3: Jimmie Mattern’s Heart Stops
For weeks and weeks, Jimmie Mattern was lost. He was flying around the world, in the fall of 1933, in an endeavor to break Wiley Post’s record. He had reached Siberia and apparently it had gobbled him up. Then there came the news that he had been found. Some Eskimos rescued him, cared for him, and took him down the river to a seaport where he was able to secure passage home. I was one of his American friends fortunate enough to meet him first. He was being flown back to New York by a Canadian pilot. Regina, Saskatchewan, was the place. Newspaper accounts had blown up the privations he had endured, so I expected to see him thin and wobbly looking. On the contrary, he was looking better than I had ever seen him.
Did his heart ever get up into his mouth? It d
