Grounded

When Carolyn Lee Wills (B.B.A. ’59) started her career at Eastern Air Lines in 1965, it was the leading carrier on the East Coast and one of the “Big Four” domestic airlines along with American, TWA and United. As the company’s first representative of women’s activities, Wills was hired to “promote travel and sales to women,” she remembers.

She went on to become the first woman to hold an executive management position with the airline when she was appointed regional manager of public relations. She managed the company’s Southern Division, ranging from Atlanta to Tokyo. A few years before Wills’ arrival, Eastern had pioneered an air shuttle service — the first of its kind — from Atlanta to New York, Boston and Washington, D.C.

In its heyday, Eastern was widely considered the gold standard of air travel. For nearly 30 years, the airline was led by Eddie Rickenbacker, a revered World War I flying ace, who was closely identified with Eastern until his retirement in 1963. Another legendary aviator, Frank Borman, the astronaut who commanded the Apollo 8 spacecraft around the moon, led Eastern from 1975–86.

Just three years into Borman’s tenure, the federal government deregulated the airline industry, introducing a free market in commercial airline travel. Eastern, a legacy carrier with an aging fleet, couldn’t keep up. Without government protection, Eastern’s profits nosedived, and the company was sold in 1986 to Texas Air International, headed by Frank Lorenzo.

Two months into the job, Lorenzo called for a half-billion-dollar cut in labor costs. Union workers opted to strike. Lorenzo countered by claiming bankruptcy and hired nonunion workers to fill the jobs of striking employees. But in late 1988, Lorenzo took his demands a step further and asked the machinists’ union to take a pay cut, resulting in yet another strike. This time, Eastern’s pilots joined the picket line, and the airline came to a standstill.

In 1991, Eastern flew its last flight. Its hubs in Atlanta and Miami were taken over by competitors, and its concourses in New York and Newark, N.J., were demolished.

Wills donated her collection of Eastern photographs, documents, memorabilia and ephemera to the Southern Labor Archives at Georgia State. Administered by Traci Drummond (B.A. ’97), the archive collects, preserves and makes available the heritage of Southern workers and their unions.

“We’ve been able to use her collection as a stepping stone to bring in other parts of the collection [not directly related to the labor movement],” Drummond says. That includes the papers of Martha Hamilton, a Washington Post reporter who covered the airline industry during Eastern’s struggles, the collection of Adrienne Cohen, an advertising executive who worked on print and radio ads, and the Jim Ashlock collection, comprised of periodicals, annual reports and strike files collected by the Eastern public relations officer. It also includes Borman's papers. Borman was friend of famed negotiator W. J. (Bill) Usery Jr., namesake of the W. J. Usery Chair of the American Workplace in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. Usery’s papers and the John Chaknis Air Line Pilots Association collection round out the Eastern materials in the collection.

“We’ve been able to bring together all of these aspects of the history of this airline, not just labor management. We have advertising, reporting, video, even uniforms,” Drummond says. “It’s not like anything else out there. It will be useful to people for years to come.”

On Eastern
"We Earn Our Wings Everyday"
Eastern slogan

Carolyn Lee Wills: Eastern was a family thing for me. I had an aunt, Lillian Cox, who worked for Eastern for a number of years. I grew up listening to her stories, and I just thought I wanted to work there. I also met my husband because of Eastern.

Jeremy Bright: In the 1950s, the Eastern flight experience is what you would imagine during that time — champagne and chateaubriand service. They set the tone for aviation. But as the other airlines began popping up, they had to start changing the way they were doing business because it was so expensive to keep up that level of service.

Wills: Eastern was the first airline out of Atlanta and the first airline out of Atlanta to carry passengers. It flew mail in 1928 and passengers in 1930. For the 50th anniversary, we rebuilt a Pitcairn Mailwing, the first airplane that flew to and from Atlanta. We also flew the first-ever international flight out of Atlanta.

Martha Hamilton: Eastern inaugurated all these great aircrafts. It had a great history. It was a great airline. It was a real tragedy it ended the way it did.

Traci Drummond: Atlanta was the hub. Eastern’s headquarters was in Miami, but Atlanta was the biggest hub. Most flights went through Atlanta.

Wills: Atlanta was always first for Eastern.

Bright: The Atlanta airport wouldn’t have grown as much as it did without Eastern helping it grow through its business.

Drummond: They would do a famous flight from here, called the “Jet to the Met,” where you got on a plane all dressed up, and go to the opera at the Met and then fly back.

Bright: Eastern was really involved in the community, and it was really great about promoting its services by partnering with other organizations.

Wills: We had an Eastern ice hockey team in Atlanta — really, we did! It had one female on it. We traveled all over playing hockey. Patty — the one female on the team, she loved to the be the one to face off — she would bat her eyelashes toward the other team. I contacted the [Johnny] Carson show, and Carson wanted to have her on as a guest, and I went with her. She was going to teach Carson how to play ice hockey. It was a very cute segment. She wore her hot pants, and she had her flight attendant uniform on. It ran 28 minutes! It just kept getting better and better.

Bright: One of the great things about the Wills collection is not only did she do public relations with Eastern and the public, but she was really great about documenting the celebration of Eastern and Eastern employees.

Drummond: The Wills collection started coming to us in 1986 before Eastern closed down — before the strike, before the bankruptcy.

Hamilton: It was a great airline. It really dominated the East Coast, so it was a big story for the Washington Post. I really wanted to donate my papers and keepsakes somewhere. And because machinists were involved — and as someone who is the daughter of a machinist — it made sense to donate it to [the Southern Labor Archives at] Georgia State.

Labor Struggles

Dear Fellow Pilot: As Eastern management continues to attempt to rectify the numerous shortfalls programmed into their system, we, as pilots, can expect further attacks on our working agreement. Apparently, stability is a thing of the past unless there are changes in management philosophy. — Sept. 8, 1986, Eastern Air Lines Pilots’ Newsletter

Wills: Through the years, Eddie Rickenbacker welcomed unions. They formed easily. That was part of what he did. There were disputes through the years, but they resolved.

Bright: Both sides, the machinists and the management team, felt like each side kept changing the rules.

In 1983, instead of going on strike, unions and Eastern management agreed on an ownership plan. Workers agreed to major concessions, including wage cuts, in return for equity and two seats on the company’s board. Charles Bryan, president of District 100 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW), which represented about 10,000 Eastern Air Lines workers, was one of the first members of the board.

Frank Borman*: If we [had] had the resources to take a strike, particularly with the machinists’ union in ’83, the company would have been immeasurably better off. ... We didn’t have the resources to take a strike.

W. J. Usery**: Colonel Borman had a genuine, strong feeling for the pilots, and it hurt him greatly that the pilots had seemingly become mad with him. This all started over the ’83 thing, when they thought he took money and gave it to Bryan. And all during the years that Colonel Borman had been at Eastern, he had had a very close working relationship with the pilots. They respected him, and he respected them. Colonel Borman was a pilot himself, a test pilot. He knew as much about airplanes as any of the rest of them, talked that language and so forth.

Bright: We have the correspondence between Usery and the machinists and management. Usery came out and said to the machinists, “You can’t continue a smear campaign against management and expect them to come to the table,” and to management, “You cannot treat the machinists as if they can be easily bowled over, and if you want to come to an agreement with them, you have to give up something.”

Charles Bryan***: In my opinion ... we’ve had a lose-lose situation going on. It’s been every six months or every year of some crisis. Either one of the unions [is] potentially negotiating a contract, [or there’s] a potential to strike, a default in our loans, a threat of bankruptcy, not meeting payroll on a couple of occasions. … And [the way] that all played out to the public was very, very detrimental.