Family
Actresses Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine are de Havilland's cousins; his father, Charles, and their father, Walter, were half-brothers.
In 1909, Geoffrey de Havilland married Louise Thomas, who had formerly been governess to de Havilland's sisters. They had three sons, Peter, Geoffrey and John.
Two of the sons died as test pilots in de Havilland aircraft. His youngest son, John, died in an air collision involving two Mosquitoes in 1943. Geoffrey carried out the first flights of the Mosquito and Vampire and was killed in 1946 flying the jet-powered DH 108 Swallow while diving at or near the speed of sound. Louise suffered a nervous breakdown following these deaths and died in 1949. In 1951, de Havilland remarried, to Joan Mary Frith, a divorcée. They remained married until his death.
Read more about this topic: Geoffrey De Havilland
Famous quotes containing the word family:
“The son will run away from the family not at eighteen but at twelve, emancipated by his gluttonous precocity; he will fly not to seek heroic adventures, not to deliver a beautiful prisoner from a tower, not to immortalize a garret with sublime thoughts, but to found a business, to enrich himself and to compete with his infamous papa.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–67)
“... a family I know ... bought an acre in the country on which to build a house. For many years, while they lacked the money to build, they visited the site regularly and picnicked on a knoll, the site’s most attractive feature. They liked so much to visualize themselves as always there, that when they finally built they put the house on the knoll. But then the knoll was gone. Somehow they had not realized they would destroy it and lose it by supplanting it with themselves.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“Though a family be a thousand, there can be only one in charge.”
—Chinese proverb.