John Wayne Woman!  

By John Dalton

The bus driver pointed excitedly at a large hilltop house with huge glass windows overlooking the aqua-colored Caribbean Sea, repeating over and over, "John Wayne Woman!" John Wayne Woman!"

My wife and I had arrived at the island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands on a Caribbean cruise and were going across the island to its principal city of Christiansted. While faster taxi service was available, we decided to take the local islander bus service so we could see the countryside. The bus was roughly three-fourths full of native islanders and one-fourth full of tourists from the ship.

Not only was the scenery beautiful, but we saw barefoot islanders walking with straw baskets balanced on their heads, filled with wares to trade at the market. The goods consisted of handmade sandals, clothes and even chickens.

I quickly forgot the sites and racked my brain in an attempt to decipher the driver's message, hoping he wouldn't run off the road or hit one of the natives walking along the shoulder. Then it hit me: "Maureen O'Hara!" Yes, the beautiful, feisty red-headed Irish actress who starred opposite John Wayne in many movies. Actually, in only five of her more than 30 films did she co-star with the Duke. However, their chemistry was so great many people really thought they were married.

Indeed in 1979, she appeared before the U.S. Congress and successfully petitioned for a gold medal to be struck honoring John Wayne as a true symbol of the American spirit and the ideals for which America stood. She said he had the same persona on or off the screen. The medal has the Duke's likeness on one side and simply says "John Wayne ­ American," as per her only request.

I then remembered that she had married the owner and chief operator of Antilles Airboats, which operated a flying boat air service around the Bahamas and the Virgin Islands. (He was retired USAF Brigadier General Charles Blair and a former chief pilot for Pan American Airways.) After moving to her favorite island of St. Croix from California, she went into retirement and helped her husband run the business.

In fact, after her husband's death in a plane crash near St. Thomas, she took over operating the business for a few years. Miss O'Hara became the first woman CEO of an American airline. After all, she played a pirate ship captain in The Black Swan. Eventually, she sold the business and came out of retirement to accept some new movie roles.

Ms. O'Hara was also a good singer and a good fencer as well. She once said she could out-fence Errol Flynn. Some of her other leading men were Sir Charles Laughton, Anthony Quinn, Trevor Howard, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Tyrone Power, Jimmy Stewart and even John Candy.

Out of love for her husband's aviation career, she helped dedicate a Seaplane Museum. She currently maintains homes in Arizona, St. Croix and her native Ireland, although she is a naturalized citizen of the U.S. Her own penned autobiography entitled, 'Tis Herself, tells much more.

She hopefully will celebrate her 88th birthday this year.

We never did see Miss O'Hara; nor did we really expect to either. But we appreciated the driver's enthusiastic attempt to make the local bus ride more interesting and revive some memories of a real bold and beautiful actress known to many as "John Wayne Woman."