The Family Firm 1958

Dad was a Cadet 1st Lieutenant enrolled in the R.O.T.C. program at Yale University when he filled out his application to work at the CIA. He was hoping to edit or interpret written data "in a field pertaining to Army matters". His previous job experience included the 1955 summer he spent as a roustabout with Barnum and Bailey Circus and two summers as a handyman at the Block S dude ranch in Elk, Wyoming. Still Dad had reason to hope he'd get the job because both his uncle and father had worked at The Agency.

His uncle was Tracy Barnes, a former war hero who four years earlier managed the covert overthrow of the democratically elected president of Guatamala. In 1961 he was still the "golden boy" of the CIA when he helped plan and oversee the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, an attempt to oust Fidel Castro.

My grandfather ran the Psychological Warfare Workshop at the agency. He hired a bright group, but as Evan Thomas writes in his book The Very Best Men "he seems to have recruited from the Princeton Tiger, his college humor magazine." He brought on board the writer Finis Farr and the legendary practical joker Hugh Troy. One propaganda stunt they come up with was to drop extra large condoms --labeled "medium" in English--on the Soviet Union.

The psywar staff did carry out one memorable propaganda stunt, funding the animated version of George Orwell's Animal Farm (1954). They managed to change the ending of the story to give it a distinctly anti-pig ( and therefore anti Communist) ending. My grandfather helped the CIA buy the rights to Animal Farm by introducing Orwell's widow to Clark Gable.

But if Dad thought he'd have an easy time getting accepted into the family firm, he was sadly mistaken. In P.S. Wilkinson his alter ego takes a lie detector test and "fails" questions about his sexuality. It ends with a physical by a lisping physician.

"You look very young. How old are you?"

P.S. felt the hair rising on the back of his neck. There was something horrible about the man's voice. It's tone. "Twenty-four," P.S. said.

You don't look that old."

A shiver ran through him, and P.S. started to sit down.

No, no!" the doctor protested. "Don't sit down yet. Let me look at you."

P.S. remained standing where he was. His skin felt cold and damp.

"My, you're tall?" the doctor said. "Are you long all over?"

Mission Beyond Darkness, 1945

This print by renowned aviation artist Robert Taylor is one of many that can be found at www.roberttaylorprints.com


At the end of the First Battle of the Philippines, on June 19, 1944, United States Navy planes from Task Force 58 attacked a Japanese fleet. They sank at least one carrier and four tankers and damaged several other ships. Our losses were ninety six planes and forty nine men.

The attack occurred late in the afternoon amid a barrage of such intense anti-aircraft fire the ships below appeared to be on fire. From out of the clouds came a horde of Japanese fighter planes. Those who survived enemy retaliation then faced their greatest challenge: returning to that little sliver of home that is a carrier flight deck, in darkness, while running out of fuel.
Sixty four men took off in thirty four planes from Group 16's flagship, the USS Lexington.The book my grandfather wrote with Philip Reed, Mission Beyond Darkness, is an account derived wholly from statements by the survivors.




On that moonless night, Admiral Marc A Mitscher broke with protocol and had every ship in his task force switch on their lights to guide the planes home. So heavy was the stampede to the landing strips, plenty of exhausted pilots had little choice but to ditch.
Not all of them ditched within sight of the ships.
After cartwheeling in the waves 22 year old Ensign Edward Wendorf came to consciousness to find himself upside down in a Hellcat filling up with water. He managed to kick himself away from the sinking plane and into a raft. Filled with nausea from all the fuel he swallowed, he caught sight of something afloat.

From Mission Beyond Darkness:

The vague object drifted closer. It's a piece of wreckage from my plane, that's what! Soon it was close enough to touch. He was about to reach for it when he saw that it was moving. It was a shark. Another followed it, and another.
Wendorf became a madman. He pounded the water with his shoe, then threw it at them, screaming and cursing. The fins glided off, but turned and came back until they were three feet away. His screaming made him retch again, and his retching upset the raft tilt. He was terrified that it would upset, or that the sharks would puncture it and sink it. He thought of his pistol. The next thing that moved, he shot at. He fired eight times before nausea overwhelmed him again, and when the spasm passed, the sharks had disappeared...
He curled up and tried to sleep.
It'll be dawn soon.
Dawn was six hours away...



Though nine planes were lost all but four men survived. That was due in part to Admiral Mitscher's decision. He had brought thousands of men and a billion dollars worth of ships into enemy waters. He knew if he lit up the ships any Japanese torpedo plane or bomber or submarine in the area could hardly miss.
On the other hand, the prospect of several hundred planes fumbling for those narrow decks in the dark meant sure catastrophe.


Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher

It's important to note Mission Beyond Darkness was published in 1945, a war time book. It was produced in full compliance with the Government and was even printed with a seal of a bald eagle holding a ribbon that read "Books are weapons in the war of ideas."
After writing this book, Grandpa Joe worked for the Central Intelligence Agency with a concurrent commission as lieutenant colonel in the air force, giving him the unusual distinction of having been an officer in all three major branches of the armed services.

The Irritants of Grandpa Joe , 1986-1989

My grandfather collected trivia, curios and exotica. He enjoyed the astounding, the bizarre, the offbeat and the occasionally bawdy. In his eighties, he wrote these tidbits down in two collections.

Time Magazine said of Hodgepodge, published in 1986, "the covers of this one are too close together".

So he followed it up in 1989 with Hodgepodge Two aka Gallimaufry To Go.

Among the curious data he offered ( The Dallas Zoo has two yaks, Yack and Yill), he added a chapter in each entitled Irritants.

The Duke of Richmond had little patience for the foolish and the petty. He preferred to live his life as it was meant to be lived. In the Victorian Era.

Among the irritants he listed:

- Clip-on coat hangers in hotel closets, silently implying that the guest is a thief.

- Waiters and waitresses who tell you their names.

- Clowns in the background of a TV news film who lean into the camera and make faces and wiggle their fingers in their ears.

-Idiots who call you early in the morning and ask in astonishment, "Oh did I wake you?"

-Vogue words and phrases such as gutsy, state of art, flight attendant for stewardess, and all other such pretentiousness, pilot error, ball park figure (meaning a rough estimate in round numbers, whereas real ball-park figures are exact: "Attendance today was 31, 449")

-Modern packaging, which requires an ax and a blowtorch to open the box or envelope--e.g., the salted nuts they give you on airplanes.

Even the grand-apple does not fall far from the tree so I feel I must add my own irritants:


-Snapping chewing gum within hearing distance of any other human being.

-Bank tellers, cashiers and airline ticket takers who insist on calling you by your first name ( which in my case is Joseph, or even worse, Joe).

-Duck boats and duck boat horns in the hands of anyone who has disembarked from a duck boat.
-Waiters who always point to the most expensive thing on the menu when you ask them what's good.

-Drivers who slam the brakes on an interstate to watch a paper cup drift by.

-"Kiddos"


-And I don't care much for the goons who shout things and make faces during live TV reports either.

Grandpa Joe: The Duke of Richmond 1904-1993

St George Bryan II, J Bryan III, Katharine L Bryan , Joan Bryan , CDBB
FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA VIRGINIA

Joseph Bryan was a journalist and writer who was born into the influential Bryan family of newspaper publishers and industrialists. He edited and wrote for many national publications, including the family-ownedRichmond News LeaderandChicago Daily Journal, as well as Parade, Time, Fortune, Town and Country, Reader's Digest, the Saturday Evening Post, and the New Yorker. He wrote numerous articles on travel, humor, and celebrities, some of which evolved into books or reappeared as portions of his books. He served in all three branches of the U.S. military: first as a lieutenant in the field artillery of the army following his graduation from Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, then in the navy during World War II (1939–1945) as a lieutenant commander assigned to naval air combat intelligence in the Pacific, and later as a lieutenant colonel in the air force. He also worked for the Central Intelligence Agency from the late 1940s until 1953. He lived in Washington, D.C., and at Brook Hill, an ancestral home in Henrico County.

Joseph Bryan was born on April 30, 1904, at Laburnum in Henrico County, the son of Joseph St. George Bryan and Emily Nelson Page Kemp Bryan and a grandson of the preservationist Isobel Lamont Stewart Bryan and of the Richmond industrialist and newspaper publisher Joseph Bryan (1845–1908). Known as Joseph Bryan III throughout his life, Bryan was educated successively at Chamberlayne School (later St. Christopher's School) in Richmond, Episcopal High School in Alexandria, and Princeton University, where he earned a BA in 1927. He edited Princeton's humor magazine, the Princeton Tiger, and was voted most entertaining and most witty man in his class and runner-up for best-dressed man and best-all-around man outside athletics.

Following graduation Bryan and several friends toured Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and India. From 1928 to 1930 he worked as a reporter and editorial writer for the Richmond News Leader and the Chicago Daily Journal, both published by his uncle John Stewart Bryan. The Great Depression made earning a living as a freelancer difficult and forced Bryan into frequent job changes. He was associate editor of Parade magazine in Cleveland in 1931 and 1932, then worked briefly for Time, Fortune, and the New Yorker, and from 1933 to 1937 was managing editor of Town and Country. From 1937 until he resigned in June 1940 Bryan was an associate editor of the Saturday Evening Post.

As a result of his Reserve Officers' Training Corps work at Princeton, Bryan held a commission as a second lieutenant and then lieutenant in the field artillery for several years following his graduation. In January 1942 he was commissioned a lieutenant commander in the navy and assigned to naval air combat intelligence in the Pacific. Reassigned to naval public relations in 1944, Bryant spent much of 1945 aboard the carrier U.S.S. Yorktown. From the late 1940s until 1953 he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency with a concurrent commission as lieutenant colonel in the air force, giving him the unusual distinction of having been an officer in all three major branches of the armed services. In 1953 Bryan was promoted to colonel in the air force reserve. He lived in Washington during World War II and until 1959, when through a complicated family trust he inherited the right to live at Brook Hill, an ancestral home in Henrico County.

As J. Bryan III he wrote about three dozen articles for Collier's, Reader's Digest, the Saturday Evening Post, and the Saturday Review of Literature during the 1930s and 1940s. After leaving government service he resumed his career as a freelance writer. From 1953 through 1974 Bryan wrote about fifty articles for Holiday magazine and numerous pieces for other journals. Other pieces Bryan published in national magazines included biographical works on the Aga Khan, the duke of Edinburgh, Britain's Princess Margaret, and Katharine Hepburn, and in 1965 he wrote a biography of John Armstrong Chaloner for the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. His only work of fiction, a short story entitled "First Patrol," appeared in Esquire in 1956.

Bryan's principal books included Mission Beyond Darkness (1945), written with Philip Reed about the U.S.S. Lexington in the South Pacific; Admiral Halsey's Story (1947), an authorized biography written with William F. Halsey; Aircraft Carrier (1954), based on a diary Bryan kept while aboard the U.S.S. Yorktown; The World's Greatest Showman: The Life of P. T. Barnum (1956), written for young readers; and The Windsor Story (1979), a dual biography of the duke and duchess of Windsor, written with Charles J. V. Murphy. He also published two volumes of short writings. The Sword over the Mantel: The Civil War and I (1960) features reminiscences and character sketches derived from his youth in Richmond, and Merry Gentlemen (And One Lady) (1985) contains memorable pen portraits of Fred Allen, Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, and other personalities of the Algonquin Round Table who flourished during Bryan's years in New York. His last two books, Hodgepodge: A Commonplace Book (1987) and Hodgepodge Two: Another Commonplace Book (1989), reflect his omnivorous reading, his love of travel, and his sense of humor.

Bryan married three times. On October 4, 1930, he married Katharine Lansing Barnes, of New York. They had two sons and one daughter and were divorced in 1954. On February 22, 1960, Bryan married a widow, Jacqueline Vandesmet, viscountess Guy de La Grandière, of Paris. She died on March 8, 1988, and August 28, 1991, he married Elizabeth Mayo Atkinson McIntosh, of Richmond. Joseph Bryan III died of cancer at his home in Richmond on April 3, 1993, and was buried with other family members in the yard of Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Henrico County.

Major Works
•Mission Beyond Darkness (1945), written with Philip Reed
•Admiral Halsey's Story (1947)
•Aircraft Carrier (1954)
•The World's Greatest Showman: The Life of P. T. Barnum (1956)
•The Windsor Story (1979), written with Charles J. V. Murphy
•The Sword over the Mantel: The Civil War and I (1960)
•Merry Gentlemen (And One Lady) (1985)
•Hodgepodge: A Commonplace Book (1987)
•Hodgepodge Two: Another Commonplace Book (1989)Time Line
April 30, 1904 - Joseph Bryan (also known as Joseph Bryan III) is born at Laburnum in Henrico County.
1927 - Joseph Bryan III graduates from Princeton University. While there, he edited Princeton's humor magazine, the Princeton Tiger.
1928–1930 - Joseph Bryan III works as a reporter and editorial writer for the Richmond News Leader and the Chicago Daily Journal, both published by his uncle John Stewart Bryan.
October 4, 1930 - Joseph Bryan III marries Katharine Lansing Barnes, of New York. The couple will have two sons and one daughter but divorce in 1954.
1931–1932 - Joseph Bryan III is an associate editor of Parade magazine in Cleveland, Ohio.
1933–1937 - Joseph Bryan III is managing editor of Town and Country.
1937–June 1940 - Joseph Bryan III is an associate editor of the Saturday Evening Post.
January 1942 - Joseph Bryan III is commissioned a lieutenant commander in the navy and assigned to naval air combat intelligence in the Pacific.
1944 - Joseph Bryan III is reassigned to naval public relations.
1945 - Joseph Bryan III spends much of the year aboard the carrier USS Yorktown.
Late 1940s–1953 - Joseph Bryan III works for the Central Intelligence Agency with a concurrent commission as lieutenant colonel in the air force.
1953 - Joseph Bryan III is promoted to colonel in the air force reserve.
1953–1974 - Joseph Bryan III writes about fifty articles for Holiday magazine and numerous pieces for other journals.
1956 - Joseph Bryan III's only work of fiction, a short story entitled "First Patrol," appears in Esquire.
1959 - Joseph Bryan III moves from Washington D.C. to Brook Hill, an ancestral home in Henrico County.
February 22, 1960 - Joseph Bryan III marries a widow, Jacqueline Vandesmet, viscountess Guy de La Grandière, of Paris.
March 8, 1988 - Joseph Bryan III's second wife, Jacqueline Vandesmet, viscountess Guy de La Grandière, dies.
August 28, 1991 - Joseph Bryan III marries Elizabeth Mayo Atkinson McIntosh, of Richmond.
April 3, 1993 - Joseph Bryan III dies of cancer at his home in Richmond and is buried with other family members in the yard of Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Henrico County.

New York Times Obit

Joseph Bryan 3d, 88, an Author
By MARVINE HOWE
Published: April 06, 1993

Print

Joseph Bryan 3d, an author and editorial writer, died on Saturday at his home, Brook Hill, in Richmond. He was 88.

The cause was cancer, said his wife, Elizabeth Mayo Atkinson McIntosh.

As a lieutenant commander in air-combat intelligence in the United States Navy in World War II, Mr. Bryan saw action in the Southwest Pacific, the South Pacific and the Central Pacific.

His best known book, "Mission Beyond Darkness" (1945), written with Philip Reed, is a dramatic account of the events and emotions experienced by the gunners and pilots of Air Group 16 aboard the aircraft carrier Lexington in the first battle of the Philippines.

Another account of action in the Pacific, "Admiral Halsey's Story" (1947), written with Adm. William F. Halsey, first appeared as a series in The Saturday Evening Post. Mr. Bryan's "Aircraft Carrier" (1954) is a record of life aboard the carrier Yorktown from January through April 1945.

His last work, "Hodge Podge Two" (1989), is a collection of observations and quotations. Other books include "The Windsor Story" (1979), about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.