The Rarest Zippo Lighter

The Ernie Pyle Memorial Lighter

The Lighter:

Ernie Pyle left the light carrier USS Cabot, in Okinawa, at the end of February 1945. A few months later he was killed on the island of Ie Shima when a bullet from a Japanese machine gun hit him in the left temple below the rim of his helmet. Pyle was a friend of George Blaisdell, the founder of the Zippo Lighter Co. Following Ernie’s death, George sent lighters to the sailors of the USS Cabot in Pyle’s memory.

The Man:

Ernie Taylor Pyle: August 3, 1900 - April 18, 1945

Ernie Pyle was an American journalist and war correspondent who is best known for his stories about ordinary American soldiers during World War II. Pyle is also notable for the columns he wrote as a roving human-interest reporter from 1935 through 1941 for the Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate that earned him wide acclaim for his simple accounts of ordinary people across North America. When the United States entered World War II, he lent the same distinctive, folksy style of his human-interest stories to his wartime reports from the European theater (1942–44) and Pacific theater (1945).

Pyle won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for his newspaper accounts of "dogface" infantry soldiers from a first-person perspective.

At the time of his death in 1945, Pyle was among the best-known American war correspondents. His syndicated column was published in 400 daily and 300 weekly newspapers nationwide.

President Harry Truman said of Pyle, "No man in this war has so well told the story of the American fighting man as American fighting men wanted it told. He deserves the gratitude of all his countrymen."

Echoing the sentiment of the men serving in the Pacific theater, General Eisenhower said: "The GIs in Europe––and that means all of us––have lost one of our best and most understanding friends."

Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who frequently quoted Pyle's war dispatches in her newspaper column, "My Day," paid tribute to him in her column the day after his death: "I shall never forget how much I enjoyed meeting him here in the White House last year," she wrote, "and how much I admired this frail and modest man who could endure hardships because he loved his job and our men.

Ernie Pyle is one of the few civilians ever to be granted a Purple Heart.

Personal Thoughts:

I have huge admiration for Ernie Pyle.  It is hard not to when you read his writing. He was a thoughtful and gifted man, and maybe one of greatest friends of the American Soldier. I have loved and collected lighters all my life, and to have these two worlds intersect is powerful to me. There are very few objects in this world that were never sold, but only gifted. I find George Blaisdell’s gift and tribute to Ernie Pyle moving. This simple act of kindness to Soldiers that knew Ernie speaks volumes about George Blaisdell. I hope both of their legacies last the test of time, and for that reason I share this artifact. I hope that it touches others and opens up an appreciation and desire to learn more about their history.

Where to see one:

For the first time ever, the Zippo museum will have one on Display! In celebration of the museum’s 25th year, there will be one on display from March 2022 - June 2023.