A young boy, with the help of his father, peers inside an airplane’s overhead bins as his family looks on.
The moment, captured in a photograph, personifies the excitement of air travel.
Nancy Brown didn’t think she had anything to do with that image when her mother asked her about it.
As a 25-year employee of the Boeing Co., Brown knows about airplanes. It’s in her blood. Both of Brown’s parents, Jack and Bettie Smith, along with several of their six children, have worked for the Boeing Co.
“We sort of kept it in the family,” Bettie Smith said.
It’s only fitting, then, that the Smith family was featured in that nearly 40-year-old picture with Brown, her mother, sister and brothers watching as Jack Smith lifted his son, Gale, inside a Boeing 747 jet.
The photo resurfaced recently as the Boeing Co. celebrates the 40th anniversary of its Everett factory this year. Families such as the Smiths appreciate firsthand the impact of the company throughout the Puget Sound region. Members of the Smith family live from Stanwood down to south of Seattle and report to different Boeing facilities in the region.
But it was the building of that first 747 that brought the Smiths here.
Jack Smith was working at Edwards Air Force Base through a contract with General Electric in the mid-1960s. With his contract running out, Smith heard the Boeing Co. might be hiring for its new 747 jumbo jet program in Everett.
Smith moved out ahead of the family, who later settled in Bothell.
During those early years at Boeing, Jack Smith worked not only on the first 747 but also on early versions of the single-aisle 737. He would also spend time with Boeing’s 727, 757 and 767 jets before retiring in 1989.
After the 747 took its first flight from Everett’s Paine Field in February 1969, Smith would take part on a number of test flights and was asked to accompany the plane to its first appearance at the Paris Air Show. Boeing invited the families of Paris-goers to tour the inside of the company’s jumbo jet.
“I don’t think Jack can lift Gale” up to the overhead bins anymore, Bettie Smith said recently.
Boeing used the original 747 for numerous test flights through the years. The company has retired the plane to the Museum of Flight in Seattle.
“They got their money’s worth out of it,” Jack Smith said.
During Boeing’s infamous downturn in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Jack Smith was one of thousands of Boeing workers laid off in the Puget Sound region. The Smiths sold their house in Bothell, packed the six kids in the car and moved back to California.
The recall notice from Boeing came six months later. Jack Smith didn’t think twice about it. The family bought another house in Bothell, within blocks of their first one, and has lived there ever since.
After the family’s return to the area, Bettie Smith followed her husband’s lead and took a job at Boeing as a secretary. She failed her first typing test but eventually won a spot with the company, remaining in her secretary position for 19 years.
“I stayed with the same place – it was the supervisors who left,” she said.
Bettie Smith encouraged her children to work for the company that “has always been good to us.”
Brown started working for Boeing at the company’s Everett plant in 1979. As many a Boeing employee can empathize, Brown has moved from site to site around the Puget Sound area, completing stints at Boeing’s Kent, Renton and Auburn facilities.
Like her father before her, Brown has enjoyed the chance to see Boeing’s latest creation, the 787 Dreamliner, take shape. She was in Auburn when the company worked up the concept of the Dreamlifter, the modified 747 that will ferry 787 parts around the world. At Boeing Field, Brown says the Dreamlifter often parks about 200 feet from where she works.
“It seems like our family has had a finger in everything out at Boeing,” Bettie Smith said.
Reporter Michelle Dunlop: 425-339-3454 or mdunlop@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
