Cherished Memories of Eastern Airlines

March, 1963 my love affair finally took off – literally. Captain Justin Greiner said I was ready to become an active pilot for Eastern Airlines. I was paired with Andrew “Andy” Smith for my Convair 440 flight training in, of all places, New Orleans. My career had started better than I ever anticipated. I thought I would not make it through the ground school.

Most of my class 02/11/63 were assigned to DCA. Of course, being from Miami, I thought I would like to stay right at home and fly for Eastern. Looking back, going to DCA was the best assignment as my first domicile. Great Captains to learn from as most had served in WW2 and were heroes, which they truly were. I never came back to Miami spending my first year in DCA and the next 25 in ATL.

5 guys in a two bedroom apartment doesn’t sound to enticing to start out what would become a fabulous” dream” job as anyone working for Eastern Airlines would know. I believe the apartments were new and the River Towers had just been built so we got a good deal. It was furnished too. The way we figured it, we each would get a bed at least a few nights a week while some of us were on trips that, in most cases, had great layovers. And I mean great layovers – Syracuse, Louisville, New Orleans, Corpus Christi, Brownsville, Jacksonville, Tampa/St Pete, Miami Boston and some others I don’t remember. And the great thing about DCA on the CV-440 was that we are able to hold lines of flying right from the beginning – no reserve for our class of new hires. The five guys earlier mentioned were: Vince Janes, Dan Gellert, Phil Sybille, Andy Smith and me.

As I mentioned earlier in this recollection, the captains we flew with were guys I welcomed as mentors. Just to name a few: Al Lovelace, Cy Crites, John “JB” McBride, Jack Mannion, Hugh Pierce, Hal Cooke, Larry DeAngelis and many others. The Flight Attendants were the best. They had to be as they had to serve meals to 40+ passengers on very short leg segments – many times finishing up between the outer marker and the runway. Only one Stewardess/Flight Attendant was assigned to serve 44 people plus the two of us up front on the CV-440. They were magnificent and smartly uniformed in those blue jackets, skirts, pill-box caps and white gloves. (When did the gloves go away?)

I’ve told my story of the Miami layover and the very senior Miami based Stewardess meeting me on one of my first early flights out of Miami on my radio show. It happened on the pre-flight inspection one rainy morning around 7:00 am. She parked in the parking lot very near where our flight was parked and got soaking wet in an early morning rain shower between where she parked and where our aircraft was parked. When I got to the top of the Convair’s airstairs she met me in her white slip and bra. WOW !!! Was this going to be a wonderful job. She had taken off her uniform and hung it out to dry next to the radio rack in the cockpit to dry out before boarding passengers. True story. Yes, this was MY AIRLINE !!! And through the years that feeling never left me. Eastern was truly a family affair.

Trying to live on $475 a month with my wife and two children was not going to be easy. Especially in the Washington DC area. After leaving the River Towers and finding an apartment in Annandale, VA about a 30-minute drive to Washington National Airport, I managed to hang in there for one year until I was able to re-domicile to Atlanta after an opening for qualified Convair F/Os when MSY and CLT closed its crew base.

But before we get to Atlanta, I’ll tell you how great Eastern Airlines was to me and my family while I was DCA based. A tragedy struck my family when my wife had a cerebral hemorrhage after only 5 months with the company. Of course, it happened while I was on a trip to Miami with a 30-horu layover. It was a trip number I will never forget - EAL Flight #687 – DCA to MIA with about 12 stops to Miami. After landing in JAX and calling operations for the outbound fuel requirement, Operations asked if there was a F/O Neal Holland on board. I said yes, I was. He asked me to come into ops after landing. In flight operations I was told my wife had a major stroke and was in the Fairfax, VA hospital. He gave me a phone number to call and informed me that the DC-7 at one of the Gates was waiting at the gate for me. It was a scheduled non-stop JAX to DCA. They had called ATL for a F/O replacement who was on his way to cover my Flight 687. I was so proud to be with an airline that would care enough about a new hire of only 5 months to go through holding a scheduled flight and sending a crew replacement for me. But this was not just an airline. It was Eastern Airlines.

Now to shorten this story to “the rest of the story” I will tell you the amazing part. Me, no insurance to cover a major health issue for a family member in a Virginia hospital in a coma. We didn’t get that until we finished the first year. Yes, you guessed the “rest of the story.” Eastern Airlines not only covered ALL my wife’s medical bills, but gave me as much time off as I needed WITH PAY to take care of her until I was able to have her mother come and stay with us so that I could return to my “dream job.” They even bought my mother-in-law a ticket on Piedmont Airlines to DCA from Asheville, NC.

Folks, as of this writing, I have been with my wife for 69 years. We celebrate our anniversary February 2, 2025. Our gratitude to Eastern Airlines goes beyond my “dream job.”