Flying Career
Merrill began his aviation career in earnest when he purchased a war-surplus Curtiss JN-4 Jenny in Columbus, Georgia in 1920 for $600, flying it at air shows through the 1920s briefly appearing with the Ivan Gates Air Circus in the mid-1920s. He eventually turned this into a career as an air mail pilot, flying the Richmond to Atlanta night route. By 1930, Merrill held the record for flying the longest cumulative distance and became the highest paid airmail pilot, earning $13,000 in 1930 at ten cents per mile.Eddie Rickenbacker later called him the "best commercial pilot" in the United States. Unlike some of his peers, Merrill was a deliberate and careful pilot, so well regarded that many celebrities (his friend Walter Winchell and even General Eisenhower during his 1952 presidential campaign) specifically requested him as a personal pilot. Merrill always would chalk up his successful flights more to luck than skill.
A later compatriot, Merton Meade, related an anecdote that summed up Merrill's flying "luck." "Dick often said he'd rather be lucky than good. When Eddie Rickenbacker owned Eastern he always insisted on Dick flying the airplane whenever he had to travel. Dick always told this story: 'But Captain, you've got a hundred pilots on the line better than me.' 'I know, Merrill, but you're the luckiest son of a bitch I've got, and I'd rather fly behind a lucky pilot than a good one any day!' Typical self-effacing comment by Dick… I doubt there ever WAS a better airline pilot than Dick Merrill."
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