Other Activities
During this period, Mantz carried out a number of "mercy" flights including transporting a deep sea diver to the Mare Island Navy Yard where a decompression chamber was able to save his life, flying 15 Mexican fishermen to safety after their boat began to break up and assisting 53 trapped firefighters in the Santa Barbara mountain area by dropping supplies. Mantz had to fly low through an inferno in order to make the drop. After Tom Mix's accident and death, Mantz was also chosen to fly the body of Mix home.
In 1937, a few months before she vanished over the western Pacific ocean, acting as a technical advisor, Mantz tutored Amelia Earhart in long-distance flying and navigation (and had accompanied her as a co-pilot on the aborted first attempt of her world flight).
Air racing also became a passion for Mantz in the late-1930s. He entered his Lockheed Orion in the Bendix Trophy transcontinental dash from Los Angeles to Cleveland, placing third in 1938 and 1939.
Read more about this topic: Paul Mantz
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“If it is to be done well, child-rearing requires, more than most activities of life, a good deal of decentering from one’s own needs and perspectives. Such decentering is relatively easy when a society is stable and when there is an extended, supportive structure that the parent can depend upon.”
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“Minds do not act together in public; they simply stick together; and when their private activities are resumed, they fly apart again.”
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