BOY WHO WENT UP

Taranaki Daily News, 23 March 1935, Page 22 (Supplement)

BOY WHO WENT UP

AN EMBANKMENT DREAMER. A CAR FROM THE WAR. The life of Edward Henry Hillman, ended recently while he still hoped to have years of work before him in this world was a continuous struggle to a success to which all steps were cut by himself. , How often, as we pass some down-and out sleeping on the Embankment, do we feel that there, with a little encouragement, sleeps a hero. As a boy Edward Hillman slept on the Embankment; he never had a day s schooling, and he got his first job of binding brushes when he was a boy or nine. We are sure he bound them well; but, always willing to seek a new opening, he found it by enlisting m the Army and going to Malta as a band The war raised this self-educated lad to the rank of a sergeant-major, but left him without any wish to continue a career that seemed to him without prospects. He spent his war bounty on buying a motor-car, not for pleasure but for profit, which he found in letting it out on hire. It was the first step on the upward path, the first rung of the ladder of commercial enterprise. His profit went into a cycle repair shop, and when he had enough money he bought a motor-coach, and drove it himself with his son as conductor, between Romford and Chelmsford. He was a little before his time and the coach did not pay. The many fail, the few succeed. Edward Hillman was the kind to wrest success from failure. He hung on grimly though he was sometimes hard put to it to pay for his petrol, and two years after he had run the Chelmsford coach he owned a fleet of 200. Even that did not satisfy his restless mind. He still looked upward and saw that while scores might make fortunes or lose them in motorcoaches there were not so many to try to gain them in aeroplanes. So, undeterred by risks or the recollection of others who had failed, he sold his coaches and put his money into civil aviation. He started with a small fleet of aeroplanes running between Romford, Ramsgate, Margate, Broadstairs, and Clacton. When he owned motor-coaches he offered penny fare stages, when he ran aeroplanes he offered to take people at threepence a mile. He had a quick eye for advertisement, and engaged Mrs. Mollisdn as one of his pilots when he extended his plane service to France. He was ever a fighter, and fought the Traffic Commissioners and the Minister of Transport about the licence of one of his long-distance coaches, winning his case. His name will live as an outstanding example of one of the determined men who helped themselves.