MAVERICK: The Story of Robert Six and Continental Airlines

Robert Six quit school in tenth grade and left his wealthy family to go out on his own. He became a sailor, truck driver, soldier, pilot, rancher and hunter, but the 6'4"" swaggerer denies the soldier of fortune tales that gathered about him during the period of youthful wanderlust that took him to China for eighteen months. He bought his first plane at 22, in 1929, and by 1938 was president of Continental Airlines. Legends of Continental's early, moneyless days are woven with examples of Six's fire-eating temperament, sentimentality and nervous emotion. Even so, he had a persuasiveness that ""could have talked Herman Goering into working for El Al."" Continental has an unofficial slogan which describes Six as well as the company: ""Heads down, ass up, and CHARGE!"" Serling's anecdotes about Six are not so much tales of the high and the mighty as of a loner who refuses to lose intimate touch with his company's personnel and passengers. The author says that this is not an authorized or company biography -- but his admiration for Six is so great that it sure reads that way.