The Gripping True Story Behind a 1955 Bestseller

Rarely does a book come along that is intriguing, stirring, and ultimately satisfying, but the story of the New York Times 1955 bestseller, ‘The Lonely Sky,’ and its author, Jacqueline Hazard, is exactly that. The book is the true tale of Bill Bridgeman, a World War II pilot who, years later, became a Douglas Aircraft test pilot for the D-558-2 Skyrocket. The D-558-2, a rocket-powered plane that broke height and speed records, was the precursor to space exploration. Starting with Bridgeman’s entry into World War II, Hazard wrote: ‘After a year of training at Pensacola, my first official duty at the Naval Air Station was Officer of the Day. The day was December 7, 1941. The morning had begun gently, warm and fragrant, like most Honolulu mornings. Then, one hour after I had taken the duty on the week-end-deserted base, Sunday exploded.’ Bridgeman started the experimental testing at the Air Force Fight Center on the Mojave Desert with Douglas Aircraft in late 1940s. The fueling of the Skyrocket is explained in the cool, even voice that the public associates with modern-day pilots: ‘Into the underbelly of the airplane the minus-297-degree-below-zero liquid oxygen was introduced into one of the large twin tanks that sit two inches apart from each other. If the liquid oxygen should be contaminated, it would blow the plane, trailer, crew and spectators off the desert floor.’ A page later, Bridgeman notes ‘Once the very nervous hydrogen peroxide was in the Skyrocket a speck of dirt in the hydrogen peroxide tank or in any of the myriad tubes and lines, the little research ship would be blown to dust. Two models of the Air Forces’ X-1, our rival, the only other rocket airplane in the country’using identical fueling’had blown up in launching last year.’ The author of ‘The Lonely Sky’ was the daughter of a millionaire businessman, Jack Hazard, founder of the System Parking and Garages. At 18, Hazard became a reporter, writing film reviews for the Hollywood showbiz publication Box Office. Later, her father bought her the Malibu Monitor, a weekly newspaper, to give is daughter something to do, and ‘keep her out of trouble.’ She published and edited the paper, but soon met and married Paul Weaver. ‘I fell in love with the son of the publisher,’ Harzard says. With her husband now as her editor and Hazard writing features, they founded the Pacific Palisades Post in 1950, which was a rival to The Palisadian. (The two papers merged in 1960 to form what is now the Palisadian-Post.) Hazard interviewed local writers and celebrities, including Peter Graves, Christopher Isherwood, Thomas Mann and Leon Feuchtwanger. One day in 1953, Weaver asked her to interview Bridgeman, a Palisadian. ‘He had taken all of Chuck Yeager’s records away and was known as the fastest man on the earth,’ Hazard tells the Post today. ‘All of the magazines were writing about him, and I was ordered by my editor (and husband) to do a story.’   During the interview, she found Bridgeman circumspect, laid-back and steady.   ’He answered all my questions and I got a marvelous interview from the unflappable, suntanned legend,’ Hazard says.”When he read the article he called to tell me how much he liked what I had written and said it was closer to how ‘it really was’ than any of the other numerous articles written about him.’   In 1954, the Weaver marriage started to fray and Hazard separated from her husband of four years. ‘We parted lovingly,’ she says, noting that they would still see each other on occasion.   By then, Bridgeman had a book deal and needed a writer. ‘He could’ve chosen any of the journalists who had written about him, but he chose me,’ Hazard says. ‘I was petrified. I had never written a book, and by that time I had a big crush on him.’   She spent the next year interviewing engineers, rocket experts and aerodynamicists, as well as interviewing Bridgeman. ‘Our relationship was strictly platonic, but it was difficult for me because I was in love with him,’ Hazard says.   It is easy to see why women flocked to him. In ‘Lonely Sky,’ Bridgeman is painted as focused and intelligent; a searcher, a hero. Readers understand, through the detached reporting, that Bridgeman faced death each day because of the uncharted territory, including the effects of height and speed on man and plane. In preparing for a flight, Bridgeman’s fear is put succinctly in the book:   ’Three enemies. The Skyrocket, the unknown area and myself. Only one of them I had the power to control completely and I had to use that control well. My mind had to be prepared for any emergency and not be distracted by that emergency. But before the face of something I had no knowledge of, could I trust myself? I had planned as far as I could foresee, but beyond that I had to rely on my judgment at the moment that the unforeseen was met.’   When Skyrocket reaches 61,000 feet above the earth, which is out of radio contact range, Bridgeman says, ‘I have left the world. Perception is enormously exaggerated’black is blacker, white is whiter. Silence is more acute. It is the tender edge of the unknowable.’   He continues to climb to almost 80,000 feet. ‘It is a pure, immaculate world here.. . .It is as if I am the only living thing connected to this totally strange, uninhabited planet 15 miles below me. The plane that carries me and I are one and alone.’   Hazard, who had never flown, spent four to five days a week with Bridgeman over a year’s time that it took to write his story. ‘Dragging this stuff out of him meant I had to get into his mind and soul,’ she says.   Later, when she professed her love and told him that she had to quit writing the book because it was too hard, he responded, ‘Oh, come be a brave little soldier, don’t quit.’ She stayed, finishing the book. When ‘The Lonely Sky’ was published in the mid-1950s, it received rave reviews from every major media company. Time magazine wrote: ‘One of the year’s most fascinating adventure stories.’ Joseph Henry Jackson of the San Francisco Chronicle identified it as ‘a philosophical and curiously prophetic book.’ Reader’s Digest paid more money than any other companies for the rights to print the book in condensed form.   Hazard, who sailed to France before the reviews came out, had gone to visit ex-husband Weaver, who had a sloop anchored in the harbor at Cap D’Antibes, and didn’t know that her book had become a bestseller. When Hazard returned to the United States, she faced a great amount of acclaim, as well as some questioning: some wondered if a female could truly write the technical information in the book, and they queried Bridgeman regarding whether Hazard was really the author, to which he replied, ‘No, I wrote the book and she flew the plane.’   Bridgeman began to court Hazard. One day, he showed her the plans for his new home and asked her, ‘Where do you want your dressing room?’ Which was his way of asking her to be his future wife.   ’Why do you want to marry me?’ she asked, knowing that he could have his choice of women.   ’You’re a challenge,’ he replied.   They were married in 1957. In 1961, they had a child, Christopher. After a few additional years as a test pilot, Bridgeman switched careers, turning to real estate investment in Malibu.   Hazard Bridgeman wrote about her husband’s death in an e-mail to the Post: ‘In 1968, on a misty autumn Sunday afternoon, he was flying alone from San Pedro to Catalina Island in a Grumman twin-engine sea plane, when his plane dove into the Pacific Ocean.”When asked about the accident, she simply said, ‘It was traumatic.’   ’The Lonely Sky,’ which Hazard Bridgeman calls ‘a damn good book,’ is exactly that. The author is talented and one might wonder why she didn’t follow it with a second book.   ’I got busy living. I had a baby,’ she says, adding, ‘I was passionate about this topic and I couldn’t generate that same passion [for anything else]. What else has revved me up?’   Hazard Bridgeman was the co-founder and, until recently, the president of the Malibu Stage Company, which has produced critically acclaimed plays at its 99-seat Equity Waiver theatre. Three productions have gone on to appear off-Broadway in New York. Some of the productions have included ‘The Unexpected Man’ with Stacy Keach and Genevieve Bujold, ‘The Last Word’ starring Daniel J. Travanti, and ‘Speed the Plow’ with Harry Hamlin and Kathleen Quinlan.   In the mid-1990s Hazard Bridgeman moved to her late father’s 10-acre ranch in the center of Malibu, where she grows avocados commercially and hosts special events, weddings and receptions for charity groups and private organizations.’During the same period, she served as editor of ‘Huxley and God,’ a book of essays published by HarperCollins.   Bridgeman and her recently reissued book will be at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on April 24 and 25 at the UCLA campus at Booth 232, Zone B. The book can also be purchased at Village Books, and proceeds are earmarked for Doctors Without Borders.

Pacific Palisades resident Katie Bergin was honored for her service to the arts at Cornerstone Theater Company’s 10th annual Bridge Awards dinner on March 16.   Bergin and her partner, Aaron Paley, co-founders of Community Arts Resources (CARS), were among three honorees selected by the theater group to be recognized at the event, held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.   Cornerstone, named a top 100 charity by Worth magazine, has commissioned more than 50 playwrights, produced more than 75 new works, and trained thousands of students across the country.’For 24 years, Cornerstone has been transforming lives and building bridges between diverse communities through theater. Since founding CARS in 1988, Bergin and Paley have used the arts to bring communities together. Besides designing and overseeing cultural events and initiatives such as festivals, art tours, concert series, educational programs and rehabilitation of urban landmarks for public use, CARS consults with city governments and private developers on the uses of public space.’   CARS has designed festivals and other events for the Getty Museum, the City of Santa Monica, Disney Theme Parks and the California Endowment.’Most recently, acting under the direction of the National Endowment for the Arts and the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, CARS produced 19 events in nine days during the Festival Guadalajara, an international book fair at which Los Angeles was selected as the guest of honor.’The festival, held annually in Mexico, hosted some 600,000 visitors.   Bergin is producing the Santa Monica Festival on Saturday, May 8. She and her husband, John Mankiewicz, are longtime Palisades residents, along with their children, Molly and Jack.

Lonnie Geyer Resser has been named the full-time volunteer coordinator at the Venice-based A Window Between Worlds (AWBW), a nonprofit organization that uses art as a means to help end domestic violence. A 2005 Palisades Charter High School graduate, Resser earned her bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University in health science, society and policy, with a minor in women’s and gender studies. As an intern with March of Dimes, she oversaw the first-ever March for Babies Relay event in Sacramento last October. ‘I’m passionate about the health and well-being of women and children and I’m thrilled with the opportunity to coordinate a wide range of volunteer opportunities and events,’ Resser said, adding that AWBW was founded by Palisadian and PaliHi graduate Cathy Salser. Believing that through creative expression, battered women and children could gain a sense of renewal and power, Salser partnered with a local domestic violence organization to pilot the first ongoing Windows project to provide weekly art workshops at a shelter. Salser, who was painfully shy as a youth, felt that art allowed her to ‘speak and be heard.’ She started her nonprofit after leaving her job as an art teacher in 1991 and traveling through 18 states, from California to Massachusetts, from one domestic violence shelter to the next, living and making art with battered women as well as paying for their art supplies. A fundraising event, ‘Art in the Afternoon,’ will be held on May 2 from noon to 4 p.m. at 710 Fourth Ave., #5 in Venice. Contact: lressser@awbw.org or 310-396-0317. To volunteer, visit www.awbw.org.

In what will no doubt make one fine Mother’s Day gift, Food Network star Giada de Laurentiis will sign her latest cookbook, ‘Giada at Home: Family Recipes from Italy and California’ on Friday, April 30, 5 to 7 p.m., at Village Books on Swarthmore.   The bestselling author and Pacific Palisades resident will share her favorite Italian dishes, from those inspired by her generations-old family recipes to more modern ones’ all of which capture her signature fresh, healthy, and simple style.   Since 2003, de Laurentiis has been married to Todd Thompson, a fashion designer for Anthropologie. The two had been dating since July 1989. The couple’s daughter, Jade Marie de Laurentiis Thompson, was born on March 29, 2008.   Since her debut on Food Network in 2003, de Laurentiis has been on the fast track to success. In 2007, she appeared as a presenter on the inaugural Food Network Awards and hosted a two-part Food Network special entitled ‘Giada in Paradise,’ featuring the two locales of Santorini, Greece, and Capri, Italy. De Laurentiis also made several appearances as a guest judge on the third season of ‘The Next Food Network Star.’   In 2008, De Laurentiis won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lifestyle Host and became a spokesperson for the pasta manufacturer Barilla. This year, she debuted a line of kitchen supplies in Target stores.   She also happens to be the voice of Paulette on the Disney Channel animated cartoon series ‘Handy Manny.’   Note: Because of the popularity of de Laurentiis, Village Books will close at 4 p.m. and re-open at 5 p.m., when strict rules will apply:   1. Books must be purchased at VB to be signed. If a book was purchased prior to event, the receipt must be shown at the door.   2. There will be two lines: one for prepaid books and one to purchase books. Pre-paid line will be given priority.   3. Books may be purchased in the store, over the phone, or via email.   4. Giada’s other books will also be available for purchase: ‘ ’Everyday Italian: 125 Simple and Delicious Recipes,’ ‘Giada’s Kitchen: New Italian ‘ ’Favorites,’ ‘Everyday Pasta: Favorite Pasta Recipes for Every Occasion,’ and ‘Giada’s   Family Dinners.’ ‘Giada at Home’ was released on March 30.   Contact: 310-454-4063.