The Cloudbuster Nine by Anne R. Keene

Author:Anne R. Keene
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781683582083
Publisher: Sports Publishing
Published: 2018-03-26T04:00:00+00:00

The PR Machine

There were many who left fingerprints on the Pre-Flight publicity campaign. One of those people was William D. Carmichael, who’d made a pile of money on Wall Street and had raised millions for the university through the state legislature, gaining support from the captains of state industry, foundations and influential families.2 One of his disciples was Kidd Brewer, an officer who was too old to become a fighter pilot so he requested a desk job in a North Carolina spot where the “fighting was the thickest.”3

Long before Kidd ended up in the psychiatric ward and the state penitentiary for bid-rigging, he was the Pied Piper of the Navy press office. With the help of his editors, Leonard Eiserer and Orville Campbell, Kidd built a crack team of photographers and artists who churned out cartoons, branding Pre-Flight cadets as the Supermen of the war. He was also a charming entertainer, who held court with the most influential journalists of his era, and he protected the privacy of star cadets like Ted Williams.

In an official Navy portrait, Lieutenant Kidd Brewer stands on the bleachers of Kenan Stadium with his hands on his hips. He is directing a cameraman aiming a motion picture newsreel camera at the football field like a machine gun—and he went about his job as the Pre-Flight publicist just like he played football at Duke—having fun and taking in every single play.

In her mid-eighties, Kidd’s daughter Betty Brewer Pettersen was described by her cousin Benjamin Kidd Brewer as spirited, and prone to strongminded opinions. When I met Betty at a Mexican restaurant with flourescent murals near her home in Louisburg, North Carolina, she was soft spoken, with a quiet, demure laugh. Like most of the offspring of the Pre-Flight luminaries, she was mystified by her father’s stealthy history at the Pre-Flight school. During the war, Betty lived with her mother in Florida during the winter, spending summers on the Navy base, where her father bought her a little brown pony named Tony. She was about ten years old when her father and stepmother moved to 10 Oakwood Drive in 1942, two miles south of campus near the future site of Finley Golf Course. Neighbors included a host of athletes, including Ray Stoviak, an outfielder for the Philadelphia Phillies, along with Lieutenant Alexander McLeigh, a hand-to-hand combat instructor, who lived down the road.

Before I met Betty, she offered to give me a box of old letters written by her father when he was stationed in the Pacific and pictures from his years in the Navy that no one wanted. She considered throwing them away after a recent move but felt the timing of my call was providential.

In person, Betty bore a strong resemblance to her father; she was fair-skinned with sloping blue eyes, and a gentle, warm smile. Though she never said a word about her own athletic pursuits, Betty ranked among the nation’s fastest race walkers in her fifties, carrying on her father’s genetics. Betty said her

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