The first note of the upcoming Godfrey African
Safari was noted in the LA Times 17 February
1957 with flight pal none other than general
Curtis LeMay. The Times report said - The
Safari serpentined through French Equatorial
Africa under Godfrey’s leadership. They
overcame serious communications problems tobeam regular reports back home for his millionsof listeners. Godfrey and Friends achieved theheretofore unheard of feat of introducing
underarm deodorant to the people of the DarkContinent.
Godfrey (K4LIB) was not without hiscontroversary, FAA flight problems, Kenilworth
Hotel accusations in Miami plus personnel
problems not allowing any union in his NYCstudio.
As a boy Arthur had a variety of neighborhoodjobs, including mowing yards, weeding gardens,
mucking out stables and shoveling snow. Laterhe would say that he was grateful for having thiskind of boyhood background, he also enjoyed
the surrounding countryside with fields andstreams, below Hasbrouck Heights, theHackensack River where he trapped muskrats, the river was a good place to play and swim. Its
brackish waters teemed with blue crabs, perch, bass and a variety of other aquatic life.
Early in his childhood, his mother attempted to make a pianist out of him, by 1912 when he wasnine, she thought that she had succeeded, as he could play almost any piece by sight, but her son
remained her star pupil for only a year or two because of family financial difficulties finally forced
her to sell her piano. At his point she became a pianist at a local silent movie theater house. The 8
dollars a week she earned was not enough to keep the family’s bills paid and things went from worse
to worse.
By the time The read Head was 12, doing all kinds of odd jobs for the neighbors, both before andafter school. That didn’t leave much time for studies, but it did help keep the family together. Soonhe had a job as a delivery boy for a bakery that also carried groceries and dairy products He earned
50 cents a day at this job plus take home all the stale bread and near sour milk that his family could
eat. He soon developed a fixation about money.
Godfrey experienced the humiliation of his parents being evicted from the living quarters because
they could not pay the rent. He also felt the hurt when the local grocery refused to let his mothercharge even one more pound of hamburger. Later in life he always paid cash for everything that hebought.
At age 15 Arthur dropped out of Hasbrouck heights H.S. in his sophomore year and struck out on
his own in the world. He was soon shining shoes in NYC and also peddling newspapers on its
sidewalks. Continued on page two.

Before long the red haired freckled faced country hick had become a big city urchin. He slept on parkbenches and lived on three cent bowl soup and five cent hamburgers at Max’s Busy Bee Lunch
Wagon in downtown Manhattan. Pictured is Max at his Busy Bee Lunch wagon.
At age sixteen Godfrey was living for atime at the 23rd street branch of the YMCA
in Manhattan, there in 1919 he received aninvitation to participate in a musical thefollowing Sunday evening.
Godfrey hadn’t touched the piano for years
and to his dismay, he found that he could
not even play a simple scale or read musicalnotes. He had forgotten everything that his
mother had taught him. Besides, his fingers
were stiff from manual labor and a lack ofproper finger exercises. He had lost histouch. There and then he learned the hardway, If you don’t use it, you lose it!
NAHF National aviation dot Blade..
Information
One day this talented boy would have
“Captain Arthur Godfrey” in gold leaf
inscribed under the left cockpit window on
the gift of a DC3 by Eastern Airlines! Plus he would literally fund the payroll at CBS with the influx
requests of commercial business of the art this gifted man had and America ate up and enjoyed, bothTV and radio. There was no end to the list of companies waiting to have Arthur pitch their business.
Entertainer, pitch man, ham operator, he was the best in his time.
W8SU 2009/2011