Many workers follow in their parents’ footsteps

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, December 30, 2006

EVERETT – Walking through the Boeing Co.’s Everett factory, Calvin Mang seems at home – even though it’s been 20 years since he’s worked here.

“An airplane factory is an airplane factory,” he said.

But there’s no airplane factory quite like the one in Everett. The largest building by volume in the world, the factory is frequently likened to a city, one that these days employs about 25,000 people.

More than five years have passed since Mang’s last visit to this “city,” yet the 82-year-old doesn’t feel overwhelmed.

“I wouldn’t get lost out here,” Mang said.

Besides his long history with the Boeing Co., one that spanned from 1951 to 1986, Mang has some additional “insider” information on the Everett plant: several members of his family still work there — perhaps that’s where the feeling of home inside the Everett factory comes. Like many families in Everett and Snohomish County, the Mangs always have a shared interest, a topic of conversation at the dinner table: Boeing.

More than half of Mang’s immediate family has worked at Boeing. Mang himself started his career with the company in Wichita, Kan., where his father also worked. After Mang transferred to Everett in the 1960s, his wife also made Boeing her employer of choice. Over the years, the Mangs’ children, along with some of the children’s spouses, have followed suit.

When his father worked at the Everett plant, Darin Mang used to dream about having his picture taken while standing underneath the giant factory doors — doors between 300 and 350 feet wide and 87 feet high. On his first day on the job in Everett, Darin Mang got his wish — sort of. Boeing doesn’t allow cameras on site, so Darin settled for just being in the spot he’d dreamed.

There are obvious reasons a child would follow his or her parent to work at Boeing. And there are reasons to avoid Boeing, primarily because of layoffs associated with the ups and downs of the aerospace industry.

For Darin Mang, whose siblings already worked at Boeing, “everybody else was doing it, why not?” he said.

Besides the aerospace industry providing the top-paying jobs in Snohomish County, Boeing workers such as Mang tend to mention the good benefits and wide range of professional opportunities as reasons to follow in a parent’s footsteps.

And there’s pride.

Former Everett site manager Ron Ostrowski recalls watching a family on the day Boeing rolled out its 777 in 1994.

The employee hoisted his child on his shoulders. As the plane moved forward, he pointed to a specific part, not the plane itself.

“And he was telling his kid, ‘That’s what daddy built,’ ” Ostrowski said.

Any single part seems incidental in the process of building an airplane. However, Ostrowski said, that part is important to the person who built it. Ultimately, that part is essential to the plane’s success.

The elder Mang still takes pride in his role in building that original 747 nearly 40 years ago. His son Darin may look back one day with the same affinity toward the 787.

As for his father, “I’d really like to be around to take a ride in it,” Calvin Mang said.