When I started work for Boeing in 1975, I worked at the Developmental Center right across the street from what was to become the Pacific NW Museum of Flight. The building site was just a parking lot, with a strip club on the street side of the lot. The strip club closed shortly after we moved to the Seattle area, and it wasn't long before the lot was cleared to begin construction. Thousands of Boeing employees like myself, contributed to the building fund through monthly payroll deductions, and everyone knew it as the Boeing Museum of Flight.
Watched the building take shape over the years, and really enjoyed seeing the airplanes arriving in mostly pieces, all restored to beautiful condition by the many hundreds of volunteers, who worked for years to pass this exciting aviation heritage on to the following generations.
I was privileged to be there for the opening, and visited often after work, as I parked just a few hundred feet away in the lot directly across from the DC hanger, former home of the SST mock-up.
One particularly memorable event came as a complete surprise to me. I left work, and saw a lot of activity, and many press vehicles pulling into the Museum parking lot. When I walked to the back of the Museum parking area, I was stunned to see a beautiful Russian Sukoi jet fighter parked there! It was one of their first line fighter aircraft, and it was not roped off, or protected by security fencing. I walked over and was able to walk right up to the Sukoi. I can still remember the excitement I felt, when I reached up and touched that beautiful airplane. It had suddenly dawned on me, that the bitter cold war was finally over.
A small group of people were gathering directly in front of the Sukoi, surround by the news media, so I walked over to see what was going on. There stood the Russian and US astronauts, who had manned the first US/USSR joint space mission! I listened as they introduced each Astronaut in turn, and stood there in awe as the group headed single file into the Museum, walking perhaps a dozen steps in front of us. They nodded and waved as they passed, and their smiles spread to every single person in that crowd. It illuminated hundreds of smiling faces, like the sun breaking through the clouds, after a dark and dreary storm.
I was still smiling thirty minutes later, when I walked through the front door of our home, to tell my wife and family about the incredible event I had just witnessed.
Bill
Topic: Museum of Flight, Seattle (Read 1543 times)