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Shared note |
John Paul Riddle was the Son of T. M. Riddle and Bessie A. (Ferrell) Riddle
and Grandsone of Samuel R. Ferrell & Lydia Jane (Tiller) Ferrell. Riddle was a
Pikeville, Ky native, an early aviator and a leader in the fields of air cargo
and aviation education. The following was taken from an obituary in the Lexington-Herald-Leader
(Lexington, Kentucky) newspaper - Wednesday April 12, 1989. Riddle, trained as a pilot in the Army, began his career in aviation
education in 1926 at Lunken Airport in Cincinnati, when he and T. Higbee Embry,
a stockyard owner, founded the Embry-Riddle Flying School.
The school's first students were pilots for the nation's first package
express business. In 1927 the school won one of the first federal air mail
contracts. The company was incorporated two years later as part of the
Aviation Corporation of Deleware, later known as AVCO. That company, in turn,
gave birth to American Airways, known today as American Airlines.
Riddle went globe-trotting with Howard Hughes and dined with the Prince of
Wales.
The partnership with Embry dissolved, but Riddle kept the school going.
In 1934 the re-formed Embry-Riddle school opened a charter seaplane service in
Miami and a new flight school at Miami Municipal Airport.
During World War II, Embry-Riddle operated three schools in Florida and
one in Tennessee, training thousands of pilots from the United States and
Britain. The school was moved to Daytona Beach in 1965 and renamed
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 1970. It now has campuses in Daytona
Beach and Prescott, Arizona.
In 1943, Riddle opened a technical school of aviation for the Brazilian
Air Ministry in Sao Paulo. In 1946 he began training civilians at the Riddle
Inter-American Institute. The year, Riddle Airlines, an air cargo carrier,
began operation in Miami. He retired in the early 1960s.
Riddle is survived by two children, Tandy of Livingston, Montana, and John
Paul Jr. of Los Angeles and four stepchildren, Robert Pardee and James
Strickland Pardee, of Aspen Colorado, Christopher Pardee of Oxford, England,
and Adele P. Cunningham of Winchester, Mass. (end of Obit)
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