Hunting down the ghost of a man long gone takes dedication–and fortification–and surely this was a man who would appreciate the drinks taken in his honor. The last steps of Donald Douglas (the man responsible for founding Douglas Aircraft Company and the team that created the DC-3) took place in Southern California. He’d spent much of his life there; I felt honored to trace his path.
But something led him from his longtime home near the ocean in Santa Monica to the deserts of Palm Springs…from the tacks of a lifelong sailor to the sun-baked days of a man scuttled on dry land.
His first marriage took place at an Episcopal church in Riverside, in 1916, where I found echoes of that happy day in tacos and a beer under the mission architecture of the town promenades. His second (and last) marriage came under a cloud, not a year and a day past his divorce. In a motel room in Palm Springs and a Sinatra-era steakhouse nearby, a shot or two of Chivas on the rocks helped me commune with his encroaching melancholy, at a grand life now in denouement.
He’d left friends behind. He’d had to. And so he ended those days in the desert–but his ashes landed in the waters off Catalina. From ocean to dust to the ocean again, like a good sailor’s dreams.
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- Tacos and Negra Modelo under the shade in Riverside
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- Donald Douglas’ favorite tipple: a Chivas in a Palm Springs hotel room
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- The anchorage at Avalon on Catalina makes a safe harbor for sailors