BORN 1887 • MISSING 1925
Alvin “Ace” Holder was born to Henry and Ginny Holder on a farm in Olathe, Kansas, in the winter of 1887. As an only child, from a very young age, he was tasked with many chores on the family’s simple subsistence farm. His father would earn most of the family’s income by sharecropping for the much wealthier J.R. Dunham, who owned a much larger neighboring plot of land and a small dairy.
In 1896, when Alvin was just 9 years old, his mother was struck down by consumption. Without his mother to mind him, he began accompanying his father to work on the Dunham farm. Henry’s grief at the loss of his beloved wife led him to heavy drinking.
Just as young Alvin watched as his mother was taken by tuberculosis, within a short two years, he also watched as his father was taken by alcoholism.
During this time, Dunham and his wife Clarice, who were unable to have children of their own, formed a great fondness for Alvin and happily took the boy into their home after his father was gone. The success of the farm allowed him to purchase a steam thresher and, eventually, a gas tractor. He also designed and built a few machines of his own: a chain-driven drag conveyor for cleaning the barn stalls and a horizontal paddled wheel to spread fertilizer and compost onto the fields.
A precocious boy, Alvin was enthralled by watching Dunham perform repairs on the farm equipment and was always eager to help and get his hands dirty. However, on more than one occasion, Alvin’s curious nature led to mischief, and he was punished for dismantling things he shouldn’t have.
Always a risk-taker, Alvin soon found that life in Kansas had grown stagnant. As soon as he was of age, he joined the Army Signal Corps and found himself in the Aeronautics division. Initially working with balloons, he was soon introduced to what would become a consuming passion: airplanes.
Whether behind a plane’s yoke or the wheel of a car, Alvin couldn’t help but push every machine to its limits. And when those limits were surpassed, his mechanical prowess always allowed him to fix and often improve on their design. This combination of intelligence and cavalier attitude did not go unnoticed by his superiors, and he quickly climbed in rank. Soon he was instructing new pilots, and by the time war broke out in Europe, he had become a squadron leader. According to his war record, Alvin was responsible for downing twenty-one German planes in lone aerial combat, a feat that earned him the moniker “Ace.”
After the armistice, Alvin returned to Olathe and the Dunham farm, but the war had left him with a hunger for excitement. In search of new ways to satisfy his need for adventure, Alvin answered a newspaper advertisement in search of participants for an archaeological expedition in Peru. A new chapter in Alvin’s life was about to begin.
On January 23rd, 1925, while investigating the death of his friend, Jackson Elias, Holder and his companions, Nicodemus Ford and Jacque Brochet, stepped onto a train in Westchester County, New York, bound for the Sing Sing Correctional Facility, where they were to follow up on more leads. They were never seen again.
Peru: Episode VII • Peru: Episode VI • Peru: Episode V • Peru: Episode IV • Peru: Episode III • Peru: Episode II • Peru: Episode I
