The airplane was lavishly decorated and featured a beautiful French Hostess dressing the part. I still remember, Simone! She acted and dressed the part of one of the Can-Can girls, (only her skirt was long and flowing). This flight featured, Beer, Cigars, Pretzels and (Famous) Herkimer Cheese.

The flight was always sold out and I enjoyed several trips aboard. Not as a passenger, but as a guest ACM. I commuted from Albany, NY to Boston in order to fly my trips on TWA.

Years, later with a lot of irony, I missed by a few months owning this famous "Gay Nineties" DC-3, with the old faded Lamp still painted on the side of the aircraft.

A few years later after closing my flight operations I received a visitor at home asking a lot of very personal questions about Vern Pickup (like the truck). I learned through the grapevine (no secret is a secret very long), that Vern went to work for the CIA, and Air America. I never heard from Vern again.

Just a few years ago I was visiting with some friends at Long Beach airport and I mentioned his name. It was then that I was told a very sad story.

During the very last days of the fall of Saigon there are some vivid video clips of the mass exodus. In one of the more famous video shots, there is a DC-3 going down with one engine smoking and on fire. The Captain of that DC-3 was my friend Vern Pickup, as good a pilot and close friend as any man could hope to meet.....Vern Pickup, flown West with honor.

"Gone but not Forgotten"..... the men, and women who flew the famous DC-3