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Actress Maureen O'Hara and her husband, airline pilot Charles F. Blair, during a stopover in Frankfurt on his retirement flight in July, 1969

Actress Maureen O'Hara and her husband, airline pilot Charles F. Blair, during a stopover in Frankfurt on his retirement flight in July, 1969 (Jim Cole/Stars and Stripes)

Actress Maureen O'Hara and her husband, airline pilot Charles F. Blair, during a stopover in Frankfurt on his retirement flight in July, 1969

Actress Maureen O'Hara and her husband, airline pilot Charles F. Blair, during a stopover in Frankfurt on his retirement flight in July, 1969 (Jim Cole/Stars and Stripes)

Actress Maureen O'Hara and her husband, airline pilot Charles F. Blair, during a stopover in Frankfurt on his retirement flight in July, 1969.

Actress Maureen O'Hara and her husband, airline pilot Charles F. Blair, during a stopover in Frankfurt on his retirement flight in July, 1969. (Jim Cole/Stars and Stripes)

Actress Maureen O'Hara and her husband, airline pilot Charles F. Blair, during a stopover in Frankfurt on his retirement flight in July, 1969.

Actress Maureen O'Hara and her husband, airline pilot Charles F. Blair, during a stopover in Frankfurt on his retirement flight in July, 1969. (Jim Cole/Stars and Stripes)

RHEIN-MAIN, Germany — Capt. Charles F. Blair, senior pilot with Pan American World Airways, is making his final official trip around the world before retirement. His most distinguished passenger is a lovely redhead named Maureen O'Hara, his wife.

Behind the captain lie more than 10 million miles of flying in more than 35,000 hours with the Navy, the Air Force and commercial airlines. He is a brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve.

Blair, Miss O'Hara and a planeload of passengers landed here Friday morning for a brief stop on their way to Beirut, Lebanon.

How much this valedictory trip means to the charming movie star is shown by the fact that in order to accompany the skipper, she took a leave of absence from Miami where she is engaged in filming "How I Do Love Thee" with co-stars Jackie Gleason and Shelley Winters, as proof, perhaps of "how she doth love him."

In her brief stay at Rhein-Main, Miss O'Hara had a few pertinent remarks to make concerning the trends in movie making, particularly the wave of nudism sweeping through the industry.

Her objection to it, she said, is that it isn't necessary; that it stems from unimaginative writers, writers who are not able to create good drama, and who use nudism as a cover-up for their literary shortcomings.

As a flying captain's wife, she also had one suggestion for the improvement of comfort in the air. Her thought: There should be two compartments, one for smokers and the other for nonsmokers.

"That would enable those of us who don't smoke to travel these long distances without bothering — or being bothered by — those who do."

The Blair-O'Hara itinerary will carry them back to New York by way of the Near East, India, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Japan, Honolulu and San Francisco. Miss O'Hara will then resume her work on the film.

Turning to Captain — or General — Blair, you find other distinctions in addition to his being married to a celebrity. In May 1951 he made the first single-engine jet flight over the North Pole. A few months after this feat, he set a nonstop record in an P51 Air Force Mustang fighter from New York to London, in 7 hours and 48 minutes, later flying the same plane from Norway to Fairbanks, Alaska, over the Pole.

Blair is president and principal owner of Antilles Air Boats, a small line operating between Puerto Rico and the Virgin Is. lands. That is where he intends to "settle down," if that is the word, to devote his career to management.

In his spare time Blair has written a book, "Red Ball in the Sky," which tells many of his adventures in the air.

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