Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man by Mary L. Trump; Page A

however, was possible because Donald used his connections to do her a favor. For decades Elizabeth worked in the same job at Chase Manhattan Bank that Fred had arranged for her. Donald was enabled from the beginning, every one of his projects funded and supported by Fred and then by myriad other enablers right up to the present. Other than a brief stint at a New York securities firm after graduating from college, Robert worked for Donald and then his father. Even Fred was not entirely self-made, since his mother had started the business that would become Trump Management.
    Freddy had put himself through flight school in college, defied his father (which he would spend the rest of his life paying for), and had no support from, as well as the active contempt of, his family.Obstacles aside, he had been determined to apply to TWA as many times as necessary. He made it on the first try.
    In the 1950s and ’60s, the vast majority of incoming pilots had received their training in the military; a typical training class had twenty students: four from the air force, four from the navy, four from the army, four from the marines, and four civilians. At twenty-five years old, Freddy was one of twelve men accepted into the airline’s first 1964 pilots’ class. Ten of them had received their training in the military. When you consider that there were no flight simulators and all the training was done in the air, the achievement was all the more staggering. Freddy was finally reaping the rewards of all of those hours he’d logged at the airfield while his fraternity brothers were partying.
    In those days, air travel was at the height of its glamour, and at the forefront of that trend was Howard Hughes’s Trans World Airlines, the favorite of the Hollywood glitterati. TWA provided limousines to the gossip columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons to ferry them to and from the airport; the resulting publicity made everyone want to fly TWA. One of the largest carriers in the world, TWA flew both domestically and internationally. The captain was God and treated accordingly, and thanks to Hughes’s penchant for beautiful women, the stewardesses all looked like movie stars.
    The reactions pilots got from passengers as they walked through the terminal, the admiring stares, the requests for autographs, were all new to Freddy and a welcome change from Trump Management, where he had struggled and failed to gain respect. The gleaming airports stood in stark contrast to the dark, unwelcoming office and dirty construction sites he’d left behind in New York. In place of bulldozers and backhoes, rows of 707s and DC-8s glimmered on the tarmac. Instead of having all of his decisions second-guessed and criticized by his father, on the flight deck Freddy had the controls.
    Freddy moved his young family to Marblehead, a small harbor town forty minutes northeast of Boston’s Logan Airport on the Massachusetts coast. They rented a ramshackle cottage set among an eclecticmix of houses that circled the village green not far from the sprawling harbor, where Freddy kept his “yacht,” a beat-up Boston Whaler.
    May in Marblehead was idyllic. Freddy loved the flying. There was a lot of socializing, with barbecues and deep-sea fishing excursions. Almost every weekend, friends came up from New York to visit them. After a month, though, Freddy started to struggle with the schedule. He was often at loose ends when he wasn’t in the cockpit. Linda noticed that he started drinking more than everyone else—something that had never been a problem before.
    Her husband didn’t confide in Linda anymore, wanting perhaps to shield her, so she wasn’t privy to the details of the conversation he’d had with Fred back in December. Linda didn’t know about the constant barrage of abuse Freddy was receiving from his father in New York through letters and phone calls. But his friends knew. Freddy told them, with a note of