Barnstormer and Charles Lindbergh's oldest friend (1905-1982) who served as a consultant for the 1953 film version of The Spirit of St. Louis. TLS signed “Bud,” one page, 8.5 x 11, October 4, 1971. Letter to Alden Whitman of the New York Times, in full: "I make you a promise that the next anecdotes will be clean and pretty, not smudged, erased and scribbled as this one is and the other have been. We have found a good stenographer who needs to obtain extra earnings in her spare time. We can afford it and we also can afford to have someone known to you, re-type the previous anecdotes [this one too] if you know of such a person. Send us the bill and a check will be in the return mail. Now that things have gone this far, and if you can take it, I am resigned to completing the whole batch. It would help though, if I could stem [ha-ha] a tendency to violate all grammatical rules. In putting words on paper something happens and old faces, names not thought of for years and years; little details like the flags blooming in a forgotten garden, all come back to mind's television. While that is happening, and it isn't imagination, but memory; the words flow, expressing the feelings of that long ago in the words I used then. It's awful! So I have my problems. [I can't spell either!] I hope you like this story of an early air show. Slim will remember this one, but maybe not precisely as I do. After all, I flew the 'pick-off' airplane where I could view everything. He had the harder job. Actually we made five, not three try to make that plane-change. The anecdote tells enough with only three." Gurney has made a few handwritten emendations to the text. Includes a typed 8-page manuscript of the referenced anecdote entitled 'A year of Thirty Seconds,' which also bears several handwritten emendations by Gurney. In fine condition.
