Barnes

—This is an appeal from the judgment in a divorce case by E. S. McKendry, the defendant and cross-complainant, against Pancho B. McKendry, his wife, more familiarly known in the history of air flights and desert land proprietorship- as Pancho Barnes. Mrs. McKendry was .almost completely successful in the trial of this domestic litigation; she obtained a divorce on the grounds of adultery and extreme cruelty, resisted the cross-complainant’s request for a divorce for himself, and secured by decree practically all of the property as to which the parties claimed an interest.

The record shows that Mrs. McKendry filed the original complaint on August 16, 1962, in which she charged mental cruelty as a ground for relief. The pleadings show that the parties were formally married in June 1952, although both conceded that they had lived together as husband and wife “without the benefit of clergy” since about February of 1946. Both had been identified with flying; Pancho Barnes was successful as one of the early women fliers in this country, and E. S. McKendry was engaged in airplane operation in the army and commercially for a period thereafter. The record indicates that in 1946 Pancho…