I was surprised to see that the article ended without revealing whether he made it, but apparently it's an excerpt from a much longer biography.

Wikipedia sort of answers that question but leaves open a ton of other questions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plennie_L._Wingo

Apparently Wingo published a memoir in 1982 under the title Around the world Backwards, and the new biography is called The Man Who Walked Backward: An American Dreamer's Search for Meaning in the Great Depression.