AN AIRLINE CAREER BEGINS

It's surprising how a career starts. Looking back on my life, I guess it was fate. I started out as a dental technician to join a good friend who, like me, was waiting to join the Army. I needed something to do. The army provided me the opportunity to work with dentists, and this ended up leading me to the United States. The unpleasant situation which made me to give up this profession, forced me to seek another career path, which fortunately led me to one that I got to love. Back in the 1940's the airline industry was really just getting started. I didn't know it at the time, but here I was on the ground floor with United Air Lines which, in the future, was to become a major American airline.

I reported for work in November 1946, as a reservations agent. My job was to answer the reservation phone and book the caller on a flight to the destination requested. There were no computers in those days; each flight and date had a page with spaces for the number of seats available. When I started, our airplanes were 21 passenger DC-3s. When each 21 spaces were filled out with names written in, the flight was sold out. United's main route was from the West Coast to New York, with stops in various cities enroute.

I had my first flight as an employee in December of 1947, when the company sent me to Chicago to attend a two weeks training course. It was quite an experience; it took us three days to get there. Our DC-3 was about half full. The Stewardess, that's what they used to call these lovely ladies, gave us all blankets, as whatever heating the aircraft had was not enough for winter operation. We made three stops enroute and, at two of them, Salt Lake City and Omaha, we landed but had to stay overnight due to snow storms. At the two stops where we could not take off, United put us all up in a hotel. Finally we reached Chicago.

The United Airlines training classes were held right at the Chicago Airport. As I remember, we had about twenty participants; most from SanFrancisco, as this was to be united's main station at that time. All of us were accommodated at a nearby hotel. We would be picked up every morning and transported to the airport. The weather was terrible, the wind blew, and it snowed almost every day. Chicago's nickname as the "Windy City" certainly was apropos. The two weeks went by fast and we were soon enroute back to beautiful SanFrancisco.

While I was attending classes in Chicago, my mother moved to SanFrancisco to be with me. This was very fortunate as I had only been at work for a few days when I came down with the measles. It was just at that time that United decided that they had hired too many people as they were anticipating receiving a number of DC-4 aircraft from the military. The military was reducing their need for all the aircraft they used for the war, but ended up delaying their return to the airlines for almost six months. The SFO reservations manager had the job of deciding who would be furloughed. As I was one of the last hired, they tried to reach me at home to give me the bad news. Since I was sick in bed, my mother took the phone call. Instead of telling me, she somehow got an appointment with the reservations manager and talked him out of furloughing me. I don't know exactly what she told him, probably something about how dedicated to my job I was, how much I loved my job, etc. I guess it worked as I kept my job. (Never underestimate the power of your mother.)

 

Being a reservations agent was not a difficult job. I got to talk to a lot of very interesting people who wanted to fly somewhere and learned about all the different destinations in the USA. Flying was not the popular means of transportation that it is today. The old DC-3s were not pressurized so they couldn't fly over about 13,000 feet. Today they can fly at 30,000 feet or higher. The turbulence back then could be high at times and weather would often result in delays or cancellation of flights. In some ways, this has not changed. Mother Nature still has a say in this.

I remember being at the airport when welcomed the first DC-4 in SanFrancisco. Compared to the DC-3s, it had 44 seats instead of 21, and I remember remarking to a fellow employee: "Where in California, are we going to find 44 people who all want to go somewhere at the same time"? Filling 21 seats on a DC-3 was not always easy, back in 1946 we would often have to assure people that flying was safe, that they wouldn't get a nose bleed and that the stewardess was a registered nurse (as it was in those days). I had been with the Company for almost a year when, in November of 1948, United had a fatal crash in Brice Canyon.

As it happened after every commercial air line crash, people would cancel reservations. Phone activity would drop dramatically. It was at that time that United and Eastern airlines made an agreement on personnel. Since neither airline competed for passengers (United was primarily an East West carrier and Eastern a North/ South carrier). The agreement called for United to loan personnel to Eastern during the winter, and Eastern would loan personnel to United in the summer season. This agreement was very timely for us as the Brice Canyon crash cut deeply into our passenger loads and once again we had more employees than needed. That's when I was asked, "Would you like to spend the winter working with Eastern Airlines?" I thought for about thirty seconds… and responded YES. It was on my first anniversary with United that I found myself enroute to sunshiny Miami.

AN AMERICAN BEGINNING

Sacramento, California was a far cry from Vancouver, British Columbia. Here I found a city where the sun shined almost every day. It was very hot in the summer and mild in the winters. It was the first time I had seen palm trees. Sacramento was a city of parks and nice homes. It was a good introduction to what was going to be my adoptive country. Vancouver was a city I loved dearly. It had beautiful mountains, the Pacific Ocean, and the frequent rain that brought a lush green to all the landscape. I loved the smell of the cedar trees, the bounty of the fruit orchards, and lovely home gardens full of colorful flowering bushes and plants. Vancouver was a city I would always love, no matter where I lived.

The first thing I had to do was to find a place to live. I contacted Dr. Spurgeon, my employer, to let him know that as soon as I found a place to live I would be ready to go to work. I checked the local paper and found a room for rent. Visiting the home, I found that it belonged to an old Spanish American war veteran and his wife. I don't recall how much I paid, but it was a nice room. The old veteran's name was Pete. He had a well trained police dog. Several times coming home in the evening, the dog would not let me in the house. I would have to wait until the barking got the attention of its owner. Pete's wife was an invalid, and was very heavy. He often asked me to help him get her into a wheelchair.

I worked for Dr. Spurgeon for about a year. He was married and had a very young daughter. In the beginning, everything was great. I was enjoying my work and he seemed pleased to have me working for him. I had decided that I wanted to learn how to fly. Every weekend I would go out to the airport and take flight instruction from a great guy who was an ex flight instructor in the American Air Force. Flying became my love and I even thought about the possibility of a commercial license. When I took the physical exam for my license, I learned that I was shade blind, which precluded my getting a commercial license. It is not that I was totally color blind, but I was not able to tell dark blue from black, etc.

Things were not going well back at the office. It became clear that Dr Spurgeon had a drinking problem. He had become an alcoholic. Unfortunately, he expected me to be his enabler. I would have to purchase his liquor for him. This was not easy as I was still only nineteen and couldn't do it legally. He would insist that I go out with him to dinner. This became more than I could handle. His wife would call me and ask that I try to get some money for her as she didn't have money for food etc. I didn't drink and this man I had met in the Canadian Army had become someone much different. It became my job to get him home, get money from him for his wife, etc. His practice was going down the tubes. I decided that for my own sake I had to leave. He was not happy with that decision, but I was not going to get anywhere staying with him.

I just had to get another job. I decided that I had enough of dentistry so I applied for a job at the Payless Drug Store in downtown Sacramento. I ended up at the candy counter selling candy. It was about this time that my mother showed up. Pete was happy to rent us a second room and mother moved in. It was nice to have her with me. The war had destroyed our family and as we had all ended up all over the place, it was good to become reconnected. I was still flying every weekend but only for about an hour as money was short at the time.

I decided that I needed to find a better job than the candy counter at the Payless Drugstore. I was not sure just what I wanted to do. I got the Idea of going down to San Francisco and see if I could find something to do. As I got off the bus in San Francisco and was walking up Market Street, I saw a sign for United Air Lines. Their offices were at the corner of Post and Powell Streets. I decided to go in and see what kind of jobs they had. I guess they thought I was a little strange when I asked for the personnel department. They didn't have one. I spoke to the office manager and told him that I had been on several UAL flights and thought that United would be a great company to work for. We spoke for quite a while about all the jobs in the airline industry. He thought that reservations would be a good place to start and offered me a job. This was November 1946. I was to come to work in the reservations office at Post & Powell. There would be a training class in Chicago in December and I would have to participate in that. Two days later, I started work.

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS

The job offer from Dr. Spurgeon, one of the dentists that I worked with in the Army at Chilliwack, came as a real surprise. Although we had been friends as well as Army comrades I honestly had never expected much in the way of communication after we all returned to civilian life, especially from somebody who had returned to life in California. I was flattered that he thought that much about me. Since he offered me the job of heading up his dental lab, I certainly was not going to turn it down.

My first call and visit was to the U.S. Immigration office in Vancouver. I needed to find out what I had to do to enter the United States and accept a job there. I found out that my Canadian occupation as a dental technician would give me a preferred place in line. It would be helpful if I had a sponsor, preferably a relative, who would be willing to guarantee that they would support me if need be. I should also have the promise of employment. There were also many forms to be filled out, including my honorable army discharge and a police report that I had no criminal record. I would also have to obtain a Canadian Passport for crossing the U.S. border.

I called my sister in Rhode Island. She, and her husband Harold, had purchased a home in Coventry R.I. and were both employed. Vera had a job as Secretary to a Supreme Court Justice in the Supreme Court, in Providence and Harold was working as a civilian at the Navy Yard. They both agreed to become my sponsors. I was able to get a job confirmation letter from Dr. Spurgeon. Finally I had obtained all documents required. Now I had to wait for a call from Immigration. I was informed that this would take two to three weeks.

I had resigned from the post office and was staying with my father. While waiting for my hearing at the U.S. Immigration Office, I learned that my mother had obtained her discharge from the Canadian Air Force and was visiting Vera. We spoke on the telephone and she told me that Vera had updated her on my situation and had agreed to sponsor Mother as well. As my mother said, she had no reason to start her life again in Canada, if her two children were going to be living in the U.S.A.

It took all of three weeks to hear from U.S. Immigration. They had found everything was in order and I was granted Immigrant status. They gave me a green card and I was on my way. I was certainly going to miss living in Canada, and especially Vancouver. The only American experience I had was my trip to Washington D.C. and a couple of trips to Seattle while I was in the army. From what I had seen on those trips, I felt sure that the American and the Canadian people were pretty much the same and I would get along just fine. I had always been a very positive and adventuring person who rarely saw anything negative. I was looking forward to a new adventure, perhaps the beginning of a whole new life, and I could hardly wait to see where it would lead.