DEL.ICIO.USMuseum evokes good old days when workers felt more connected
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 04/19/08
Along with makeup tips and Bloody Marys, there was something a little bigger on the agenda at this week's meeting of the Delta Clipped Wings.
Discussion of their former employer's upcoming merger with Northwest Airlines was a hot topic at Thursday's luncheon, where about 60 women enjoyed food and fellowship at the Druid Hills Golf Club. Clipped Wings includes retired Delta flight attendants as well as longtime active ones.
 Rich Addicks/AJC | ||
| Former Delta flight attendants Carol Ellington (from left), Helen Cork, Iris Laster, Helen Thompson and Saundra Stratton try to identify flight attendants in a 1960s picture at the Clipped Wings luncheon at Druid Hills Golf Club this week. Former employees help keep Delta's history alive. | ||
 Rich Addicks/Staff | ||
| In the 1960s, Delta's flight attendants operated in an era where their lives and appearance were more controlled by the airline. Over the years, Delta workers have seen plenty of changes, the latest being plans to merge with Northwest. | ||
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Many are merger veterans themselves. Donna Wilson of McDonough flew with Northeast Airlines until her company was absorbed by Delta in 1972. She stayed with Delta an additional 30 years and became a dedicated member of the Delta family.
Seeing her old company disappear "kind of hurt," she said, "but we were glad that there was someone out there to save us."
Over the years, not every new adoptee has greeted Delta with open arms. When the airline acquired international routes from Pan American World Airways in 1991, Ellen Cleveland was part of a team that visited Pan Am's international bases to welcome them into the fold.
At Pan Am's offices in New Delhi, Cleveland was shocked to discover that the globe-trotting Pan Am personnel didn't have the highest esteem for their new Southern bosses.
"I was really surprised to have them react that they had no idea what this airline was," said Cleveland, a 25-year veteran, now retired, who was a flight attendant at the time. "We were goodwill ambassadors to comfort them, and [tell them] this was a great opportunity."
They were convincing evangelists. Though Delta went into the hole for the first time after the Pan Am acquisition, Delta employees had faith. "It was an extraordinary environment of mutual trust between the employees and management of the company," Cleveland said. "We were dedicated to them, and we believed they were dedicated to us."
History and hot pants
Today the company, sending similar missions to Northwest's Minneapolis hub, might have a harder time finding such eager salesmen, Cleveland said.
"It's not the culture that it was," said former executive vice president Bob Coggin, whose 42-year Delta career took him from cleaning planes to the executive boardroom. Yet Coggin and others, who saw the cohesive Delta culture become frayed after 9/11, predict that the merger will help revive that spirit.
Delta's is a history of mergers. When Coggin hired on, the company had just merged with Chicago & Southern Air Lines and the "livery" on the DC-3s that he helped wash was "Delta C&S." The company would merge with Northeast Airlines in 1972 and with Western Air in 1987.
Evidence of those past incarnations lives on in a hangar at the Delta headquarters near Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, home of the Delta Air Transport Heritage Museum. Here are a pair of hot pants, once part of the uniform for Northeast flight attendants. There is a desk from a Western middle-manager's office, its fir-tree legs carved in a rustic "log-cabin" style. And more artifacts turn up all the time.
"I got really excited when I found C.E. Woolman's business cards that had a crop-dusting photo on one side and his information on the other," said Marie Force, archives manager at the museum. Those cards showed Delta's humble agricultural beginnings.
'Culture has changed'
The airline's archives exist because Harriette Parker, a former editor of the Delta Digest company newsletter, saw history crossing her desk every day, some of it headed for the trash. She began keeping artifacts in a closet. Now the expanded collection fills two hangars.
The crown jewel is a Boeing 767 that takes up most of Hangar 2, modified to provide clearance for its giant tailfin. In 1982 three flight attendants thought it would be a good gesture to buy a new jet for their company. They started a campaign that eventually raised $30 million from employees, who presented their CEO with "The Spirit of Delta."
The interior of the aircraft is now part of the museum and includes displays of old uniforms, models of airplanes and even vintage serving ware.
This larger-than-life artifact contains history, but it also commemorates something more precious to longtime employees. "I was there when we presented that gift," Cleveland said.
Could that kind of largesse happen today?
"Hell no," she said. "The culture has changed entirely. It was a unique and wonderful thing. It was innocent, that we felt so strongly about our company."
Hoping for revival
Jane Hubbard, who retired from Delta in 2006 after 24 years in computer programming, strategic planning and training, said that some of the changes at Delta were caused by forces beyond anyone's control, including the cataclysmic events of Sept. 11, 2001.
Today, survival is a matter of learning "how to do a whole lot more with a whole lot less. How to do the drastic cost-cutting demanded while still trying to have good quality customer service," she said. "You can do one or the other, but to do both together is really a challenge."
While employee morale and service both sank in the post-9/11 era, morale has improved since the 2005 bankruptcy proceedings and the subsequent recovery, she said. Today Hubbard is director of prayer at First Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, Va. She feels a long way from Delta, but is less pessimistic about its future.
"Becoming the largest airline in the world, that's exciting," she said. "I have great hopes for where it's going."
GLIMPSES OF A HAPPY HISTORY
When the unionized flight attendants from Northwest meet their nonunion colleagues at Delta, they'll have much to talk about. But besides discussing the upcoming union vote, they also might want to hear about some Delta traditions. Recent interviews with former flight attendants yielded a few tidbits of history:
• Appearance: Flight attendants were required to keep their hair above the collar, avoid dangling jewelry, wear some sort of polish on their nails, and keep below a certain weight limit. "You'd go in your supervisor's office and step on the scale to see if you weighed what was your max," Ellen Cleveland said.
• Orchids: When they graduated, flight attendants gathered in President C.E. Woolman's office. "He had a hobby raising orchids, and he gave each girl an orchid," Mary Mac Saunders of Atlanta said. "Then we stood around his desk while he told us the history of Delta."
• Cigarettes: Passengers not only smoked on flights back in the 1960s and 1970s, but free cigarettes were delivered to their tray-tables — mini-packs with four cigarettes inside.
• The Alamo Plaza: In the 1960s, the airline housed flight attendant trainees at a motel on the somewhat down-at-the-heels Stewart Avenue. The street later became well-known for strip clubs and prostitution. Trainees were assigned four to a room, and extracurricular adventures were discouraged. "They watched us like hawks while we were there," Saunders said. "Management would report to them anything that was not right."
• Marriage: Until the mid-1960s, flight attendants were required to remain single. "I flew until I got married, at that time you had to quit when you got married," Saunders said. "Looking back on it in this day and age it seems silly."
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