Howard Deering Johnson

In the 1950s and 1960s, Howard Johnson’s rose to become the first and largest American restaurant chain in the industry. The company’s familiar orange roofs and white steeples covered much of the U.S. highway system. Colloquially known as "HoJos," it was also a leader in the development of roadside lodging. 

Howard Johnson (1897-1972) began his restaurant venture in 1925 in a single location in Quincy, Massachusetts. Seeking better financial opportunities, he bought a combination drug store, newsstand, and soda fountain. Soon noticing the popularity and profitability of ice cream, he developed his own formula with nearly twice the butterfat content of other ice creams, with a creamier consistency, not like hard, hand-dipped ice creams at the time. Needless to say, folks lined up to buy his ice cream. "HoJos" were eventually known its twenty-eight flavors.

The rise of highway travel also elicited the rise of crudely-made billboards. Howard Johnson elected an upscale approach to make his buildings stand out with memorable signage. On top of a historic New England-style white building was a bright orange roof that was visible in the daytime and floodlit at night. He topped it off with a steeple reminiscent of a New England church or city hall, a weathervane, and added the “Simple Simon and the Pieman” neon sign. Later modernizations dropped the nursery rhyme characters. The beautiful Howard Johnson's at left was located in Queens, New York City, in 1940.

By the 1950s, the company expanded operations by opening hotels, then known as Howard Johnson's Motor Lodges, which were often located next to HoJo restaurants. Johnson also owned and operated “company stores,” using franchising only when money was tight. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, it had become the largest restaurant chain in the U.S. with over one thousand owned and franchised Howard Johnson’s restaurants.

Lacking the vision of the previous business CEO, handing over a business to a second generation can spell doom for a company. Under the leadership of the son, Howard B. Johnson, his father's legacy of first-class dining and lodging fell to the wayside. Howard Johnson's no longer stood alone in the restaurant and lodging universe. By 1980, the once-great company was in dire straits through mismanagement and cost-cutting from a guy who wanted no further future ties to the business. For a $360 million profit, H.B. sold the company to Britain’s Imperial Group. Their six-year ownership saw further decline, which became an embarrassment to the industry. All hotels and company trademarks, including those of the former restaurant chain, have been owned by Wyndham Hotels and Resorts since 2006 as Howard Johnson by Wyndham. In the following fifteen years, the Howard Johnson name dramatically diminished.

A Television Transition

The new television medium offered a career shift for some movie character actors. Many were kept busy, becoming a household face if not a name.

Richard Erdman (1925-2019) was an American character actor appearing in more than 160 films and television productions, mostly in supporting roles. Known for his expressive face, he was adept at drama or comedy. He kept busy as a voice artist for a number of animated shows later in his career. Starting out with Warner Bros in the mid-Forties in uncredited roles, the Enid, Oklahoma native later made an early impact opposite Dick Powell in Cry Danger (1951), tapping into his talent for delivering dry quips. This led to a few minor military roles, most notably in Stalag 17 (1953). That same year, he was a co-pilot in, The Steel Lady which concerns a crew that crash lands in the Sahara desert.

Though appearing in a few films through the Sixties, his mainstay became the small screen, often as humorous or quirky individuals. Erdman played a garage mechanic in sync with a corrupt administration's small town, in a 1958 Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode, The Crooked Road. In a 1963 The Twilight Zone episode, A Kind of a Stopwatch, (above) he famously played an obnoxious blow-hard who is given a timepiece that can halt time. He guest-starred in a wide variety of popular shows, among them were six appearances on Perry Mason, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., I Dream of Jeannie, The Beverly Hillbillies, That Girl, The Six Million Dollar Man, One Day at a Time, Lou Grant, Quincy, M.E., Cheers, and Murder, She Wrote. Near the end of his career, Erdman gained renewed fame with his fifty-three appearances as Leonard in the comedy series Community (2009–2015).

16,000 Hours of Flight Time

 

Lieutenant Colonel Fitzhugh Lee "Fitz" Fulton, Jr. (1925-2015) stands next to fellow test pilot, Colonel Joseph Cotton, with the North American Aviation XB-70A Valkyrie in the background at Edwards AFB, California in the Sixties. Upon his retirement from NASA, Fulton had flown more than 16,000 hours in 235 aircraft types. But his flying days started much earlier during World War II. 

In 1946 Fulton participated in Operation Crossroads, the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. He made 225 sorties flying a Douglas C-54 Skymaster four-engine transport during the Berlin Airlift, and then the Douglas B-26 Invader light attack bomber during the Korean War. Fulton graduated from the Air Force Test Pilot School in 1952. He served as project test pilot for the Convair B-58 Hustler supersonic bomber and flew it to a World Record Altitude of 85,360.66 feet during 1962. He flew the B-52 “mother ships” for the X-15 Program from Edwards, AFB.

Fulton continued as a research test pilot for NASA, flying as project pilot for the YF-12A and YF-12C research program. He flew all the early test flights of the NASA/Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft that carried the space shuttle prototype, Enterprise.