FORTUNE MADE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 November 1940, Page 8

FORTUNE MADE

NEW ZEALANDER’S SUCCESS ENTERPRISE IN AVIATION. AMERICAN PAPER'S ACCOUNT. The story of how a New Zealander made a fortune in America is told in the "Los Angeles Times" of November 17, 1940. Out of a German prison camp into the Central American jungles . . . . shot and blinded in one eye .... A dim beginning for the success story of Lowell Yerex. World War flyer who ran 1 nothing into a fortune .... There is no future in aviation. Yerex thought, so he quit .... broke . . . . bumpy weather on the ground . . . . back in aviation .... sickening tailspins out of jobs .... His vision of the future began to take shape .... he flew pianos through the air with the greatest of ease over jungles where Indians had hauled them in tropical sweat by hand . . . . MACE MILLIONS. Yerex’s friends say today he has made at least 2,000,000 dollars as president and principal stockholder of an air transport company blanketing Central America with planes and landing fields nine years after he went there with 25 dollars in his pocket. Last year Yerex’s company, officials say, carried 12,000 tons of freight, more than any other airline in the world, in addition to mail, express, extra baggage and approximately 65 000 passengers. Yerex, a middle-sized man. 45 years old, graying, with glasses, a compact .body and good, strong hands, says little and the little he says he softpedals. HAILS FROM WELLINGTON. The start was ambitious enough but not new. At 16 in his Wellington (New Zealand) home he thought the United States was the place to make a fortune. So he came here to study and went to Valparaiso University in Indiana. Five years later he was graduated into the midst of World War No. 1. “I was a British subject,” he says. “So I enlisted in the Royal Flying Corps in Canada, got my training, was shipped across, was commissioned a lieutenant, shot down three Germans, was shot down twice myself.” VISIT TO HONDURAS.

“In 1931,” he says, “I got a chance to go to Honduras with three American boys going there to start a flying business with a small plane that could carry three passengers.” The boys couldn't pay Yerex’s salary and, in lieu of pay. he kept acquiring an interest in the plane until he owned it. Within that first year after arrival in Honduras he owned three small planes and and a tri-motor worth altogether 30,000 dollars. He built up to that figure ferrying passengers and freight all over the Central American jungle tops. In October, 1940, he moved into the big time, a recognised success at last in the United States where he had sought to make a fortune and failed. The American Export Airlines made a deal with him to take over his company, he remaining as its president and at the same time making him a vicepresident of the parent company with a large block of stock to boot.