "take care of the live ones". Rickenbacker's injuries included a fractured skull, a shattered left elbow with a crushed nerve, a paralyzed left hand, several broken ribs, a crushed hip socket, a pelvis broken in two places, a severed nerve in his left hip, a broken left knee, and his left eyeball was out of its socket. He was in critical condition at Atlanta's Piedmont Hospital for ten days. After four months in the hospital, followed by months of home care, Rickenbacker healed from his injuries and regained his full eyesight. Rickenbacker later noted the supreme act of will that it took to stave off dying.

Rickenbacker was an avid golfer, often playing at the Siwanoy Country Club course near his home in Bronxville. He is one of a very select few members who were granted honorary lifetime membership. He was also a member of the Los Angeles Elks Lodge #99. After he left Eastern Airlines, the Rickenbackers traveled for several years in the Orient.

In 1972, Rickenbacker had a stroke that left him in a coma for a short time. He recovered and traveled to Zürich, Switzerland, in July 1973, seeking medical treatments for his wife's failing vision. While in Zürich, Rickenbacker contracted pneumonia and died at the age of 82. His memorial service was held at the Key Biscayne Presbyterian Church with the eulogy given by Lt. General Jimmy Doolittle. He was interred in Columbus, Ohio, at Green Lawn Cemetery. When he died, Rickenbacker was the last living Medal of Honor recipient from the United States Army Air Service.

In 1977, Adelaide was blind, in failing health, and still grieving severely from the loss of her husband. She died by suicide via gunshot at their home in Key Biscayne, Florida, at the age of 92.