Where friendships took flight
October 31, 2024
On the first Tuesday of each month, a group of retirees from Eastern Airlines still gets together — 35 years after their Charlotte office shutdown.
by Sharon Smith | photographs by Tonya Russ Price, Poprock Photography
Truett Taylor held a winning raffle ticket. He and his wife, Lyda, received one as they walked in the door at this year’s Eastern Airlines retirees picnic in south Charlotte at Davie Park. It wasn’t a big prize, just a canister of cookies, but it’s all part of the fun.
This group loves a raffle, though the prizes are nothing to write home about. There’s no hiding the good-natured eye rolls, playful side-glances and sly smiles across the table. Announcer and retiree Miriam Martin pokes fun at the prizes, too. Laughter abounds.
After all, they’ve been holding raffles for a long time. Not just at the annual picnics, which traditionally draw Eastern retirees from across the region, but also at local monthly meetings where they catch up over dinner and announcements at Park Place Restaurant.
“It’s sort of like family, you know,” says Taylor, whose Eastern career started at the reservations desk and ended at the rate desk decades later. “Some of us traveled together. Some of us went to church together. Some of us played golf together,” he explains.
Many of them met at work in the 1960s, when they were in their 20s. Eastern was one of the big four national airlines and one of Charlotte’s largest employers, with a hub on Fairview Road near Park South Drive.
It’s where Emily Wilson met her husband, Benjamin, who passed away several years ago. “We had two boys and we would switch shifts,” Wilson says. “I would work an a.m. morning shift, and he would work an afternoon shift. And sometimes we switched the children in the parking lot at work!” she shakes her head with a grin, remembering how they made it work as young parents all those years ago.
Now in their 70s and 80s, some retirees use a walker. They crack jokes at the door about getting the closest parking space or being dropped off.
Yet the energy they bring to the room is palpable. People half their age would be lucky to attend a “work” party with this much easy camaraderie.
Judy Kelly, a 25-year veteran of Eastern, still speaks with pride about being a reservations agent at “the best airline in Charlotte.” She describes how they wrote reservations on cards and filed them by hand, and how passengers could show up at the airport and book a flight minutes before takeoff.
“We worked a lot of crazy hours,” Kelly says, recalling the 24-7 nature of the office. “We worked real busy times and we worked slack times, so we had time to get to know each other. We were there when people got married. We were there when they had their children,” she adds, explaining how friendships were cultivated.
Their work culture back then is unlike most today. At Eastern, they had longevity. They spent 20, 25, 30 years working together. Then came the shock of losing their jobs when the airline went bankrupt and the Charlotte office shuttered in 1989 amid union strikes.
“Everybody went bananas,” Kelly says. “We had EMTs there because people were fainting and falling out.”
Wilna Eury, who organizes the gatherings along with Miriam Martin, says initially, they hoped Eastern management and the unions would find a solution. Some colleagues transferred briefly to remaining Eastern offices around the country; others took jobs in Charlotte’s emerging business and banking sectors — back then, that included companies like NCNB, First Union and Duke Power.
In January 1991, Eastern flew its last flight. Eury says that same year, the Charlotte crew held their first picnic. Small groups started meeting for lunch, which eventually led to monthly dinner gatherings.
“We do it to see the happiness it brings everyone,” Eury says. “Back in the ’60s through ’80s, when you were hired you were assigned to a team, and you stayed with them. They became your family. You shared the deaths of your parents, weddings, births of babies, and at times the death of a fellow employee.”
They’ve done life together. For many in this group, that also includes unthinkable tragedy.
At this year’s picnic, they marked the 50th anniversary of the worst plane crash in Charlotte history. On September 11, 1974, as the morning crew started their day, Eastern Airlines Flight 212 went down 3 miles from the airport runway, claiming 72 souls. Only 10 people survived the fiery crash, which was blamed on pilot error.
Employees from the Charlotte office rushed to the scene like first responders. They were heroes without training and unprepared for what they saw. Others worked around the clock to help in the office.
None of them had a choice about working that day, or getting laid off years later. They’ve been retired from Eastern longer than they ever worked there. Still, they choose to be friends and spend time together.
“To come back and be here with your best friends, it’s wonderful,” Kelly says, as she expresses appreciation for Wilna and Miriam’s effort to keep the get-togethers going.
To paraphrase the old Eastern slogan, if you ask anyone in this group, those two have earned their wings. SP
