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LARRY DRUCKER
The Tycoon as an American  Mr Lawrence Charles Drucker -- a portrait by Stuart McCarthy a short biography by our correspondent, Stuart McCarthy exclusive for the Manchester Commercial Intelligencer September 1939 Full Name: Lawrence Charles Drucker Species/Gender: Great Dane/Male [Ancestry: German/Irish/Swedish] Date of Birth: 12 April, 1899 Place of Birth: El Paso, Texas, USA Parents: Earl William Drucker & Freda (formerly Gustavsson) Drucker Lawrence Charles Drucker is the eldest of three children born to Earl and Freda Drucker. Second oldest sibling is his brother, John Elias Drucker (b. 1901) who is currently studying law at Yale. The youngest of the three is his sister, Abigail Lois Drucker (b. 1906) who is the founder/manager of her own couture design house, "Looking Good", which is based in New York's Garment District on 39th Street and Sixth Avenue. Larry Drucker's father, Earl Drucker (b. 1866) is a very successful businessman who originally started out in the mid-to-late 1880s working as a "drummer" (travelling salesman) in the employ of a well-respected manufacturer of household appliances, Porter & Gould, whose head office is based in Chicago. He would quite often travel extensively by train to towns across the south-western United States promoting Porter & Gould wares to furniture and department stores catering to the middle-class trade. However, Earl had set his sights on much bigger things, and eventually did not find his job very fulfilling. He felt to restricted by his line of work. In 1892, after working for Porter & Gould for five years, he decided to quit his job, and set up his own business. He first made a name for himself by distilling and marketing his own brand of whisky. It was while working in this particular sideline that he developed his famous style of "sales pitch", which was going to come in very handy for him. However, it was when he started prospecting for oil in the Land Rush areas of Oklahoma, in 1895, that Earl Drucker started raking in the big money. On August the 9th of that year, he struck oil! In the following year, on July 1st, 1896, Earl founded his company, "Lone Star Oil". He went on to develop more oilfields throughout Utah, Louisiana, and his home state, Texas! Earl Drucker's reputation as a powerful oil baron was well established by the time his son, Lawrence (Larry) was born. When Larry was old enough, his father wasted no time at all in encouraging his son's enterprising spirit and showed him the ropes in setting himself up in a business. Young Larry took to profiteering like a duck to water! He made a few bucks by doing numerous jobs (e.g. raising heifer cattle, apple picking, selling magazine subscriptions, etc.). When he wasn't busy earning his allowance, he would put in some hard exercise working as a farmhand at the family homestead. Sometime around 1910, Earl Drucker had set up a college fund for his son, Larry. In the mid-1920's his father managed to get him a place in the Business College of the prestigious Harvard University. This was the place where Larry would meet his roommate and future business partner, Stanton Whitmore III (eldest son of the highly revered Wall Street financier, Stanton Whitmore II) who also happened to be attending the same business courses as Larry. Their personalities, though, could not be anymore different! Whereas, Stanton (who Larry affectionately referred to as 'Stan') was extremely reserved, Larry's character tended to be somewhat brasher. Yet the pair thought very much on the same wavelengths, and became the closest of friends during their time together at Harvard. Upon graduation in 1928, Larry Drucker and Stanton Whitmore decided among themselves to set up their own little business venture. The burgeoning age of aviation (along with the fledgling air travel industry that came in its wake) had totally captivated their imaginations. The pair of them were inspired to set up their own airline, "Trans- Continental Airways" (inaugurated on 26 October, 1928) whose fleet consisted of 24 Curtiss C-55 "Kingbird" monoplanes. Unfortunately, the company folded totally after just nineteen months, when Stanton was called to his father's side, as he had been appointed vice-president of the family-owned company. Other circumstances beyond their control contributed to the company's collapse. (The 1929 Wall Street stock market crash certainly didn't help matters any!) Bitterly disappointed, but not deterred, Larry got back up on his feet and dusted himself off. This time, he was more determined than ever to get his own airline business off the ground. Luckily for Larry, he had inherited his father's sharp business acumen (and his "silver tongue"), which stood him in good stead in his quest to seek financial backing for his new company. His persistence finally paid off in the form of "Union Airways" which came into existence on 31 August, 1930. Larry had acquired a sizeable fleet of twelve Lockheed 9-D "Orions", six Northrop "Gammas", and four Ford "Tri-Motors". Larry's father also came to his aid, by handing over a third of his Lone Star Oil stock to his son, which enabled him to finance his airline. Sure enough, from that moment on, Larry was to follow in his father's footsteps. He also set up a few oilfields of his own, in Utah. This set the foundations for his new company, Drucker Oil Ltd. By November, 1933, "Union Airways" had come quite a long way from its early days, and was re-christened "Drucker Airlines". During the following year, in a bid to bring the company's aircraft up to date, Drucker ordered and procured a fleet of Douglas DC-2 airliners. Never one to rest on his laurels, Drucker had an even more ambitious scheme. In May, 1934, he began drawing up plans to build the world's first "Flying Wing" jumbo-airliner. As well as selectively hand-picking a highly-skilled design team, he also brought in a group of engineers and designers from the Junkers works at Dessau, in Germany. (This was the same team who were responsible for designing and building the massive, 34-passenger civil transport plane, the Junkers G38ce in 1928 and 1929). The "Colossus" project would take a further five years to come to fruition. In the meantime, though, Drucker Airlines was beginning to expand its operations and started operating flights to the South Sea islands, which were fast becoming a popular holiday destination with many well-to-do American holiday-goers around this time. Another thing that can certainly be said for Larry Drucker is that his father's flair for showmanship had certainly rubbed-off on him. In 1939, to mark the launch of his "Pacific-American" services (reserved exclusively for the AP-97 "Colossus", of which five fully-operational craft had by then been completed), he pulled out all the stops to hold a lavish, no-expense-spared, private reception soiree for all the financial backers and other celebrities, at the Metropole Hotel in Golden Beach City (on Maui Island in the US Territory of Hawaii). Guests-of-Honour were Larry's long-time friend, Stanton Whitmore III, and Los Angeles-based Italian aviatrix-cum-Hollywood actress, Sophia Bianco, who had won the "Seven Islands Cup" air race a couple of days previously (of which Larry Drucker happened to be one of the main sponsors, and Mr. Whitmore an attendee). Needless to say, the event was an astounding success! More recently, though, ugly rumors regarding Mr. Drucker's alleged shady dealings have been circulated among the gutter press by some of his embittered business rivals, but he just takes all this with a pinch of salt. Although he likes making a fast buck just like the next multi-millionaire tycoon, he is certainly not without his own scruples, either! Larry currently resides at his ranch in Nebraska. He likes to commute on long-distance business trips in his private plane, the "Winged Stallion"--a specially modified Boeing Model B-14 "Clipper" flying boat.  As well as being the C.E.O. of his own companies, Larry is also part-owner of the "Gleason" hotel chain, which has about 400 establishments across the United States, and have begun to set up their first-ever branch off the mainland, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Another interesting sideline of his is his casino and nightclub, the "Sand Dollar", situated in the Intramuros area of the Philippine capital, Manila. Larry Drucker is married to Jessie May Drucker (his partner for seven years) and is father to a two-year old daughter named Mary-Louise.  |
