Chapter Four: Captain Jamie Mathewson

In 1919, Cecil Reed was traveling in South Africa when he met Captain Jamie Mathewson — a WWI flying ace of remarkable skill and irresistible spirit. Jamie’s passion for flight had begun in boyhood when he first saw a plane overhead delivering mail. When World War I was declared on June 28, 1914, twenty-two-year-old Jamie felt the call to serve and joined the South African Air Force.

Jamie began his training at Tempe under the Aeronautical Society of South Africa and was appointed Lieutenant by April 1914. His initial training was on a Paterson biplane (No. 36), powered by a 50hp Gnome engine. He and a group of South African officers were then sent to England for advanced training with the Royal Flying Corps at the Central Flying School at Upavon on Salisbury Plain. Of the original ten trainees, Jamie was among the five who earned their flying certificates.

On May 6, 1915, the South African Aviation Corps went into action with a fleet of six Henri Farman F-27s and two BE2C aircraft, used for reconnaissance and bombing missions in support of General Botha’s forces. Jamie’s bravery and extraordinary airmanship earned him promotion to Captain. When the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, he sought new opportunities — and found one when Cecil Reed made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Cecil offered Jamie the position of personal pilot for the Reed family — complete with a private hangar and airstrip to be built on the estate. Jamie accepted, moving to America at age 26.

The Reed Field hangar Cecil commissioned became one of the most distinctive structures on the estate. Expansive, with a massive sliding door at the front for aircraft, the left rear housed a tool room and workshop with a barn door leading to a saddle room and farm equipment storage. Jamie’s private quarters occupied one end — complete with a small yard and separate entrance. It was a seamless blend of functionality and comfort.

Jamie became, in every meaningful sense, a second father to Ervin. He taught the boy to think about the sky — how weather moves, how terrain shapes air currents, how a pilot reads the wind by watching the trees. He shared long stories of South Africa, of the bush and its wild animals, of the creatures he had encountered during his youth helping his family in their safari business. Ervin stored every word in his photographic memory, where it remained, vivid and retrievable, for the rest of his life.

It was Jamie who began affectionately calling Ervin “Turtle” — not with mockery, but with the knowing affection of a man who recognized that the boy’s deliberate pace concealed something extraordinary.