Frank Glasgow Tinker - Later Years and Death

Later Years and Death

Eventually, Tinker fell victim to combat stress reaction due to the constant combat. After the war, Tinker was a guest speaker in New York on the radio program “We the People,” discussing his feats in the Spanish Civil War. He wrote a number of articles including a series for the Arkansas Gazette Magazine describing his voyage from St. Charles (Arkansas County) down the White and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans with his fox terrier. Tinker also wrote a series of serial articles for the Saturday Evening Post titled “Some Still Live.” These articles detailing his war experiences, were published in book form with the same name in 1938. Ernest Hemingway was notably a fan, lauding it to Maxwell Perkins. Hemingway's influence on the style is rather evident; the language is simple but full of human emotion while the war scenes are full of life and the text creates colorful images for the reader.

However, soon after the book was published, Tinker died, a purported suicide by a gunshot to his head in a Little Rock hotel .

The reasons for his death are still controversial and may relate to the harsh treatment he received from the FBI, due to his support of the Republican cause. Tinker asked to return to the US Navy or US Army as a pilot but he was rejected. He even threatened to return to Spain to continue fighting. At the end, he was haunted by the thought he had betrayed his comrades and himself. His colleague Albert John Baumler, nicknamed "Ajax" (from his name acronym A.J.), proposed joining the American and other foreign pilots then flying for the Chinese Nationalist Air Force. His signed request was found next to his death bed with an empty bottle of whiskey. On his tombstone, the local priest engraved the phrase in Spanish: ¿Quién Sabe?, meaning "Who knows?"

On July 11, 2009, near the centennial of his birth, relatives, admirers and the Grand Prairie Historical Society participated in an observance and toast at Tinker's gravesite in DeWitt, Arkansas.